The Prisoners' Dilemma and Trust

The Prisoners' Dilemma was extensively studied as a model of first strike nuclear ballistic missile strategy. In it, two prisoners are held separately, and both are offered the following deal, `If neither of you confess, you shall both go free. If both of you confess, you will both receive long sentences. If only one of you confesses, that one will receive a short sentence, but the other will receive a doubley long one.'

The thing is, unless I can be certain that you won't confess, the best thing I can do is to confess, and settle for a short or long sentence, but avoiding the doubley long one. You feel the same way. So unless we are both certain (remember the old packer `certainty'), which we cannot be, we both end up with long sentences where we could have got off with none at all.

This result was depressing during the Cold War, when considerable strategic advantage could be gained from a first strike. While the game theorists insisted that a double launch was inevitable, the human race, faced with utter destruction, was able to behave rationally and avoid any kind of nuclear exchange at all, let alone the Spasm predicted by game theory.

P.S - This was taken from www.reciprocality.org/