Sciencespeaking topic
The prisoner's dilemma: why do both people end up losing when each acts in the most rational way for themselves? How does individual reason produce collective disaster?
— Tucker, the prisoner's dilemma (game theory)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- What does Fleming noticing penicillin from a stray mold in his lab tell us about the role of luck and the prepared mind in science?
- While a baby is still in the womb, its immune system is drawing up its 'who am I' list. Everything it meets in that period it counts as 'self.' So your body's definition of 'me' isn't fixed at birth; it's the product of early learning. Could part of your identity be something learned?
- The decoy effect: why do we choose the expensive option when a seller deliberately adds a bad one? How does a third option steer our preference?
- Can Jabir ibn Hayyan turning alchemy into an experimental pursuit and developing methods like distillation be considered the origin of chemistry?
- It takes tens of thousands of years for light to travel from the Sun's core to its surface, but only eight minutes to reach your eye from there. The light you see may have been born when mammoths still walked. How old can a single 'moment' really be?