Nice Guys Do Finish First
Midweek recommendation
In our last post, we explored what it means to be kind without being a pushover. We looked at how kindness can say “Not yet,” how it can step back when hurt, and how it doesn’t have to mean staying close to those who don’t respect the line.
That post introduced a powerful idea from game theory: benevolent tit-for-tat- a strategy that begins with cooperation, responds firmly when crossed, and stays open to reconnection when the other side truly changes.
This week’s video shows why that strategy doesn’t just survive, it wins.
The video explains exactly how that works, through a clever visual breakdown of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the most famous model in game theory for understanding cooperation and trust.
In the early 1980s, Robert Axelrod ran a coding tournament at the University of Michigan where coded programs played 200 rounds of the Prisoner’s Dilemma to test how cooperation evolves.
As you read in the previous post, the winning strategy, Tit-for-Tat, began with kindness, retaliated if betrayed, and forgave if the other returned to cooperation.
Another strategy, Grudger, also started kind, but once betrayed, it never forgave. This harsh stance meant Grudger got lower scores overall, punishing both itself and the defector, because it cut off the possibility of future cooperation.
One version, called forgiving tit-for-tat, waited for two betrayals before retaliating. It prevented echo cycles of punishment, and in many situations, it outperformed even regular tit-for-tat. But it could also be taken advantage of.
This wasn’t just passive kindness. It protected itself without becoming cynical. And it showed that nice strategies outperformed ruthless ones- not in any single round, but across time, through trust.
Robert Axelrod subsequently wrote a book, The Evolution of Cooperation, which detailed his findings from this experiment.
This experiment, a seminal study in game theory and cooperation, also showed that kindness needs a backbone, but it also needs memory. And the ability to start again when the time is right.
Now that’s a lovely life lesson to pass on to our children.
See you Saturday with the next issue of Raising Ki(n)d.
Gaurav G