Victoria Bay

Question: What do genetics, the Cold War, and the 1970s tobacco industry all have in common?

Answer: The Prisoners Dilemma, a game that has been studied by mathematicians, political scientists, psychologists, and economists since the 1950s. By the 1980s, a consensus on how to play the game (or, more accurately, its iterated version) had emerged cooperation is best. However, in 2012 William Press and Freeman Dyson published a groundbreaking paper containing their new zero-determinant strategies. They demonstrated that, counterintuitively, one player can set their  opponents score, or, instead, extort their opponent, to win a disproportionate share of the overall reward. In this talk, I will explore the history of the Prisoners Dilemma, and then discuss Press and Dysons breakthrough.