Jesus’ Game
A question I’ve often thought about is why is it that people that don’t believe in God are often not dramatically evil or immoral. I’ll take a look at one of the famous parts of the New Testament, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain. Many smart people have written much about it. However, some aspects of it are still very hard to understand and even harder to implement in your own life.
The passage I would like to discuss is Mathew 6, 38-48:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Before I get to the text itself allow me to take a bit of an excursion to another famous and well discussed problem: the Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is one of the fundamental problems of Game Theory. Here is Wikipedia’s take:
Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?
Imagine you were one of these suspects. I presume you would be facing a tough moral decision. Ten years spent in prison is a big chunk of your life, and you can’t be sure how your accomplice will react?
It is well established that the rational1 thing to do in a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation is to defect. In fact it is a strictly dominant strategy. For some time, this result turned out to be quite a wrench in the wheels of theories on why and how people cooperate with each other. It seems inconsistent with the notion that people are (mostly2) rational beings.
Take a moment to consider how you feel about the fact that human cooperation is irrational - that in fact, by helping others you are making your own life worse. Not exactly cool, is it?
Thankfully, Keneth Binmore comes to our rescue:
A whole generation of scholars swallowed the line that the Prisoner’s Dilemma embodies the essence of human cooperation… Rational players don’t cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma because the conditions necessary for rational cooperation are absent3.
Doesn’t look that bad for the human race after all. But it answers the question I’ve started this essay with: Why don’t atheists sin a lot more? Why do we know pretty decent people who don’t believe in God? Why aren’t even satanists epically evil? If you are absolutely convinced that there is nothing greater than us, there seems to be no reason to adhere to basic morality, is there?
In a lot of situations behaving morally is rational. Or in other words, being good to others is in fact good for us (in a very materialistic sense). Jesus refers to this when he says: “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors4 do the same?”
What I’m trying to get at with this digression into Game Theory is that Jesus tries to tell us that as Christians we need not be always rational - or specifically, not always rational in game-theoretic terms.
If you look at how this would turn out in the Prisoner’s dilemma then yes, at first you would get the sucker’s payoff. But now imagine a world where most people would try their best to turn the other cheek and when in a prisoner’s dilemma you would know that the other person will cooperate with say a 60% probability. Then defecting loses its strict dominance and you would be more likely to choose the option that maximizes social welfare, that is an option that’s better for every player taken together. Hence I believe that not only does choosing this “irrational” lifestyle make sense morally but also it in fact may affect other people’s lives and actually contribute to make the world a better place.
Also:
My thanks to Joachim Veselý for proofreading this essay.
What exactly constitutes rational behavior is of course debatable; in Game Theory it generally means to maximize one’s payoff.
Whether or not you consider humans as rational depends on which psychological theory you subscribe to and what notions of rationality you hold, but I would argue that humans are more or less rational in decisions that matter.
Imagine that in the prisoner’s situation if they both cooperate then they will be set free for lack of evidence and if only one defects he will get minor jail-time, then cooperation is the dominant strategy. Binmore argues that this type of situation is far more common in real life then Prisoner’s Dilemmas and this fact is why we cooperate in most situations.
Tax collectors were considered the scumbags of Jesus’ time.
