Freeman Dyson and William Press announced that they had discovered a previously unknown strategy for the game of prisoner’s dilemma which guarantees one player a better outcome than the other.

That’s a monumental surprise. Theorists have studied Prisoner’s Dilemma for decades, using it as a model for the emergence of co-operation in nature. This work has had a profound impact on disciplines such as economics, evolutionary biology and, of course, game theory itself. The new result will have impact in all these areas and more.

amazing contribution by freeman dyson (yes, he of the dyson spheres, not of the overpriced vacuum cleaners): tit for tat is not the only strategy in iterated prisoner’s dilemmas. i wonder what would have happened had we known this during the cold war.

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