A strategy of permanent retaliation after a single defection sustains cooperation, at the cost of being unable to forgive error.
Effective at sustaining cooperation and brittle in practice, because it cannot distinguish defection from error. Tit-for-tat outperforms it precisely by forgiving.
In practice
- A supplier dropped permanently after one late delivery loses a decade of good service to one bad week.
- A friendship ended over one unreturned favour cannot recover, and tit-for-tat would have.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Games & Strategic Interaction
- Essay
- The recurring shapes of conflict and cooperation