Eli5: Why is Prisoners Dilemma considered a Dilemma?
In: 46
We’ve known for a while that there IS a solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, so in that sense the hypothetical prisoner doesn’t really face a “dilemma” because there is one clearly superior choice. The simplest answer is that the guy who came up with it named it that, and the name stuck.
But there are some reasons to still think of the scenario as a dilemma:
1. The prisoner is trying to minimize a bad thing. There is no option where he comes out better than the scenario where he doesn’t play at all. One might say that being put in such a position always poses a dilemma, even if one choice is less-bad than the other.
2. The solution to the prisoner’s dilemma is not intuitive, so the dilemma may be the challenge of figuring out what to do, or possibly the despair of a prisoner who can’t figure it out.
Latest Answers