The Prisoner's Dilemma
Two people can each do better by betraying the other — and end up worse off than if neither of them had.
195018 min read
American mathematics and game theory
John F. Nash Jr.
1928 – 2015
Proved in 1950 that every finite game with mixed strategies has at least one equilibrium point, the concept now called the Nash equilibrium. It is the solution concept that makes the Prisoner's Dilemma precise: mutual defection is an equilibrium even though both players would prefer mutual cooperation. Shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.