DEFEATING THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA

I was first introduced to the prisoner’s dilemma while I was an undergrad, lending me an overview to game theory in general, as part of my education in political science and philosophy.  For those that are unaware, a very brief summary of this dilemma is as such: Two suspects are arrested for a crime and interrogated separately, unable to communicate. They are both offered a deal: if one confesses and betrays the other, the confessor goes free, while the other receives a harsher sentence. If both remain silent, they both receive a lighter sentence. If both confess, they both receive a moderate sentence.  Per game theory, the dilemma here is that two individuals acting in their own self-interest may end up with a worse outcome compared to if they had cooperated.  HOWEVER, with my philosophy background, I posit that the REAL dilemma here is the angst inherent in wanting to make the BEST choice while in the face of the uncertainty of not knowing what the other individual is going to do.  Which is, effectively, the despair inherent in facing uncertainty in general, similar in turn to facing the absurd, as highlighted by Camus, or, truly, existentialism in general, or perhaps even Nietzsche’s observation of the loneliness and uncertainty of the death of God, for what shall we do now?!  And, in turn, upon learning of this dilemma, I came up with my own solution in order to defeat the dilemma: make a pact with your fellow criminal that, no matter WHAT happens, you WILL rat them out if you get interrogated.  Let there be no question: you WILL confess, so they may as well do the same and save their own skin as best they can.  Take THAT game theory!

Raul Julia perfectly demonstrated this by picking an awful movie to execute some amazing acting

Much like you are currently feeling right now, this sentiment greatly confused and frustrated my professor, but allow me to explain.  Once again, the dilemma here isn’t about ACHIEVING the best outcome: it’s the dilemma of picking the right CHOICE to achieve that outcome.  We experience the angst of the dilemma because we place great stress upon ourselves to HAVE to pick the “right” choice, knowing full well that we can’t rely on the other person on the other end to cooperate with us in doing so.  We are not in control of that other person, but we ARE in control of our OWN actions, and, in turn, what we can do is strip the power away from the dilemma by INTENTIONALLY selecting the worse choice.  We face a harsher sentence, but it’s on OUR terms that we face it.  We are no longer the victim of someone’s game and their machinations, no, WE control our fate.  We CHOOSE the worse outcome, knowing full well it is the worse outcome, such that we no longer face the dilemma.  We may be in prison, but we are free, for we arrived there by our own decision and NOT from the actions of another outside of our control.

 

This bizarre approach to problem solving has echoed in my own life on many occasions, and specifically in the realm of physical transformation.  Primarily because I have never been a victim of analysis paralysis OR program hopping, because I did not concern myself with ever making the “best” choice.  I took solace in knowing FULL WELL that whatever decision I was making was a less than optimal decision.  I knew full well that there was a better choice to be made, a better path to be taken, and a better plan to employ…and I ignored it all and did what I wanted to do anyway.  Why?  Because it meant I beat the dilemma!  It meant that I could move on with my prison sentence and get those days behind me soon so I could work to be free again, versus those poor saps STILL at the station trying to decide if they were going to confess or not.  They pitter away their “freedom” in a prison of their own making, while I lived freely IN prison, no different than those poor souls that spend 6 months trying to come up with the perfect program or hopping from program to program trying to find the “right one” when they could have just picked A program and ran it hard during that time and made guaranteed progress!  Yes: the person who picked the suboptimal program had a “harsher” sentence than those who picked the best one…but those who picked the best one ended up wasting away their youth trying to pick that best one such that they never had the opportunity to even ENJOY that freedom they worked so hard for.

Don't wait until you're 80 to finally pick your major...

 

And, of course, the same rings true with nutrition.  If you think training is nuts, just look at how religiously people treat their diets.  The pursuit of optimization is nuts when it comes to this, with people arguing points of whey isolate vs whey concentrate, what proximity of training to eat around, white potatoes vs sweet potatoes, etc.  There’s so much nuance and diversity that attempting to understand all of it is bound to drive someone mad, whereas simply making A decision and executing it, knowing full well that it’s NOT the best decision, gives one the freedom to be able to go accomplish SOMETHING.  Eliminate the processed junk and eat whole foods and you’ve already put yourself in the upper 90% of the world as far as nutritional habits go, and as Dan John has expressed, sometimes, “pretty good” is a REALLY high mark in the world of physical transformation.  We need to make peace with the fact that good enough is “good enough”.

 

Because, once again, this is NOT about making the best choice: it’s about defeating the dilemma!  The dilemma itself prevents you from making progress, for it forces you into a state of stasis as you navel gaze and contemplate well beyond the point of reason all the possible outcomes of your decision.  It forces you into a state of inaction, when, in truth, those that have succeeded in the realm of physical transformation know that the most important thing is to do SOMETHING.  In our current state of obesity related illness becoming our number 1 killer, almost every medical professional has concluded that ANY manner of nutritional intervention is superior to NO manner of it, for continuing on our current trajectory is SURELY leading to downfall, whereas even the craziest juice cleanse will at LEAST have us STOP eating the things that are directly killing us.  As much as some pub-med warrior might want to argue that doing 200 push ups a day is going to result in some sort of horrible shoulder imbalance, the rest of us will appreciate that an individual doing 200 push ups a day is going to be in a MUCH better physical state than the individual doing absolutely nothing to improve their physical well being.  We can course correct as time goes on, should we feel so inclined, as training tends to be a constant state of evolution, but in order to ACHIEVE that evolution, we need that initial spark of life to get us going. 

*PSH* doesn't that dude know about periodization?!

 

Don’t let anyone put you in a prisoner’s dilemma: KNOW that you’re going to pick the worse choice, so that you can have the freedom to go on and face other REAL dilemmas.