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Prisoner’s Dilemma in Reality Television

If reality TV is good for anything, it’s explaining game theory. Check out this clip of a UK show based around the prisoner’s dilemma for instance.

The prisoner’s dilemma as explained by The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

In the traditional version of the game, the police have arrested two suspects and are interrogating them in separate rooms. Each can either confess, thereby implicating the other, or keep silent. No matter what the other suspect does, each can improve his own position by confessing. If the other confesses, then one had better do the same to avoid the especially harsh sentence that awaits a recalcitrant holdout. If the other keeps silent, then one can obtain the favorable treatment accorded a state’s witness by confessing.

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