Payoff Table: Fill & Download for Free

Let us first look at the payoff table for the situation.The payoff for you are the ones in green. The payoffs for your opponent (in this case, the people on the other ferry are in blue.The first quadrant has been colored red because the payoff for it would depend on the timing of the actions by both the parties.If you press the button first, you live and your opponent dies and vice-versa.Also, the last quadrant is "die-die" instead of "live-live" as the Joker had told everyone that if no one presses the button by 12, he would blow up both the boats.There is one more payoff table which captures the state of the peoples' conscience depending upon the action that they choose.This is a clear case of Prisoners' dilemma with a 2 modifications:Uncertain payoff in the first quadrantThere is no mutually desirable outcome (There is no scenario in which the people on both the ferries get to live)AnalysisLet us look at this from a Game Theory perspective and go by one of the basic fundamental assumption that,"All players are rational"i.e. all the players play to maximize their payoffs considering that their opponent will do the same.Your optimal strategy would be do press the button and do it before the people on the other ferry do. In this case, you will live irrespective of whether the people on the other ferry press theirs or not.You can choose to not press the button, but the people on the other ferry might (following the same logic that you applied earlier) press their button in order to ensure their survival. And you die.So, if both the parties play rationally, both of them end up pressing the button, and one of them dies (In the worst case scenario, if both of them press the button simultaneously, both die)And hence, the Joker wins.Now from a realistic perspective, all human beings are selfish.How many would be willing to die for some stranger(s)?How many would be willing to die for someone who might or might not be willing to die for them?Just a handful!This precisely was what the Joker thought.One ferry contained hardened criminals who would do anything for survival. They would not even flinch while killing off the other ferry. The other ferry contained ordinary citizens, who could not bring themselves to justify killing themselves for a bunch of rapists, murderers and scoundrels.As the lady (a mother) exclaims,"We don't all have to die. Why should my babies die? Those men had their chance!"In this case, both the parties would have pressed the button. However, the convicts would have pressed the button faster as they had little/no qualms about taking lives to protect themselves. They would not have undergone the same moral dilemma the citizens went through.So, the citizens die. And Joker wins. Again!So, in my opinion, most of the people would have pressed the button. Not pressing the button is a certain death. The only consolation in doing so is the fact that you don't have die with a guilty conscience.Also, no one wanted to get their hands dirty.BUSINESSMAN: No one wants to get their hands dirty. Fine. I'll do it. Those men on the boat made their choices. They chose to murder and steal. It makes no sense for us to die, too.To sum it up, if we look at the 1st payoff table, both the parties chose a dominated strategy which makes no sense according to Game Theory. But if we look at the second payoff table, we see that both of them chose the dominating strategy and reached a Nash Equilibrium.So, the only case where the outcome shown in the movie is a realistic one is when people care more about their conscience than their lives.Edits courtesy Vaibhav Sinha,Vaibhav Agarwal and Saishankar Rajeev. Thanks!

Even if they did, it wouldn't change things because traffic is a Catch-22 situation, a Prisoner's dilemma.Lemme explain:We human value time. Time saved gives us some sort of satisfaction (even though we may waste the same time waiting for the double ticks on whatsapp turn blue).Let us equate the satisfaction gained by saving 1 minute as 1S (1 satisfaction point, an imaginary, empirical unit)Assume that you (Player A) are pitted against all other drivers (Player B). There are 4 different scenarios.Both A and B follow the traffic rulesA (you) break the rule; B doesn'tA doesn't break the rule; B doesBoth A and B break rules (aka normal state)Now in case of A and D, the outcome is the same, albiet with more chaos, and more risk of accidents. So why do people do it?Here is a simple payoff table.Essentially, for both A and B the best strategy is to break the rules. If they do it and the other person does not, they gain 10 S score. If they do and so does the other person, they lose nothing.This is a weak equilibrium because in case of strategy 2 (break) is not definitely better than strategy 1 (follow).But we also are competitive creatures. We cannot see someone get an advantage or get away with something we can't. So when we follow the rules, and the other guys don't and they still get away, we become sad. Let's say we lose 2S points.The modified payoff now is:Now the break strategy is strongly dominant over the follow one.But from an environmental and overall viewpoint, (follow, follow) would be preferred over (break, break), although having same payoff for the users, because it would reduce chaos and pollution. It would be the desired outcome. However, the Nash equilibrium would be the (break, break) strategy.How can this be remedied?By changing the payoff. If you levy a strong enough penalty on breaking rules (in terms of fine or jail time), the satisfaction score for 'breaking' would go down.E.g. You decide a fine of USD 1100 for jumping the traffic light. Assume USD 10 = 1S score. Also assume that people are caught 10% of the time they jump. Expected fine per offence is USD 110. That is a penalty of 11S points.Now the modified table is:See, now the desired outcome is the same as the Nash Equilibrium.tl;dr: The issue of traffic can only be tackled by having strict laws and even stricter implementation

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