Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

Poundstone, William
Miller, Rich

Audio Book

Biographies GeneralGeneral MathematicsGeneral Science

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ISBN13: 9798874638757
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Dec 26 2023
Language: English
Should you watch public television without pledging? Exceed the posted speed limit? Hop a subway turnstile without paying? These questions illustrate the prisoner's dilemma, a social puzzle that we all face every day. Though the answers may seem simple, their profound implications make the prisoner's dilemma one of the great unifying concepts of science. Watching poker players bluff inspired John von Neumann to construct game theory, a mathematical study of conflict and deception. Game theory was readily embraced at the RAND Corporation, the archetypical think tank charged with formulating military strategy for the atomic age, and in 1950 two RAND scientists made a momentous discovery.

Called the prisoner's dilemma, it is a disturbing and mind-bending game where two or more people may betray the common good for individual gain. The prisoner's dilemma quickly became a popular allegory of the nuclear arms race. Intellectuals such as von Neumann joined military and political leaders in rallying to the preventive war movement, which advocated a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. Though the Truman administration rejected preventive war the US entered into an arms race with the Soviets and game theory developed into a controversial tool of public policy--alternately accused of justifying arms races and touted as the only hope of preventing them.

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