prisoner's dilemma
Betrayal versus trust
The prisoner's dilemma is a scenario in game theory where two parties, acting in their own self-interest, produce a worse outcome than if they had cooperated.
The classic setup: two suspects are interrogated separately, and each has incentive to betray the other, though both staying silent would serve them better.
The concept extends to any situation where individual rationality leads to collective harm: Arms races are a prisoner's dilemma—both sides would benefit from disarmament, but neither trusts the other to do it.
- cooperationJoint action toward shared aims
- mutual benefitGain for all involved
- defectionAbandoning one's loyalty
- betrayalBreaking of trust
- double crossTreacherous act of betrayal
trust · game theory · payoff · strategy · collective action · competition · mutual · rational · self-interest · interrogation · good cop bad cop · confess · silence · reward · punishment · temptation · matrix · players
- dilemmastough call, lesser evil, crossroads, fork in road, value conflict
- Famous Problemstraveling salesman, Monty Hall, trolley problem, continuum hypothesis, problem of evil
- Moral Dilemmastrolley problem, ticking bomb, tragic choice, mercy killing, euthanasia
- economicssupply and demand, inflation, GDP, GNP, gross domestic product
- mental modelsanchoring, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, Occam's razor, first principles
- paradoxescatch-22, Zeno's paradox, Zeno's paradoxes, causal loop, bootstrap paradox
prisoner's dilemmainvisible hand
Unintended societal benefit from self-interest
social contract · tit-for-tat · social harmony · solidarity · mutual aid
prisoner, prison, prisoners, prisons, imprisoned, imprisonment, imprisoning, dilemma, dilemmas