Dark Knight Game Theory (Part 3): Boat Scene Prisoner's Dilemma

I don't think it's a true prisoner's dilemma because both boats can't detonate the bomb. When one boat detonates the other boat blows up meaning that they won't get a chance to detonate.

That, and if both cooperate, they both die (in this case, Bats saved them both but this wasn't something you actually could calculate into your decision), which wouldn't be the best outcome, seriously. In prisoner's dilemma, they have a minimum time in jail when both parties coop, but here they both lose their lives. The outcome is completely different, since death is something undoubtedly final. So, there's basically one choice - to kill or to die (through the hands of the joker or through those people on the other ferry; it doesn't really matter in the end since you are dead). So no true prisoner's dilemma here, if you ask me.

as the joker put's it forth it's not a prisoners dilemma, it's not a voting button, it's the detonator itself, click=boom, not click=vote for boom and joker detonates

It's a bit of a stretch to say that one situation of both boats being blown up is better than the other, as the result is the same. The big question in this movie scene is, however: can you trust the rules? There is a (mad)man who wants to blow up the city. When people leave, he says the people on boat 1 can blow up boat 2 and vice versa. But how do you know that this (mad)man did not (accidentally) put the detonator for boat 1 in boat 1 itself and the detonator for boat 2 on boat 2. I think it would be a more interesting outcome of a social experiment to have people blow themselves up when they think they blow up the others (I know, this sounds perverted, but  I wouldn't start this kind of experiment to begin with). Moreover, each detonator could be linked to both bombs, assuring the destruction of both boats in case one is activated.
The same principle goes to some extent for the classical prisoner dilemma, but I guess you can get some legal evidence of your 'cooperation' in today's 'civilised' countries.

I do not think that this situation is similiar to prisoners dilemma as in prisoner dilemma it is best for the group to cooperate but here the only way you can survive is by blowing up the other boat.If one boat blows up the other then in the end half of people would be alive which is the best outcome. But they dont know anytging for sure.The batman can catch the joker in time(this is what really happens but only if joker did not tried to tell another crappy story about how he got those scars.He could have blown the boats right away) and the joker could be just fooling them by providing them their own detonators.But only if you consider these factors its a bit similiar to prisoners dillemma

The issue is you've chosen to arbitrarily assign a 'feeling stupid' point of greater than 1, which is the cost of being dead, so yes it is better to cooperate... but if you assigned a value less than one to thatfactor it would of been in better to detonate. I think I'd feel worse for being dead than stupid! But that's me, the point is that the outcome of this analysis is entirely subjective.

Well actually that is a shitty comparison. And that show why games theory shouldn't be applied to decision making in most cases.

Here the game are stated clearly but the actual end result is that batman gets here in time and save both. And that's usually true that how you analyze the rules at first glance isn't how reality actually is.

Also in the prisoner's dilemna it's actually best to cooperate it's just that you have a completely fucked up and biased analysis when you say it's not and assume people are sociopathic.AND dumb.

But here both cooperation and not cooperation results end up in both dead so if you follow the rules it's simply the faster to blow the other who "wins."

While in a true prisonner's dilemna the end result is best if both cooperate and is not exactly the same as if none cooperate. That's where your exemple fail.

let's be real it's the joker. Personally I think the joker rigged it to where if one of the boats pressed the button on the detonator and the reason is the hospital scene he leaves his finger on the hammer so that way the gun wouldn't go off and the interrogation scene he lied and said that Harvey was at 252nd street and Rachel was on Avenue x when it was reversed the joker plays games so I doubt he would've let one of the boats live

Not a good example of Prisoner's Dilemma.

When I was at Cornell, my advanced microeconomics prof made a problem from this scene on one of our exams. There were three Nash equilibrium solutions.

The values assigned were wholly arbitrary. The only values we can appraise, by virtue of the scenario, is death of one or both groups. Otherwise you'd have to factor in such irrelevancies as 'the other boat had more bad guys' or 'which boat had more older people' or 'how much money was each passenger worth'...

why -3 and -1 when death for both is -2? seems completely random, death should be worth the same in all scenarios.

If they had trust in Batman and the cops, they would hope that both cooperating will lead to them not being killed... So, Its not (-1,-1) but (3,3) [since they are alive and have clean conscience]

Your explanation is a bit wrong here there is very low probability that they will blow each other the detonation must be at the same time which is unlikely the best survival solution is both teams to try and detonate the others as soon as possible but there is an ethical dilemma in this case both ships prefer to let them selves die than become mass murderers so the best for both is to do nothing

there is a reason why it's called a movie but not reality.

While I'm rather new to game theory, I think you got it wrong, this is not the same as the prisoners's dilemma. In the latter, the dominant strategy is for both to cooperate. In the Joker's game, the best payoff is obtained by blowing up the other boat regardless of what the other boat plans on doing. And the last 2 sentences you use as conclusion seem a fallacy: "Joker miscalculated the goodness of people", well nope, the Joker calculated that if neither boat blew the other, he'd blow both, period, in the end the game is aborted (the original rules aren't applied and it's batman who saves everyone); and then "The prisoner's dilemma CAN be beaten", well, yes, it can be beaten, there's nothing new about it, it always had a solution. Literally the first thing they teach you when studying game theory is the prisoner's dilemma and how it's pretty clear what the "solution" is. I'm sorry if my post seems negative, but as I have just started studying this field, I found your video extremely misleading, uninformed and superficial.

We all know if it was real life someone would’ve rushed for the detonator and pressed the button

Distributed AI SCC.462 (Lancaster Uni.).

WT do the 0,-2,-3 represent heree

What if those 2 controllers active both of the bombs? We know how pyschopath joker is. So maybe he wanted them to be exploded by themselves.

Many people in the comments saying that this situation is not same as prisoners dilemma.
Well it's not same. But it's similar.
Prisoners dilemma is just a specific example of problem.There can be multiple types of problem like this. If we expect every problem should be same. Then Game theory branch of mathematics should not exist 😂