You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.
If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matt. 5:38-39)
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Matt. 5:43-48, Luke 6:27-28)
Put your sword back in its place...for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. (Matt. 26:52)
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matt. 5:9)
An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye ... ends in making everybody blind. (Gandhi)
The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

Prisoner's dilemma
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/



If you want to play:
http://www.iterated-prisoners-dilemma.net/

If two players play prisoners' dilemma more than once in succession and they remember previous actions of their opponent and
change their strategy accordingly, the game is called iterated prisoners' dilemma.
This game is very similar to interactions in the real world.

Tit for tat strategy is one of the best strategies for this game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

1. Unless provoked, the agent will always cooperate
2. If provoked, the agent will retaliate
3. The agent is quick to forgive
4. The agent must have a good chance of competing against the opponent more than once.

Tit for tat is very similar to eye for an eye.

In Nice Guys Finish First, Dawkins seems to concentrate only on how nice tit for tat is, and talks about cooperation and forgiveness.
I feel like he's "peacemongering" and should be concentrating more on retaliation part and how tit for tat is basically eye for an eye.
Or am I wrong?

Nice Guys Finish First
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA4dZ6NVNbk

Jesus said it's not eye for an eye, but turn the other cheek (pacifism).
Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi were also against eye for an eye.
This is not right as this is don't retaliate strategy (or always cooperate).
This strategy is no good, because nasty strategies exploit it quickly.
Like a kid that won't fight a bully and always gets beat up, or a guy that always loans money and never gets it back.
Or a guy that does favors when asked and never gets one in return...
Or being nice to everyone and people exploiting this.

That's where I think Dawkins is a little biased in Nice Guys Finish First.
"Nice guy" sounds like a sucker, more accurate representation of his nice guy is a guy that starts off nice,
but if you're nasty he takes revenge and won't stop until you stop. I substituted retaliation with revenge. Same word.

Ok, so if eye for an eye is a highly effective strategy, is our justice system flawed?

Why is death penalty more and more "wrong"?
Is this natural, or is this how pacifism and other religious thought influenced the world?

Jesus, Buddha --> Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., United Nations (universal declaration of human rights) --> Amnesty International --> most of the world abolishes death penalty

Ok, I read that they started thinking about abolishment during Enlightenment, but that didn't take.
Only after declaration of human rights, there were significant changes.

Maybe we should think about the possibility of objectively examining the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)?

It was put together very quickly, while the world was still in shock from WW2, and it was heavily influenced by religious organisations and pacifists.
1st and 3rd article of UDHR is basically a copy of 2nd sentence of the Declaration of Independence, without "Creator" and "pursuit of Happiness".
Notice "Creator", Jefferson was a deist, so I believe this is a direct influence of religious thought on UDHR.

Some of the organisations that were consulting at the time of draft of UDHR:

World Women's Christian Temperance Union
World's Young Women's Christian Association
International Federation of Christian Trade Unions
Catholic International Union for Social Service
International Union of Catholic Women's Leagues
Commission of the Churches on International Affairs

from wiki (source Glendon 2001, A World Made New...):
So, back onto death penalty. It seems that a better strategy is to retaliate life for life as game theory (PD, tit for tat) teaches us.

There have been studies about the deterrence effect of death penalty, but there were also opposite studies. No definite conclusions can be drawn.
I was thinking if the state can make decent money off of prisoners, with work, this would be a better alternative.
But then it would be in the state's and its businesses' interest to have prisoners, because they generate income. This is conflict of interests,
so it's not the brightest idea, but it doesn't even matter, because forced labor kind of violates article 4 of human rights, it violates labor rights and it takes jobs from law-abiding people.

In conclusion:
I know of no rational arguments behind the 3d article of UDHR.
Tit for tat suggests that revenge argument of abolitionists is wrong.
Seems that only valid argument against death penalty is wrongful death.
Risk of wrongful death is bad, but once studies show the deterrence effect of death penalty and determine that many lives are saved with just one execution,
the views on the risk of wronful death will be different. And the state has a duty to protect its people.
"The inevitability of a mistake should not serve as grounds to eliminate the death penalty any more than the risk of having a fatal wreck should make automobiles illegal..."
Steven D. Stewart, JD

What are your thoughts on everything?
This post is not meant to offend anyone, try to be reasonable in your responses.

I'm a fan of Dawkins btw, but what if root of all "evil" is not religion, but religion-influenced morals that may (or not) go against our nature?

Cliffs:
-argument from game theory for death penalty, against pacifism, indiscriminate altruism and for objectively examining the UDHR.

-prisoner's dilemma is very similar to interactions in real world
-tit for tat is one of the best strategies for PD
-tit for tat is basically eye for an eye
-eye for an eye is one of the best strategies for real world
-revenge is good
-death penalty is good, life for life seems reasonable
-not everyone has "right to life"
-UDHR, pacifism, common ethics seem wrong (including most religious and secular humanist ethics)

The main problem in your premises is in the line "Tit for tat is very similar to eye for an eye".

I'll let others elaborate.

Sorry, just always wanted to use that Malmuthism.

TFT is not the best model for more real-life situations where agents can make mistakes. You might want to read up on Win-stay, Lose-shift if you haven't already.

Ok, you're forgiven, but TFT means equivalent retaliation which is what eye for an eye means.
I wanted to read about Win-stay, Lose-shift, but it seemed too technical for me to digest all at once.
All I saw was that another name for WSLS is perfect tit-for-tat.

So, is it much different than tit for tat and does that change anything that I wrote in my first post?

You have too much here, so I'll focus on just one part of your post--your argument for the death penalty. Your argument goes like this: empirical results show us that tit-for-tat strategies in iterated prisoner-dilemma games is a better overall strategy than always-cooperate. If we view social cooperation as involving prisoner-dilemma type situations, then we should adopt tit-for-tat strategies for enforcing social cooperation, i.e. it should guide criminal punishment. Thus, if someone kills someone else, we should then kill them as a tit-for-tat return.

Here's one response to your argument as an elaboration on what zumby said. The basic problem is that you are conflating tit-for-tat and eye for an eye (lex talionis). However, these principles are importantly and relevantly different. What tit-for-tat does is tell us when we should cooperate and when we should defect. What lex talionis tells us is to what extent we should punish. Thus, properly speaking we should view lex talionis as one of a range of possible implementations of a tit-for-tat strategy. We could decide to punish much less or much more within the tit-for-tat framework while remaining within the essential logic of the strategy.

However, the justification for the death penalty you give here is solely a result of your accepting lex talionis--which as I've shown here is not an implication of tit-for-tat. Thus, you would need some additional reason for why we should prefer that model of criminal punishment over others, and this reason is not given here. Hence, the argument fails.

I'll also note that there are some other problems with this argument (such as you conflating the descriptive and prescriptive elements of PD strategies, and your assumption that criminal punishment is a form of defection), but this will do for now.

Ofc, regarding death penalty there are many pros and cons.
I didn't go in depth on this.
Beside lex talionis, I also mention abolishment and say it's unreasonable.

Criminal deviates from the rules, so it's a defect, so society defects too, by putting him in jail, or murdering him.

Tit for tat and lex talionis:

So, Bob and Alice are healthy newlyweds, so they get physical a lot.
I mean fighting, hehe.

Bob punches Alice (defect), Alice punches him back (defect).
This continues, and then Bob stops punching (cooperate) and Alice stops punching (cooperate).

Alice played tit for tat strategy and she stopped punching because tit for tat is retaliating, but also forgiving.

You see, I wasn't conflating, look at the similarities between tit for tat and lex talionis. Bob recieved retribution from Alice for her injuries.
EDIT: Both lex talionis / eye for an eye and tit for tat are similar because they retaliate, this is the point, retaliation/revenge is necessary.
Every good strategy is retaliating, but retaliation is revenge and goes against common ethics.

Let's say some person (call him Howard L.) steals $1000 in merchandise from a local store, but is caught and convicted by the state. If you think the tit-for-tat logic applies here, then you might think that society will benefit if the state punishes Howard L. But how should the state punish him? Should it kill him? Fine him $100? Fine him $1000? $10,000? The principle of tit-for-tat on its own is insufficient to give us an answer as it only tells us to punish Howard L., not how much to punish him.

On the other hand, lex talionis does give us an answer. It says that we should punish Howard L. an equivalent amount to the harm that he caused--so we would fine him $1000. This answer is compatible with tit-for-tat but not required. For instance, we might think that society would benefit even more if we made Howard L. pay a much greater fine than the amount stolen--say $10,000 (e.g. as punitive damages). This greater punishment is not consistent with lex talionis, but it is consistent with tit-for-tat.

My point was just that your argument for the death penalty relies on our accepting lex talionis, not tit-for-tat but you only argue in support of tit-for-tat. If I accept tit-for-tat, but reject lex talionis, then you have given me no reason to think the death penalty is justified.

Regarding your edit: Let's focus on the narrower issue of capital punishment before moving to your larger point of a conflict with common morality.

Pretty much what OrP said. And I've presented you with another PD strategy which involves retaliation (plus some randomized mercy) which outperforms TFT under certain conditions, so even if TFT and lex talionis were the same (which they aren't, as OrP has explained) you haven't demonstrated that lex talionis is the best strategy against immoral/criminal behaviour.

Your argument seems to be

P1) TFT is the best strategy for iterated PD
P2) TFT and lex talionis are equivalent
P3) Iterated PD and social ethics are equivalent
C1) Therefore lex talionis is the best strategy for social ethics

The argument certainly fails on P2, and P1 and P3 are very debatable.

There is no hero, there is no villain. Optimal strategy is nash? It should be taught taught to both agents in school and church?

I assume if we apply tit for tat to any real life situation, retaliation is equivalent.

If A defects, then B (TFT) defects. B will retaliate until A stops defecting.
That's why it's called equivalent retaliation.

Regarding death penalty, I attempt to show that abolition of death penalty is wrong and lacks in reason.

P1) I said tft was one of the best
P2) they are very similar and they both mean exactly the same
P3) I said that it's very similar to interactions in real world
C1) read cliffs below

It's a long road to demonstrating anything, I was hoping we could get there together.

should read

-iterated prisoner's dilemma is very similar to interactions in real world
-tit for tat is one of the best strategies for iterated PD
-all good iterated PD strategies are equally (or very close) retaliating
-retaliation means revenge
-equal revenge is an important part of real world interactions
-equal revenge for taking a life is taking a life
-abolition of death penalty doesn't have rational arguments behind it, is based on religious thought and appeals to emotion*

-therefore abolition of death penalty is wrong

-UDHR, pacifism, common ethics also seem wrong (including most religious and secular humanist ethics)

*will post more about this

EDIT:
I don't know about that, I know very little about nash equilibrium.

I died when I read this post, great use of Howard L.

Each player does whats best for them self and the group?

OP, there is a bonafide game theory expert doing an AMA over in the Poker theory forum. Might be a good opportunity to get an experts opinion on your theory.

I'm convinced he doesn't need to go past posts 9 and 12? I'm missing something?

You really think your posts are the best responses itt?

Could you post more about this? Because I am strongly against the death penalty, and it's not for religious reasons. It's because I think our society should not be in the business of killing defenseless people who are posing no imminent threat to the rest of us. I think killing is bad (and that this doesn't need explanation), and so should only be reserved for the times we need to do it to protect others from being killed/seriously hurt.