This song is so great.

“You haven’t tried in two years, so why start today?” is honestly so haunting. It’s a sort of terrifying sentiment that I can see rip people up slowly and subtly over time. The idea of procrastinating and bad habits being self reinforcing because, to break them, you have to admit that ALL the time before trying to break that habit was wasted, and that every time that decision was made to “not try” was a mistake. It’s so insidiously difficult, and outwardly difficult to understand why people fall into that pattern.

That’s wild. I typically mod Stardew and stop playing it a bit after I am done hyperfixating on reaching the bottom of the mines as quickly as possible.

Yeah it is basically a joker scheme.

Another way to look at it is like a device that you and I sit on opposite sides of.

If I put in a coin, you get three coins. If you put in a coin, I get three coins.

Putting in a coin strictly hurts the actor putting the coin in. Playing it “optimally”, there’s no reason to ever put in a coin. Even though we could easily both walk away two coins richer, if we are “purely rational, self interested actors”, we’ll both walk away with nothing.

Technically, this scenario is flawed because “betraying” the other person makes the scenario worse for everyone if the other person also “betrays”. A true prisoner’s dilemma is supposed to be pretty clear cut “always right to betray”, meanwhile in this a selfish actor would have reason not to pull the lever as to avoid losing the people on their trolley.

Then the optimal thing to do is to just coordinate with the other person and have one person pull the lever and one person not pull the lever. The point of the prisoner’s dillema is that it’s always “better” to “betray” the other person, but it’s going to be worse for everyone if everyone acts in a self interested manner.