Nell WatsonThe Stag Hunt
The Trust Game's quieter sibling, from Rousseau. A stag feeds you both for days — but only if you hunt it together. A hare feeds one, and can be caught alone, safely, every time. The problem here is not temptation. It is assurance: will she be there?
| Fen hunts stag | Fen hunts hare | |
|---|---|---|
| you hunt stag | 4 · 4the feast | 0 · 3alone in the snow |
| you hunt hare | 3 · 0fed, but she waited | 3 · 3two small dinners |
Fen is rational and watchful: she hunts stag only when her confidence that you will too makes it worth the risk (above 75%, for these stakes). She starts at 50% — a stranger. Sixteen mornings; make of them what you can.
Fen
The first morning. Fen is watching you.
What just happened
Notice the arithmetic of her heart: a morning you showed up moved her a little; a morning you didn't cut her confidence nearly in half. Trust is built in deposits and lost in withdrawals, and the exchange rate is brutal — which you already knew, from being a person.
The prisoner's dilemma gets the headlines, but most human–machine coordination is a stag hunt: both sides prefer the cooperative outcome and hesitate only because they cannot be sure of each other. The remedy is not punishment but assurance — track records, credible signals, showing up in the snow. That is the working half of bilateral alignment.
More play on the Playground · the sibling game: The Trust Game