What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything

With Robert Axelrod and Steven Strogatz

2:31

The prisoner's dilemma

3:34

So no matter what your opponent does, your best option is always to defect

3.44

As a result, when you both act rationally, you both end up in the suboptimal situation

5:43

But the thing about a lot of problems is that they're not a single prisoner's dilemma

8:21

The crazy thing was that the simplest program ended up winning, a program that came to be called Tit for Tat

10:08

Axelrod found that all the best performing strategies, including Tit for Tat, shared four qualities

10:15

First, they were all nice

10:46

The second important quality was being forgiving

13:04

For the second tournament, players knew on average it would be 200 rounds, but there was a random number generator that prevented them from knowing with certainty

14:38

The third is being retaliatory

14:57

The last quality that Axelrod identified is being clear

20:49

In a noisy environment, you only retaliate around nine out of every 10 times