Prisoner's Dilemma Game

A Prisoner's Dilemma Game is a limited-information competitive non-sequential adversarial non-zero-sum game that presents players with a conflict between individual interests and collective interests.

• Context:
  • It can typically involve Cooperation-Defection Decision through prisoner's dilemma game payoff structure.
  • It can typically demonstrate Nash Equilibrium that is prisoner's dilemma game collectively suboptimal.
  • It can typically create Social Dilemma through prisoner's dilemma game incentive misalignment.
  • It can typically illustrate Rational Self-Interest Paradox where prisoner's dilemma game individual rationality leads to prisoner's dilemma game collective irrationality.
  • It can typically feature Dominant Strategy that results in prisoner's dilemma game pareto inefficiency.
  • It can typically model Trust Problem through prisoner's dilemma game cooperation risk.
  • ...
  • It can often serve as Game Theory Teaching Tool for explaining prisoner's dilemma game strategic interaction.
  • It can often exhibit Strategy Evolution in prisoner's dilemma game repeated play.
  • It can often demonstrate Tit-for-Tat Strategy effectiveness in prisoner's dilemma game iterated format.
  • It can often reveal Cooperation Emergence under prisoner's dilemma game certain conditions.
  • It can often display Punishment Mechanism effects on prisoner's dilemma game player behavior.
  • It can often illustrate Communication Value in overcoming prisoner's dilemma game defection tendency.
  • ...
  • It can range from being a Two-Player Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being an n-Player Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game participant count.
  • It can range from being a Single-Decision Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game repetition structure.
  • It can range from being a Symmetric Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being an Asymmetric Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game payoff distribution.
  • It can range from being a Deterministic Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being a Stochastic Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game outcome certainty.
  • It can range from being a Discrete Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being a Continuous Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game choice granularity.
  • It can range from being a Complete Information Prisoner's Dilemma Game to being an Incomplete Information Prisoner's Dilemma Game, depending on its prisoner's dilemma game knowledge structure.
  • ...
  • It can model Real-World Conflict through prisoner's dilemma game scenario simulation.
  • It can inform Public Policy Design by illustrating prisoner's dilemma game incentive structure.
  • It can explain Human Cooperation patterns through prisoner's dilemma game experimental study.
  • It can serve as Algorithm Testing Ground for prisoner's dilemma game strategy evaluation.
  • It can facilitate Multi-Agent System research through prisoner's dilemma game interaction dynamics.
  • ...
• Examples:
  • Classical Prisoner's Dilemma Games, such as:
    • Tucker's Prison Sentence Prisoner's Dilemma Game featuring the original prisoner's dilemma game criminal scenario.
    • Flood-Dresher Experiment (1950) demonstrating early prisoner's dilemma game laboratory implementation.
    • RAND Corporation Prisoner's Dilemma Game showing prisoner's dilemma game strategic analysis application.
  • Theoretical Prisoner's Dilemma Games, such as:
    • Two-Armed Bandit Prisoner's Dilemma Game demonstrating prisoner's dilemma game reinforcement learning.
    • Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma Game modeling prisoner's dilemma game strategy adaptation.
    • Spatial Prisoner's Dilemma Game illustrating prisoner's dilemma game network effects.
  • Real-World Prisoner's Dilemma Games, such as:
    • Arms Race Prisoner's Dilemma Game modeling prisoner's dilemma game international relations.
    • Environmental Protection Prisoner's Dilemma Game for prisoner's dilemma game resource management.
    • Market Competition Prisoner's Dilemma Game showing prisoner's dilemma game pricing strategy.
  • Experimental Prisoner's Dilemma Games, such as:
    • Axelrod Tournament Prisoner's Dilemma Game for prisoner's dilemma game algorithm competition.
    • Cross-Cultural Prisoner's Dilemma Game examining prisoner's dilemma game societal difference.
    • Neurological Prisoner's Dilemma Game studying prisoner's dilemma game decision neuroscience.
  • Modified Prisoner's Dilemma Games, such as:
    • Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game with Noise testing prisoner's dilemma game error resilience.
    • Graduated Punishment Prisoner's Dilemma Game examining prisoner's dilemma game proportional response.
    • Public Goods Prisoner's Dilemma Game exploring prisoner's dilemma game multi-player dynamics.
  • ...
• Counter-Examples:
  • Coordination Games, such as Stag Hunt, which promote cooperation rather than creating prisoner's dilemma game incentive to defect.
  • Zero-Sum Games, such as Chess or Poker, where one player's gain is exactly balanced by another's loss, unlike the prisoner's dilemma game mutual benefit potential.
  • Inspection Game, which models asymmetric information and inspection vs. compliance decision rather than prisoner's dilemma game symmetric defection incentive.
  • Monty-Hall Game, which tests probability judgment and decision revision rather than prisoner's dilemma game social dilemma.
  • Ultimatum Game, which examines fairness preference and offer rejection rather than prisoner's dilemma game mutual defection.
  • Trust Game, which focuses on sequential decision and reciprocity rather than prisoner's dilemma game simultaneous choice.
• See: Game, Game Theory, Decision Theory, Nash Equilibrium, Cooperative Game, Byzantine Generals Problem, Social Dilemma.

---

---

References

2013

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
  • The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and gave it the name "prisoner's dilemma" (Poundstone, 1992), presenting it as follows:
    • Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch … If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail.
  • In this classic version of the game, collaboration is dominated by betrayal; if the other prisoner chooses to stay silent, then betraying them gives a better reward (no sentence instead of one year), and if the other prisoner chooses to betray then betraying them also gives a better reward (two years instead of three). Because betrayal always rewards more than cooperation, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them both to betray each other. The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads the prisoners to both betray, but they would get a better reward if they both cooperated. In reality, humans display a systematic bias towards cooperative behavior in this and similar games, much more so than predicted by simple models of "rational" self-interested action.

    There is also an extended "iterative" version of the game, where the classic game is played over and over between the same prisoners, and consequently, both prisoners continuously have an opportunity to penalize the other for previous decisions. If the number of times the game will be played is known to the players, then (by backward induction) two purely rational prisoners will betray each other repeatedly, for the same reasons as the classic version. In an infinite or unknown length game there is no fixed optimum strategy, and Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments have been held to compete and test algorithms.

    In casual usage, the label "prisoner's dilemma" may be applied to situations not strictly matching the formal criteria of the classic or iterative games: for instance, those in which two entities could gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so, but find it merely difficult or expensive, not necessarily impossible, to coordinate their activities to achieve cooperation.

1965

• (Rapoport, 1965) ⇒ Anatol Rapoport. (1965). “Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation." University of Michigan Press. ISBN:0472061658

---