Prisoner's Dilemma
The most famous strategic structure in game theory: a game in which each player has a dominant strategy to defect, making mutual defection the unique Nash equilibrium, even though mutual cooperation would leave every player better off. The structure recurs, unannounced, across arms races, price wars, doping scandals, overfishing, and group projects — recognizing it underneath its many disguises is the core diagnostic skill this course is built around.
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Related Terms
Dominant Strategy
A strategy that produces a better outcome for a player than ...
Nash Equilibrium
An outcome in which no single player, looking at what everyo...
Stag Hunt
A coordination game, formalized from Rousseau's parable of h...
Defection
In a Prisoner's Dilemma, the individually dominant choice th...