On revenge, response, and House committee assignments

 As promised, I have a variety of observations on the current issue of House committee assignments.  It is an ugly mess, and more complicated than one might think at first glance.  Of course, the entire House of Representatives might be characterized as an "ugly mess," but this is uglier and messier than even the general tenor of the chamber.  So what happened?  The normal process, to the degree that anything is normal in the House, is that each party gives committee assignments to its own members.  It is highly unusual for the majority party to strip a minority party member of committee assignments, although the majoritarian nature of the chamber gives the party that power.  Why have majority parties been so reluctant to use this power, even when faced with some real shitbags?  Consider the prisoner's dilemma, as we so often do.

Hey, it has been a long time since I have fallen back on this cliche.  Gimme a break.  I am a game theorist, and if I do not explain things in terms of the prisoner's dilemma for an extended period of time, I start to experience symptoms of withdrawal, heart palpitations, and a variety of other things.  It's bad.  I gotta do this.

Anyway, two prisoners are interrogated, and told to rat out the other.  If they both stay quiet, they each get a minor sentence of one year.  If they both turn rat, they each get five year sentences.  If one turns rat and the other stays quiet, the rat gets away scot-free, and the patsy goes away for ten years.

In a one shot interaction, each player turns rat.  If Player I thinks that Player II is staying quiet, it is a choice between one year and walking.  If Player I thinks that Player II is a rat, it is a choice between five years and ten years.  No matter what, be a rat.

That means they rat each other out, and they each get five year penalties, instead of staying quiet and getting one year penalties.

But what if you have an indefinitely repeated game?  By the "folk theorem," each player can stay quiet, while threatening to punish rat-turns with a rat-turn in the subsequent round.  Yes, in this particular version, that requires immortality because there are only so many ten year sentences a person can serve, but it is a metaphor.  Point being, when faced with this kind of structure, if we have the potential to fuck each other over, we might each do better by cooperating.  If you fuck me over, I fuck you over in the next round, or possibly sequence of rounds, and that threat might keep you from turning rat in a repeated game.

Robert Axelrod ran a series of computer tournaments on the prisoner's dilemma, and published the results in The Evolution of Cooperation.  Very cool book.  Tit-for-tat performed pretty well, and in fact, out-performed other strategies like a maximalist punishment strategy where if you fuck me, I fuck you over in every subsequent round.  Why?  Because then we all lose forever.

So let's consider Congress and committee assignments, but more in the general than in the specific.  How far must a minority party member go for the majority party to say, that's it, you're gone?  I have suggested that when the Democrats stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, they would have been in a stronger position had they also dealt with Ilhan Omar, but they didn't, making the move an asymmetric, partisan move rather than a consistent action against extremist derangement and antisemitic bigotry.

Symmetry would arguably make it not defection, but that requires clear thinking from a position of moral clarity, and that is not how the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world think.  So instead, in the next round, the GOP defects.

But by how much?  And here, we turn to Axelrod, and his tournaments.  There are a variety of strategies that played in his tournaments.  Tit-for-tat performed quite well, and in fact, it defeated strategies with higher levels of escalating punishment because if you are utilitarian, and indeed, self-interested, your goal is to get back to a system in which you benefit.  Hurting others for the sake of vengeance is not just morally wrong, but costly to you.  So, strategies of escalation performed worse than tit-for-tat, and in fact, as Axelrod observed, there was a strategy that would have defeated even tit-for-tat, had anyone entered it.

Forgiveness for one round before beginning punishment.

There is a moral and utilitarian lesson in Robert Axelrod's calculations.  Nearly every moral philosophy implores you not to seek vengeance, and that there is value in forgiveness.  Axelrod shows you, through mathematical calculation, that you do better that way.  To a point.  There comes a point at which you must carry out a punishment, but only when pushed so far.

This raises several issues.  There is such a thing as tolerating too much abuse.  Too much exploitation, and rationality as well as moral realism will require you to carry out a punishment in such a circumstance, not for the sake of vengeance, but for the sake of attempting to establish an equilibrium in which you are not exploited.  There is a difference, and that difference is demonstrated by attempting to follow the Axelrod strategy.  Forgive until you cannot.  Accept and forgive until you have been exploited to the point that a punishment must be carried out, but even then, only to the point of establishing an equilibrium, not vengeance.  Never vengeance.

Never vengeance.

What, then, requires punishment?  It was unusual for the Democrats to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments.  The asymmetry of the action, regardless of her shitbaggery, also stood out.

Axelrod's strategy-- the one he calculated would have won-- suggested the GOP should have let it slide.  Once.  The tournament-winning strategy of tit-for-tat would have been removing Ilhan Omar from her committees.

I can't say I'd complain about that.  The Democrats should have done that years ago.  Clean up your own messes, in-house.

And if the GOP had just removed Omar from her committees, they would have made their point, had moral standing, political standing, and the House could probably return to equilibrium.  Yet, by escalating and removing Schiff and Swalwell, the House GOP made what Axelrod knew to be a mistake.  A moral mistake, a strategic mistake, and a utilitarian mistake.

The House is a dumpster fire, and it only gets worse from here.

Frank Zappa, the title track from Chunga's Revenge.