Paper topic
1 ½ – 2 ½ pages, double-spaced
Would the game be worth playing in a face to face class?
Since our class is online, we won’t be playing the prisoner’s dilemma game I offer in the lecture. However, do you think it could be worth playing in a normal class where you could see all the other students, interact with them, get to know a little about them, etc.?
We trust total strangers so often that we don’t even know we are doing it. For the last couple of years, whenever you saw others in public wearing a mask, leaving space between one person and the next, or just getting the covid vaccine, they were demonstrating trustworthiness, because doing those things seems to be for the greater good of all, even though it imposes (small) inconveniences on the person doing it.
That seems to show people are trustworthy in just the way Hobbes says they won’t be: i.e. willing to give up some of their self-interest for the good of others. Is that kind of evidence strong enough to make it seem the game would be worth playing? Why/why not? And if you think you would have played, what would you have asked for?
