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. Special thanks to our Patreon supporters! Join the community to help us keep our videos free, forever: https://ve42.co/PatreonDEB If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms – a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically – null ▀▀▀ 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. ▀▀▀ References: Excellent game on the evolution of trust by Nicky Case - https://ve42.co/Case2023 Summary of Axelrod’s work by This Place - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0 How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemma by TED-Ed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emyi4z-O0ls 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 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8 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 ▀▀▀ Special thanks to our Patreon supporters: Adam Foreman, Amadeo Bee, Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bernard McGee, Bill Linder, Burt Humburg, Dave Kircher, Diffbot, Evgeny Skvortsov, Gnare, Jesse Brandsoy, John H. Austin, Jr., john kiehl, Josh Hibschman, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Mario Bottion, Max Maladino, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Krugman, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Stephen Wilcox, Tj Steyn, TTST, Ubiquity Ventures ▀▀▀ 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