Grim Trigger
By Cosmic Cairns on December 7, 2022 8:24 pm
I recently read a book about game theory and it had a section about Prisoner's Dilemma, which I remember playing in a class when I was in school. In a nutshell, for those unfamiliar, you play multiple rounds with a partner and you choose individually each round if you want to cooperate for mutual benefit or betray for individual benefit, or if both choose to betray nobody benefits. I instinctively went with a strategy of choosing to cooperate for mutual benefit until my partner chose to flip, at which point they became untrustworthy to me and I would flip on them mercilessly for the rest of the game. I learned from the book I just read that there's a name for this strategy called "grim trigger" which I thought would make a cool song title.
It's a simple but informative game. I remember the lesson I took away from it was that it would be better for everyone if we all cooperated for mutual benefit. It's technically possible for everyone to "win" but if there's an opportunity to get a leg up by screwing someone else over, human nature dictates that a lot of people won't be able to resist prioritizing their own self-interest. Even in a silly little game. I've found that to be largely true in real life as well.
In theory grim trigger acts as a sort of deterrent as it promises if you screw me over once you will never receive any benefit again. If nothing else I guess there's some satisfaction in "punishing" someone who flipped.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I came up with this one.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cooperation is the answer
If we could only trust each other
Don't you cross me
Don't you cross me
I won't forget
I won't forget
I've got a long unblemished memory
And I remember who my friends are
Don't you cross me...
There's only one way out for everyone
And that's to look out for each other
Don't you cross me...
If you should ever try to flip on me
I'll be forced to pull this grim trigger
Don't you cross me...
And then we'll all end up in ruins
But at least I'll know that you won't win
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)
(i’ll start from the assumption they won’t cross me, but if they do, then i’ll go ballistic 
)
