Chew over the prisoner’s dilemma and see if you can find the rational path out

Prisoner’s dilemmas ponder what happens when two rational agents, unable to communicate with one another, must choose between betraying the other for a large individual reward or cooperating for a more modest shared reward. These thought experiments are accompanied by a caveat – if both agents betray one another, they’re left with nothing. One of the best-known examples of game theory, the implications of prisoner’s dilemmas are more than just theoretical, extending to real-life matters of government and diplomacy. Illustrated with whimsical felt stop-motion, this TED-Ed animation puzzles through two prisoner’s-dilemma scenarios in which gingerbread men are forced to chew over how to keep the maximum number of limbs.