Robert Axelrod
What keeps his word is not his character
It is how many rounds the two of you have left
The Evolution of Cooperation, 1984, chapter 4, drawing on Tony Ashworth's study of trench warfare
You cannot tell whether his promise will hold. What decides it is usually not character but how many rounds remain.
What actually happened?
A truce grew by itself in the trenches of the Western Front. The men on either side had never met, were under orders to shoot each other, and had no referee between them. Working from diaries and regimental histories, Tony Ashworth found artillery shelling the same patch of ground at the same hour each day, so the other side knew when to be elsewhere. Headquarters broke the habit with compulsory raids, which had to produce prisoners or bodies and so could not be faked. What held them was not goodwill but knowing the same men would face each other again tomorrow.
The shadow of the future
His name for it. Played once, defection always pays; played many times with the next round weighing enough, the gain is clawed back later. Cooperation is not the nobler choice, it is the better arithmetic.
The stall selling to tourists once shorts the weight. The one serving the same street does not.
No friendship, no enforcer required
He keeps lowering the bar: cooperation needs no friendship, no central authority to punish, not even foresight or rationality in the players. The trenches are the extreme proof, because nothing else was there.
Two firms in the same building settle a dispute far more easily than two on different continents.
So change the structure, not the person
To get something honoured, stop auditing the other person's character and make the thing repeat: split it into instalments, leave a record both sides can see, put the two of you inside a circle you both have to stay in.
Turn one payment into monthly ones and the other side's manner usually changes by the second month.
Remove the future and cooperation goes with it
Headquarters understood this exactly. It did not break the trench truce by lecturing. It rotated units constantly and ordered raids that had to show results. Once tomorrow no longer holds the same two people, yesterday's understanding expires.
Reorganise the team every quarter and nobody owes anybody anything six months out.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the promise sounded fine and you still cannot decide whether to hand the thing over.
Ask first: once this is done, do the two of us have a next time - because if not, what needs changing is the shape of the deal, not my method for reading people.
Where it goes wrong: taking it to mean that people you know well are safe. He is measuring how much the next meeting weighs, not how familiar you are; two people who see each other daily and want nothing further are under no constraint at all.
Lines to keep
Credibility rests on the rounds still to come, not on character.
Neither side in the trench truce trusted the other.
To get cooperation, turn a one-off into something that repeats.
Same situation, other people are asking
I've stopped believing the promises.What I was promised falls through, over and over.The values are on the wall and nobody lives by them.He agreed this time. Will it hold next time?I don't believe what my boss says · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.