ILLUMINATION: LIGHT AND DARKNESS MANIFEST

It all comes together. The erratic Ghosts. Ransom’s grudge. The psychometer and Glykon Volatus and Nazino Island and the go game with Zavala and the sacred void and the silence of the Light and even the Drifter’s Ghost. 

It all means one thing. Darkness remembers. Light forgets. 

It is about memory. Memory and forgiveness. 

The prisoner’s dilemma. A relic of the days of the high carceral system. 

Two criminals are interrogated in separate cells. Who committed the crime? Tell us. Tell us the other one did it, and we’ll let you go.

If both stay silent, both will get a year in jail. (The common good.)

If one blames the other, the rat goes free and the other gets 10 years. (One winner, One loser.)

If both rat out the other, both get five years in jail. (Common failure.)

The only choice an individual prisoner has is to stay silent (cooperate) or blame the other (defect). Together, their two choices make four outcomes.

Naïve rationality, which was the assumption in the first days of behavior theory, always leads to the common failure. Always. Both prisoners blame each other and go to jail for five years. No other outcome is possible. This is why:

A prisoner who stays silent (cooperates) suffers a year in jail if the other cooperates; 10 years in jail if the other turns. Possible outcomes: one year or 10 years.

A prisoner who turns on the other (defects) goes free if the other cooperates, or gets five years in jail if the other also turns. Possible outcomes: zero years or five years. 

No matter what one prisoner does, the other benefits from turning on their ally. So both players will rationally defect, and rationally doom each other to five years in prison. Even though each might have escaped with just one year if they cooperated. By acting to see the selfish best, they deny themselves the global best.