This game theory problem will change the way you see the world

This is a video about the most famous problem in Game Theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Head to to start your free 30day trial, and the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

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If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically

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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

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

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.

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References:

Excellent game on the evolution of trust by Nicky Case

Summary of Axelrod’s work by This Place

How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemma by TEDEd

Tit for Tat by radiolab

The Golden Rule by radiolab

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.

Prisoner’s dilemma, Wikipedia

Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stanford

Flood, M. M. (1952). Some experimental games.

Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles, Wikipedia

Goodwin, I. (1998). The Price of Victory in Cold War

Cold warHow it happened.

Axelrod, R. (1980). Effective choice in the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of conflict resolution, 24(1), 325.

Axelrod, R. (1980). More effective choice in the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of conflict resolution, 24(3), 379403.

Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. science, 211(4489), 13901396.

Stanislav Petrov, Wikipedia

Wu, J., & Axelrod, R. (1995). How to cope with noise in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Journal of Conflict resolution, 39(1), 183189.

START Treaties

START I, Wikipedia

Images & Video:

RAND Historical images via rand.org

Golden Balls

Zotti, G., et al. (2021). The Simulated SkyStellarium for Cultural Astronomy Research

Newspapers from 1980s via Newspapers.com

Decommisioned nuke image via The Moscow Times

Soviet inspection image via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Decommissioning nuclear weapon via ShareAmerica

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Directed by Casper Mebius

Written by Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Ashley Hamer

Additional research and fact checking by Gregor Čavlović and Will Wood

Edited by Peter Nelson

Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Ivy Tello and Alondra Vitae

Illustrations by Jakub Misiek

Filmed by Derek Muller

Produced by Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Gregor Čavlović and Han Evans

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images

Music from Epidemic Sound

Thumbnail by Peter Sheppard