We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2015
At work here is the law of the instrument [that is, game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma]: give a small boy (or a researcher) a hammer and he will find things that need hammering. As Kaplan (1964, 29) points out, often the problem is not that some techniques are pushed to the utmost, but that others may, in consequence, be ignored.
Robert Axelrod, 1970Because it captures the structure of a recurring sort of social predicament, there can be no doubt but that the prisoner's dilemma model is bound to be of use to policy-makers … This complexity in co-operative predicaments probably means that the state will often be necessary to select and then reinforce one of the available resolutions. However much we relish the invisible hand, we may still require the strong arm. The lesson is as old as Hobbes, but there is no reason here for surprise. So, after all, is an appreciation of the prisoner's dilemma. Due to the inherent failure of individuals’ ability to cooperate, third-party enforcement must be invoked.
Philip Pettit, 1985It is easy to appreciate how an American president, even the most conscientious, would be impaled on the horns of the intractable nuclear security dilemma. By all indications, the nuclear security dilemma should be resolved by assuring reciprocal cooperation backed by potential devastating retaliation, in keeping with the classical liberal adage of war for war and peace for peace. However, rational strategists considered the threat to harm millions of innocent people once deterrence had already failed to be both immoral and irrational. In 1978, Gregory Kavka, who contributed the most rigorous philosophical analysis of this problem at that time, had little to offer President Jimmy Carter to place the strategy of mutual assured destruction on firm ground, save that he should leave the role of issuing credible deterrent threats to agents who were either less than moral or less than rational with the hope they would never be carried out. In 1980, Kavka renewed his efforts to defend the minimum deterrence of MAD against the countervailing war-fighting posture of NUTS. He recommended that the United States should disambiguate its intentions from those characterized in the Prisoner's Dilemma model of the nuclear security dilemma and arms race by clearly demonstrating the intention to cooperatively avoid nuclear war.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
