After a long season of plunder, a pirate team of five Prudent Pirates has amassed a booty of 500 golden coins. Before they part their ways, the five decide to divide the treasure.
They that they will each propose a division strategy in order of their seniority: first the oldest pirate will propose the strategy for the division of coins. All five will then vote on it, and if at least half vote "Yes", the strategy will be used to divide the coins. If the majority rejects the plan however, the oldest pirate will be killed, and the whole process will be repeated with the remaining pirates, with the second oldest proposing his strategy.
Since all the pirates are very prudent, each one will want to claim as many coins for himself without getting killed. Given this, how many coins will each of the pirates (5 - 1, with 5 being the oldest) get, and why? What strategy will the oldest pirate propose?
(In reply to
Applied Psychology by Jim Lyon)
The prudent pirate problem is fascinating, especially the way the "correct" game theory solution clashes with intuitive logic, or with other possible strategies, as Jim Lyon's applied psychology comment demonstrates so ingeniously.
I understand the logic of the proposed solution, but I beg to differ. Take it back to 3 pirates, and an offer of 499,0,1. The youngest pirate's response will more than likely be, "your life is on the line and you offer me 1 lousy gold coin?!? I don't think so!"
This isn't just being childish, it's about human nature opposing cheats. This has been demonstrated in various experiments, one of which I recently saw on telivision. A group of children were divided into pairs. Each pair was given 10 chocolate coins to divide as follows: the first decides how to divide them, the second can agree, or disagree, in which case neither gets any chocolate. In the first round the proposals were 7:3, 8:2, even 9:1. The second child always refused. In the next round, the pairs were shuffled around, but the same kids did the dividing. This time the offers were 5:5 or occasionally 6:4, and were agreed to.
From the mouths of babes! The point is we intuitively oppose cheating, setting standards for more equity.
I beg to differ
