So you want hippies huh? Alright, Ill give you hippies Come to BC, meet some tree platners Well teach you bout the prisoners dilemma I was raised with a spade in my hand ecosystem Restoration is the game that my fam plays Reforestation of our native land pine, larch Spruce, fir the species we mainly plant Rappers wanna brag about a seven figure salary Ive planted seven figures worth of trees by hand With ten fingers in the dirt since the age of seventeen If you ask me, Ill be like, yeah, thats a G Planting trees is kinda like the game of life You get paid for your efforts and never paid for your time Yeah, its piecework, so theres a ratrace side You gotta hustle if you wanna make your paycheque nice But its teamwork, cause youre workin with a crew And you gotta coordinate with the person next to you Cause the decisions that you make affect them too And efficiency is created by collective rules See, youre following a line of trees on one side And theres another line of trees that youre leaving behind And the space between trees is three meters wide Its like watching a game of Pacman played in rewind And the goal is to never have to cross over trees Just fill the open space on the block economically And never make another planter walk over trees Cause we go at different speeds, so dont cut me off please! If I cheat and you dont cheat then I profit If you cheat and I dont cheat then you profit So we both cheat, so we can each keep somethin But where did all the noncheaters go? If you dont cheat, and I dont, the team profits And people on teams can achieve some deep pockets The cheats wont beat us as long as we keep watchin So if you cheat, were gonna know Its like a sophisticated game of follow the leader Where the lead player changes every couple of meters And everybodys watching for cheaters, if youre awful eager To plant the soft easy ground, then well call you a creamer Cause theres rocks and fallen trees and piles of branches And swamps and weeds, and nice lines of trenches And its easy for opportunists to try to take advantage Of cooperative units to advance their own interests So how do we regulate? Hmm, in several ways But reputation is the most effective way We swim in a sea of gossip, and we punish reprobates With the threat of the loss of their option to participate We got groups within groups, the truck is a six pack But a lot of people like to work in pairs so they can chit chat And we live in camps of several dozen who interact On a daily basis, yeah, its quite a mish mash And sometimes we seem to move with a group mind Like a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a pride of lions But thats just the illusion of topdown design Welcome to sociobiology, the new science The coordination comes from simple local rules That combine to produce the most cogent moves At multiple levels, from genes to social groups The same way your neurons compose you If I cheat and you dont cheat then I profit If you cheat and I dont cheat then you profit So we both cheat, so we can each keep somethin But where did all the noncheaters go? If you dont cheat, and I dont, the team profits And people on teams can achieve some deep pockets The cheats wont beat us as long as we keep watchin So if you cheat, were gonna know Its the prisoners dilemma, youve been charged with a crime But you get off scot free if you snitch and drop dime And if your partner snitches on you, youre knocked for life So you both snitch, and you both do hard time If only you had some kind of code of the streets Some way to punish cheats you could both go free Ironically, the challenge is acting prosocially So we probably shouldnt model it with cutthroat thieves The point is about where your interests lie If youre locked up, well then theyre just outside But in modern society we live cooperative lives And cooperatives are the best place to catch free rides So whos pimping the system and whos snitchin? In game theory terms, snitchin means defection From a collective, along with the loss of its protection Its the tragedy of the commons the hiphop edition Cause a gangster whose motto is stop snitchin Is a snitch from the perspective of honest citizens And the Kyoto accord is a dilemma for prisoners Of this planet, and those who block it are snitches But the system only works if the members see an active Distribution of benefits, and graduated sanctions Just like the treeplanters, cause whatever the endeavor Life is just an iterated prisoners dilemma If I cheat and you dont cheat then I profit If you cheat and I dont cheat then you profit So we both cheat, so we can each keep somethin But where did all the noncheaters go? If you dont cheat, and I dont, the team profits And people on teams can achieve some deep pockets The cheats wont beat us as long as we keep watchin So if you cheat, were gonna know The prisoners dilemma is part cooperation And part competition, its an elegant model For the evolution of social behaviour Its a cross between turn the other cheek And an eye for an eye And the better we understand it The better our chances of surviving So how do you punish cheats, huh? Oh, you dont punish cheats? Shame on you! Shame!
cheat, profit, dilemma, noncheaters, tree