My wife and I were talking about the Prisoner's Dilemma the other day because we were in one -- the details can be skipped.
The interesting thing about the Prisoner's Dilemma -- which I never appreciated deeply before -- is that it's a non-zero-sum game. In fact, the sum value of the game depends on the player's behavior.
Our position at the time we were discussing this was that the other side had defected while we cooperated, thus giving us 0 and them 5. The best strategy I know for iterated Prisoner's Dilemma games is Tit For Tat (TFT). TFT indicates that we should defect on the next turn.
The sad thing is, though, that we saw clearly that it would be possible for everyone to get 3 -- for a total of 6 -- of only both sides cooperated. We could do better than net five, if only the other side cooperated. Alas, they hadn't. So we defected next turn.
But there it is again -- the dream! Real growth! But only in certain circumstances can you realize it.
39.75 hrs last week + 0.25 after midnight today. But you could tell that by the dazed ramblings above, eh?