This is a video about the most famous problem in Game Theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial, and the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms – a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically – https://ve42.co/SnatomsV

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A massive thank you to Prof. Robert Axelrod and Prof. Steven Strogatz for their expertise and time.

To read more about Prof. Axelrod’s Passion for Cooperation visit: https://ve42.co/Axelrod2023

A massive thanks to the wonderful Nicky Case. Nicky’s “The Evolution of Trust” game was a huge inspiration for this video. We highly recommend you play this excellent game yourself, over at: https://ncase.me/trust/

A huge thank you to those who helped us understand and fact check different parts of this topic - Dr. Christian Hilbe, Dr. Vincent Knight, Dr. Jelena Grujic, Prof. Andreas Diekmann, and Dr. Alexander Stewart.

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References:

Excellent game on the evolution of trust by Nicky Case - https://ve42.co/Case2023

Summary of Axelrod’s work by This Place -

• The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and T...

How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemma by TED-Ed -

• How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemm...

Tit for Tat by radiolab - https://ve42.co/T4T

The Golden Rule by radiolab - https://ve42.co/GoldenRule

Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation.

Dawkins, R. (2016). The selfish gene. Oxford university press.

Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner's Dilemma. William Poundstone.

Nowak, M. A., & Highfield, R. (2011). Supercooperators. Edinburgh: Canongate.

Binmore, K. (2007). Game theory: a very short introduction. OUP Oxford.

Northrup, L. & Rock, D. (1966). The Detection of Joe I. - https://ve42.co/JOE1

Prisoner’s dilemma, Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WikiPD

Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stanford - https://ve42.co/StanfordPD

Flood, M. M. (1952). Some experimental games. - https://ve42.co/Flood1952

Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles, Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WikiNWS

Goodwin, I. (1998). The Price of Victory in Cold War - https://ve42.co/Goodwin1998

Cold war: How it happened. - https://ve42.co/CW2014

Axelrod, R. (1980). Effective choice in the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of conflict resolution, 24(1), 3-25. - https://ve42.co/Axelrod1980a

Axelrod, R. (1980). More effective choice in the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of conflict resolution, 24(3), 379-403. - https://ve42.co/Axelrod1980b

Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. science, 211(4489), 1390-1396. https://ve42.co/Axelrod1981

Stanislav Petrov, Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WikiSP

Wu, J., & Axelrod, R. (1995). How to cope with noise in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Journal of Conflict resolution, 39(1), 183-189. - https://ve42.co/Wu1995

INF Treaty - https://ve42.co/INF

START Treaties - https://ve42.co/START

START I, Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WikiSTART

Images & Video:

RAND Historical images via rand.org - https://ve42.co/RAND

Golden Balls -

• golden balls. the weirdest split or s...

Zotti, G., et al. (2021). The Simulated Sky: Stellarium for Cultural Astronomy Research - https://ve42.co/Stellarium

Newspapers from 1980s via Newspapers.com – https://ve42.co/Newspapers

Decommisioned nuke image via The Moscow Times - https://ve42.co/MT2012

Soviet inspection image via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - https://ve42.co/Krzyzaniak2019

Decommissioning nuclear weapon via ShareAmerica - https://ve42.co/Kaufman2014

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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:

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Directed by Casper Mebius

Written by Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Ashley Hamer

Additional research and fact checking by Gregor Čavlović and Will Wood

Edited by Peter Nelson

Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Ivy Tello and Alondra Vitae

Illustrations by Jakub Misiek

Filmed by Derek Muller

Produced by Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Gregor Čavlović and Han Evans

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images

Music from Epidemic Sound

Thumbnail by Peter Sheppard