Veritasium
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2023–2026
27:19 · 27M views · Dec 23, 2023
Veritasium explores the Prisoner's Dilemma and Axelrod's tournaments, showing why tit-for-tat and forgiving strategies win in repeated games. It extends the ideas to cooperation in evolution and conflict.
HN commenters reach for it constantly as an approachable explanation of why cooperation and reciprocity are rational strategies.
17 comments from Hacker News
Veratasium just made an approachable video on this subject recently, I definitely recommend. It rebukes the whole 'oh no I just heard what a Nash equilibrium is and now I'm worried cooperation is impossible long term' fears some people interpret his thought experiment (prisoners dillema) to have. Tldr it's rare that you can't coordinate, communicate, or have exactly one trial. this video
This Veritasium video is excellent, and makes the argument that there is something intrinsic in mathematics (game theory) that encourages prosocial behavior. this video
To start with, I really enjoyed Veritaseum’s recent take on the “Prisoners Dillema” and Game Theory ( this video ). It seems appropriate to mention since it circles around this same “dillema” and even places a numerical value on the value of forgiving in game theory simulations. The historical part and layman’s reduction is good to. I think THIS article undersells the “Hold a Grudge” payoff: > David feels justified but might damage the relationship and stop Samantha from learning from her mistake. Most relationships have an ongoing bargaining element to them. Exchange of services, tit for tat, quid pro quo, pay each others backs, etc. Even when we pretend they don’t, or obscure them by wrapping higher level words around them. What makes forgiving hard, is that when we feel wronged, we feel it gives us a better bargaining position go forward. If we forgive, we fear it devalues or weakens our bargaining power going forward. Why else are we so tempted in a debate to rejoin with “yeah, well you do <fill in the blank wrong thing> too!” To clarify, I AM a big fan and proponent of forgiveness. I aspire to be better at. But I think this article has missed a key part of the dillema, by not better portraying the real allure of not forgiving.
The way I’ve always imagined crown shyness (from a total less-than-layman perspective where I’ve only casually read about the topic) is from a game theory/selfish gene perspective. Trees of the same species will share a lot of the same genes, and genes that code for non-shyness will grow to the detriment of the trees around them. Trees which critically are very likely to share a lot of the same genes. So that non-shyness gene will lose out in the long run against genes that code for shyness. It’s similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, with shyness being “cooperate” and non-shyness being “defect”. Groups of trees with cooperative strategies would do better collectively (and win out), even if a non-cooperative individual can beat a cooperative individual every time. Veritasium had a great video on this very topic today, in fact: this video
> it's no longer a matter of choice, you have to do it too You know, there are plenty of examples where people in positions of power choose different paths of escalation. I doesn't always need to be liner tit for tat. Some times you need to step back and look at the larger picture and decide of the escalation is worth the risk for all of humanity. There is a video about game theory [0] that describes this problem very clearly. You have better outcomes when you make decisions outside the direct course of escalation. Please don't talk in absolutes about these things, you have an opinion. I accept that, but its not as black and white as you think [0]: this video