[quote name=\'Joe Mello\' post=\'229710\' date=\'Nov 2 2009, 04:19 PM\']with TV Prisoner's, there's only 3 possible payouts for each player (all, half, or none), and those 3 are arranged in such a way that your decision is pretty much irrelevant. If your opponent chooses Steal, you're boned, and if he chooses Split, then it's only a question of how much you like money. With typical Prisoner's, there's 4 outcomes, organized such that your choice factors as much as the other guy.[/quote]If you generalize that one of you defects as one outcome, then there are three.
The problem is that the TV version is done improperly. The dilemma is that if you defect and the other guy doesn't, you get away relatively painlessly, and the other guy is left to be the 5,730 day carryover champ on Don't Drop the Soap, but if you both defect, you're both worse off than if you had cooperated.
When you present the dilemma in terms of competing for a cash prize, I basically decide how much money I'm going to let you have, and you the same. And after we leave the stage, none of us will be worse off than when we started.
Perhaps there's the problem.
If you were to have the Solitarians cooperate or defect, and the game outcome would determine how much sleep the players got to have (or not have), that would be closer to what the real dilemma portrays. Such an event could also be played out on Survivor; if you had both teams bring all of their food to a challenge, and there was a possibility that the food would be lost for keeps, or it would be multiplied.
/I heard that there was to be a Solitary IV.
//but which network will air it?