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0 pointscsharpminor4y ago0 comments

For some systems it seems as though a prisoners dilemma develops where communicating in bad faith can give one actor an edge over another.

In company environments I think it’s a factor of size and what core leadership will tolerate. With a good CEO, it’s hard for a bad-faith leader to thrive at a 1000 person company. But at 3000 (anecdotally) it somehow becomes easier for this behavior to thrive.

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jungturk4y ago

This general concept is described in the "evolutionarily stable strategies" aspect of game theory.

In certain environments (say, one dominated by good-faith communicators) it may be advantageous to be a bad-faith communicator, while in other environments it may not.

The resulting fluctuations in the mix of strategies deployed in the environment (as agents seek out better performing strategies) may well be unstable (i.e. a particular strategy's performance depends on what's presently dominant).

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