Prisoner's Dilemma In The Dark Knight

I'm really mad. The clip that I wanted to post from The Dark Knight doesn't have an embed address, so I can't post it. Anyways, you can go on youtube and search for "The Dark Knight ferry scene". It's one of the best parts of the movie if you ask me, and it's perfect to discuss the prisoner's dilemma present in chapter twelve. I copied Dawkins charts and made my own describing the prisoner's dilemma in The Dark Knight. The table is on the blog entry above. It doesn't look nice either way, does it? It's kind of a lose lose situation. But there are two more things to keep in mind. The first is proof. The Joker wants the prisoners to push the button, or vice versa. He wants to prove how humans will do anything to stay alive. Even if it means blowing other people up. In other words, he wants to prove people are selfish self-centered creatures capable of anything. The Joker is expecting any of the two to follow a nasty strategy to prove his theory. The second thing to keep in mind is guilt. This scene is great because it shows how the people and prisoners react. The people are trying to avoid guilt by thinking the prisoners deserve to die. The man with white hair in the prisoner's boat is trying to avoid guilt by giving the detonator to the prisoner. He's probably thinking, "that tough evil prisoner will do the dirty job for me. I'm not guilty if he does it." That tough evil prisoner is not so evil after all. Both ferries opt to cooperate and show the Joker he was wrong. They both follow the "Tit for Tat" strategy, where "both continue to cooperate until the end of the game" (p.210). This clip shows nice guys do finish first. According to Dawkins, a nice guy is "an individual that assists other members of its species at its own expense, to pass their genes on to the next generation" (p. 202). The whole gene thing isn't present in this situation, but it's more or less the same dilemma.