I remember playing this and there are situations where you can make a large group of bad actors come out better than a greatly outnumbered group of (or individual) tit-for-tat — and if you just look at that group, you might think their bad philosophy “won”. However it is interesting to note that in that case they still all come out behind a similar sized community with a sufficient number of tit-for-tat.

I think the takeaway is that in a consistently lousy environment a lousy person might do better than a nice person. But they won’t do better than a nice person in a nice environment. Or even a lousy person in a nice environment. Said another way — it matters a lot who is around us no matter our strategy. We are not going to maximize life in isolation.