Re:Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?
by brian_cloutier on Friday March 10, 2023 @11:25AM
(#35096527)
Prisoner's dilemma is a situation where you're only playing the game once, and you have no way to interact with the other participant.
To the extent that this is a single bank run and the other actors are mostly anonymous and there is no way to verify whether or not someone has withdrawn their money then yeah this is a classic prisoner's dilemma and your only hope is to quickly get in line.
However, trying to change the game is also a viable strategy! Public non-anonymized commitments like this are exactly how you tie this into our broader iterated game and escape the nasty equilibrium of prisoner's dilemma.
To the extent that this is a single bank run and the other actors are mostly anonymous and there is no way to verify whether or not someone has withdrawn their money then yeah this is a classic prisoner's dilemma and your only hope is to quickly get in line.
However, trying to change the game is also a viable strategy! Public non-anonymized commitments like this are exactly how you tie this into our broader iterated game and escape the nasty equilibrium of prisoner's dilemma.