It's a just a more technical way of trying to explain the rationale behind the ferry social experiment. It's a lot like how people like to use big words made up by old dead white guys to explain philosophy, when you could pretty much explain it using everyday language.
Basically it said that if everyone only had survival on their minds, detonation would happen 100% of the time, which makes sense.
But there are differences on the two boats - in the civilian ferry, they decide to do a majority vote, and in the prisoner's ferry, one of them takes the responsibility directly by intimidation. It only so happens that the prisoner taking responsibility is moral, but....anyway. And even though the civilians vote for detonation 3 to 1, none of them are able to take up the responsibility. Still, survival was a greater priority, detonation would still occur most of the time.
But of course, there are yet more caveats. It's time-dependent, meaning that the game ends after 30 minutes, or when detonation is chosen by either ferry, whichever comes first. If both parties can hold off detonation, there is a chance (albeit very slim) that both of them will survive. (It's the same example of cooperation offered in the classic
prisoner's dilemma, except that the people on the ferries are depending only on the
hope of benefit.)
And you also have to count the fact that you're trying to break a large group of people, which is most definitely harder than breaking one person. Whether you want to call it peer pressure or the drive for social order, it's pretty much the same thing.
I think your belief in the outcome of the social experiment depends on your outlook of humanity in general. I don't think that it was completely realistic, but I also believe that people will hold onto any shred of order if they can, which is why I believe the outcome we saw is possible in real life.
We saw this when Gotham went through with Loeb's funeral as planned, even though the Mayor's life was in danger. (The Joker was able to take advantage of this by infiltrating the funeral itself, but even he couldn't break thousands of people at once through fear.) We even experience this in real-life disasters. If only survival was on people's minds, there would be mass chaos, but you often don't see that. You see people trying to find others, sticking together, making plans.
. It's an interesting theme. But I do not think that it is that similar the prisoner's dilemma, because in the ferry game there will be no reward in cooperating.
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