The Prisoners Dilemma

A good game for all you chaos theorists out there. The object is that you and another individual are trapped inside a box by an evil wizard. At the beginning of the game, you and the individual (arbitrarily named Serendip) must choose between cooperating or competing with each other. Should you both decide to cooperate, you each receive three coins. If you decide to compete and the other chooses to cooperate, you receive five coins and the other recieves none. If you both decide to compete, you both receive one coin.

The trick here is that the Wizard is watching, and if your average number drops below some predetermined score, the Wizard will send the winner to an “inconceivably foul fate.” Since no one knows the number, both you and Serendip have to maximize your coinage.

This may utterly bore some folks, but for philosophers and mathematicians this is gravy! Soak it up! Once you play the game, there is a list of articles and such that you can peruse to see just how interesting this game is for chaos theories, philosophy, mathematicians, and other people who spend their time finding out exactly how many angels dance on the head of a pin.