prisoners dilemma
Betray or trust?
A scenario in game theory where two people acting in pure self-interest produce a worse outcome for both than if they had cooperated.
The classic setup: two suspects interrogated separately could minimize total punishment by staying silent, but each has incentive to betray the other, so both confess and receive harsher sentences.
The dilemma illustrates why rational individual choices can lead to collectively irrational results—applicable to arms races, price wars, and environmental problems where mutual restraint benefits everyone but unilateral restraint invites exploitation.
- cooperationJoint action toward shared aims
- mutual benefitGain for all involved
- collective actionOrganized group pursuit
- common goodBenefit shared by all
- defectionAbandoning one's loyalty
betrayal · trust · game theory · strategy · payoff · rational · rational choice · self-interest · interrogation · confess · silence · tit-for-tat · mutual · opponent · choice · reward · punishment · temptation
- game theoryzero-sum game, minimax, payoff, equilibrium, cooperative games
- strategic choiceschicken game, zero-sum game, tradeoff, gambit, all-in
- strategystrategy, grand strategy, tactics, tactic, tactical
prisoner, prisoners, dilemma, dilemmas, prison, prisons, imprisoned, imprisoning, imprisonment