Prisoner’s dilemma is a problem commonly featured in game theory. Each player is given an option to be either nice or nasty. Each combination of player plays multiple number of rounds. When tested against different strategies, it is found that the best performing strategies are :
- nice first ( they don’t start the provoking),
- retaliatory (when opponent is nasty they also resond nasty),
- forgiving (they don’t hold grudges),
- clear (their strategies are clear for opponent to interpret) and
- generous (when the opponent has been nasty, they do not retaliate 10℅ of the time )
Take away the power to tit for your tats, and now you can be almost as nasty as you want.
The prisoner’s dilemma is of course, a highly simplified model. If you could just submit a strategy like “my opponent doesn’t get to play, so I take all the points” then yeah, that would beat tit for tat.