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Prisoner's Dilemma in Reality Television

May 31, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

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.

via Algorithmic Game Theory // Tags: economics, television


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COMMENTS

1faris

hehehe my mate Dave created this show in the UK based on the same same

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafted

FX

May 31, 2009

2Sriram Venkitachalam

Reminds me of "Thirteen Days", the film about the Cuban missile crisis. Thankfully for the world, both US and USSR understood the theory. As is evident from the Golden Balls clip, the key to a win-win situation (more imp when dealing with nukes than 100K pounds) is the communication process that establishes trust: very well portrayed in the film.

June 1, 2009