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That's an odd reading of yud there. Rats pull heavily from game theory and a (perhaps the) prototypical game theory question is how to avoid losing the prisoner's dilemma. Continually hitting the defect button is losing. You are flushing utils down the toilet. If a rationalist should win here, they should find ways to obtain credible pre-commitments and not ferret around for a way to get one over down the line.
Ah, but that's only if you're actually in an iterated game.
Some people might correctly model an interaction as a one-shot game with a new stranger every single time, with no mutual knowledge or expectations established beforehand. In that case, hitting 'defect' will let you win in cases where the other side magnanimously chooses cooperate.
If you go into an interaction knowing you're pitted against person who will choose 'cooperate' on principle, and you don't expect to have repeated interactions with that person, you can 'win' by defecting because you 'know' you're escaping scott-free in that case.
Indeed, I don't know of any prisoner's dilemma tournaments where the 'cooperate every time' strategy wins.
With all that said, I'm agreeing that if you take it up one level, being the 'sort of person' who cooperates when faced with such a dilemma creates a much better world, and thus will likely create more utility for you, and for all other players, which can certainly compound over time.
So adopting the moral principle that loses you individual games can still make you the overall winner.
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