Aaron Swartz: What Happens in The Dark Knight
aaronsw.com> The Joker scares the city onto its two ferries. Once the ferries are in the middle of the water, he cuts their power and gives them both a button to blow up the other ferry, thereby constructing a prisoner’s dilemma (one boat is filled with real prisoners). The passengers discuss and vote. One of the prisoners makes a Ulysses pact and credibly commits by tossing the detonator overboard.
This isn't actually a prisoner's dilemma. In a PD, both players decide simultaneously, and your payoff depends on both choices. In this, your payoff simply depends on who defects first, with the caveat (which turns out to be false) that if nobody defects you both die.
(If you assume both boats decide simultaneously whether to defect or not, it still isn't a PD. The payoff matrix looks like 1,1 / 1,0 / 0,1 / 0,0 if nobody dies when they both cooperate: it's not a PD because defecting doesn't increase your score. If everyone dies when you both cooperate, the payoff matrix is 0,0 / 1,0 / 0,1 / 0,0: utility is not maximised by both players cooperating.)
Nor is tossing the detonator a credible commitment, in game theory terms, unless the other boat sees it.
It's actually more complicated than that. You value saving the lives of people on the other boat (albeit much less than you value your own), there are "third options" with risks but interesting payoffs that are worth considering (disabling the bomb, stealthily jumping into the water...), and the longer you delay, the more likely it is that a deus ex machina (Batman, a stealth bomb disposal specialist...) will show up and offer you maximum payoff on a silver platter. Indeed that's what ends up happening in the movie.
(Of course this isn't a practical approach, since the problem is likely to solve itself long before I'm done formalizing it.)
>it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero. [...] his various games only have one innocent casualty
Blowing up a major hospital (even an evacuated one - at very short notice I might add) or having firefights in the streets does cause casualties, even if none are shown on-screen.
For that matter, the joker WANTED more casualties, as outright stated in the ferries incident. A failed mass murderer is not a better role model than a successful one.
"Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide." :`(
[Edit to note that this is his final blog post, per http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047440 .]
I noticed that too. That seemed to be a recurring concept in Aaron's work. It must have been weighing heavily on his mind for a long time.
Rest in peace, brother. Your efforts will not have been in vain.
After following Aaron's career for a decade, I just interacted with him directly for the first time four days ago, in what seems to have been his last day on Twitter. :`(
"I was miserable. I couldn't stand San Francisco. I couldn't stand office life. I couldn't stand Wired. I took a long Christmas vacation. I got sick. I thought of suicide. I ran from the police. And when I got back on Monday morning, I was asked to resign."
I don't know if I should admire Nolan or Swartz after reading this.
Did you see The Dark Knight Rises? You should definitely admire Swartz, not Nolan.
care to elaborate on that?
It seems like Nolan used to make interesting movies that, while not always great film, at least had something unusual and interesting about them. Memento, for example, wasn't the most amazing masterpiece in the history of cinema, but it was solid, and the backwards-chronology as a narrative device was compelling.
But increasingly, Nolan's films are trending towards the dumbed down, using shallow and boring twists in place of actually interesting writing and direction. It seems to be a profitable strategy, and I can't blame the guy for liking money, but it's also sad to watch.
Oh please.
+1 :)