| Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary 1,507,641,708 visitors served. |
|
Dictionary/ thesaurus | Medical dictionary | Legal dictionary | Financial dictionary | Acronyms | Idioms | Encyclopedia | Wikipedia encyclopedia | ? |
prisoner's dilemma |
Also found in: Acronyms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.09 sec. |
prisoner's dilemmaImaginary situation employed in game theory. One version is as follows. Two prisoners are accused of a crime. If one confesses and the other does not, the one who confesses will be released immediately and the other will spend 20 years in prison. If neither confesses, each will be held only a few months. If both confess, they will each be jailed 15 years. They cannot communicate with one another. Given that neither prisoner knows whether the other has confessed, it is in the self-interest of each to confess himself. Paradoxically, when each prisoner pursues his self-interest, both end up worse off than they would have been had they acted otherwise. See egoism. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
|
| ? Mentioned in | ? References in periodicals archive | |
|---|---|---|
| RAND's interest in game theory was also responsible for popularizing ideas like mutually assured destruction and the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma is the game that shows that you can have a bad result if everyone acts sensibly. Meanwhile, other game theorists are arguing that the prisoner's dilemma isn't the be-all and end-all of cooperation test beds. |
| Encyclopedia |
| Free Tools: |
For surfers:
Browser extension |
Word of the Day |
Help
For webmasters: Free content | Linking | Lookup box | Double-click lookup | Partner with us |
|---|