Mathematics

As a single game theory scenario, the prisoner's dilemma is a thought experiment revealing the shortcomings of selfishness. But when treated as an iterative game, it gains a strategic dimension and becomes a powerful working model for understanding human cooperation.

When is our own self-interest best served by going against what reason tells us is our own self-interest?

The prisoner's dilemma is a game theory scenario designed to answer that exact question. The scenario usually looks something like this.

The television game show Let's Make a Deal first aired in 1963. Host Monty Hall would give contestants a chance to win a modest prize, then a chance to trade their prize for a better prize. In one scenario Hall presented the contestand with three doors. Behind one of the doors was a big prize, and behind the other two were Zonks, items of little or no value.

The discovery last week of Kepler-452B, an earthlike planet orbiting a sunlike star in the habitable zone (sometimes known as the Goldilocks zone), has once again raised the question of whether we can find intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely.

—1 Kings 7:23