The Prisoner's Dilemma ~ a Problematic Poster Child

The Prisoner's Dilemma is the go-to example for game theory noobs and experts alike. It's a non-zero-sum game that introduces payoff matrices, it has a Nash Equilibrium that is not also Pareto Efficient (helping to distinguish between the two) and when taken further, we discover that strategies change with iterated games. It's got it all! Or does it? This post explains the Prisoner's Dilemma and details its benefits while the following series will question whether or not it's really the best advocate for game theory in the real world.

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For the original post and links, visit: https://nonzerosum.games/prisonersdilemma.html