Off track!

Here is the other side of me ( I am not always complaining !! :) )

Thought provoking nonetheless...

Heard about Butterfly effect ? Check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

Also for the econometrics in all of us : Check out the Nobel Award winning theory of ' The Beautiful Mind'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

( the Prisoner's Dilemma will interest you for sure)

The classical prisoner's dilemma - derivative from the game theory

The Prisoner's dilemma was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and gave it the "Prisoner's Dilemma" name (Poundstone, 1992).


The classical prisoner's dilemma (PD) is as follows:


Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a two-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?


The dilemma arises when one assumes that both prisoners only care about minimizing their own jail terms. Each prisoner has two options: to cooperate with his accomplice and stay quiet, or to defect from their implied pact and betray his accomplice in return for a lighter sentence. The outcome of each choice depends on the choice of the accomplice, but each prisoner must choose without knowing what his accomplice has chosen to do.





In deciding what to do in strategic situations, it is normally important to predict what others will do. This is not the case here. If you knew the other prisoner would stay silent, your best move is to betray as you then walk free instead of receiving the minor sentence. If you knew the other prisoner would betray, your best move is still to betray, as you receive a lesser sentence than by silence. Betraying is a dominant strategy. The other prisoner reasons similarly, and therefore also chooses to betray. Yet by both defecting they get a lower payoff than they would get by staying silent. So rational, self-interested play results in each prisoner being worse off than if they had stayed silent. In more technical language, this demonstrates very elegantly that in a non-zero sum game a Nash Equilibrium need not be a Pareto optimum.


Note that the paradox of the situation lies in that the prisoners are not defecting in hope that the other will not. Even when they both know the other to be rational and selfish, they will both play defect. Defect is what they will play no matter what, even though they know fully well that the other player is playing defect as well and that they will both be better off with a different result.

Note that the "Stay Silent" and "Betray" strategies may be known as "don't confess" and "confess", or the more standard "cooperate" and "defect", respectively.

Update #1

The picture above will summarise this blog and my despair at this point. This time the news has a mixture of good news and bad ... as everything else in this world, the good portion is merely decorative..

The culprits have been caught ! All of them.. this is the good part and the end of it. We thought that this would be the end of it and justice would be served but one hard look at the police and the judicial system in the country will make you think otherwise... easily!

When confronted with these fellows in the station, they threatened my friend as if being in the lock up didnt matter and had no effect on them whatsoever. So much so was the confidence that they told the complaintent that jail does not stop them .. in front of the ACP!?

I mean I know of people who are afraid of traffice violations but here - what explains this ? That they are well connected? That the real power of police is just to have them locked up for 2 nights? They are so confident that the judicial system will let them go free?

India is shining but is this the colour? Where you can't do shit to psychopaths who committ the deadliest of crimes and be so confident that they commit another one of threatening from within the lock up ? What do you do ? Leave the country ?

Anyone ? Any solutions?

Not fair! What is the reason?

This time I am not going to mince my words unlike my first blog...all throughout my 30 years on this earth, I have believed that everything has a reason , a purpose and that reason/purpose has a positive outcome even if it is not immediate. It goes beyond humand mind to comprehend all the butterfly effect to realise that something good will eventually come out of it.

Yet ... something that happened two hours ago defies all logic , reasoning that all gyan gurus , spiritual speakers, deepak chopras of the world! It in no way ever by any stretch of imagination and help me fo you think it can.

A friend of mine , got her house looted ( where she was posted out of town on a project) , her maid raped , her puppy which she adopted the night before killed !!

I mean where is the reason .. where is the logic .. what is the justification...what can possibly be right or positive with this ? I am dying to be enlightened !

Someone has a theory on Karma ? Well lets see what Karma can explain such an act!

Spare a thought for that person who went through this today ... I have had enough of writting for today!!