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

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 – https://ve42.co/SnatomsV ▀▀▀ 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/watchv=BOvAbjfJ0x0 How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemma by TED-Ed - https://www.youtube.com/watchv=emyi4z-O0ls&pp=ygUScHJpc29uZXIncyBkaWxlbW1h 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://