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Prisoners Dilemma

Prisoner’s Dilemma: What Game Are you Playing?

In this classic game theory experiment, you must decide: rat out another for personal benefit, or cooperate? The answer may be more complicated than you think. *** What does it take to make people …

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What Competition in Nature Should Teach Us about Markets

“Though the free-market faithful have long preached that competition creates efficiency, as if it were a law of nature, nature itself teaches a different lesson.” No tree can afford to not …

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Mental Model: Prisoners’ Dilemma

The prisoners’ dilemma is the best known strategy game in social science. The game shows why two entities might not cooperate even when it appears in their best (rational) interest to do so. …

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Daniel Kahneman: Some Thoughts on Thinking

While Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, gets all the attention, he’s also written a few articles that might catch your interest on thinking better. Optimistic Bias: In …

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Youngme Moon: On Business Competition and Escaping the Competitive Herd

There are many ways companies compete with one another. Unfortunately, a lot of those ways seem like nothing more than an expensive route to commoditization. Companies are relentless in their pursuit …

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Social Dilemmas: When to Defect and When to Cooperate

Social dilemmas arise when an individual receives a higher payoff for defecting than cooperating when everyone else cooperates. When everyone defects they are worse off. That is, each member has a …

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