Episode 9: I Consider Concision to be One of My Principal Virtues
Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather consider what Gossip Girl is “about” (as well as the metaphor of aboutness itself) with reference, of course, to The Wire. Also: Are these teenagers really f***ing? (This is a long episode, so strap in.)
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» Download TFT Episode 9 (MP3)
References
- The Prisoner’s Dilemma
- The Prince, Machiavelli
- Writing and Difference, Derrida [Erratum: The essay "Strucutre, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" is actually collected here, not in Speech and Phenomena. The podcasters sincerely regret the error. —Ed.]
- Nausea, Sartre
- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom
Sean Nixon on Sat, 19th Dec 2009 2:14 amWell actually,
In the prisoners, if neither of you snitches you do 6 months, but if both of you snitches you do 2 years. If only one of you snitches, he gets off free and the other gets 10 years. (On the third listen, I could kind of see that maybe you had it right in your head but it was unclear. So, sorry if I was just being a douche there)
You are right, that no matter what the other person does, you are better off snitching. (As much as the Wire has taught us the contrary) The interest is that the Nash Equilibrium is not the globally optimal. If no one talks the two of you together only go to the hoosegow for a year.
In fact, in a system where that same choice occurs multiple times (you and your crony suck at crime, but not enough that the cops have you cold). The optimum (unproven) solution is to do whatever your partner did last time.