Book review: Prisoner's Dilemma

I just finished reading William Poundstone's 1992 book, Prisoner's Dilemma. The subtitle is John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb. Von Neumann is recognised (along with Oskar Morgenstern) as the founders of game theory, as outlined in their 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (although, as Poundstone's book notes, some of the key ideas date back to work by the French mathematician Emile Borel in the 1920s, some years before von Neumann began his work on game theory).

I was expecting the book to be mostly a biography of von Neumann, but that is only the beginning. The book ranges widely over the origins and early applications of game theory, from zero-sum games to non-zero-sum games, and of course the prisoners' dilemma itself (along with 'chicken' games and some other games of note). A fairly large chunk of the book is actually devoted to the goings-on at the RAND Corporation, the 'original' think tank, set up by Douglas Aviation and initially funded by the US Air Force. As Poundstone notes:

The RAND Corporation's original purpose was to perform strategic studies on intercontinental nuclear war. RAND hired many of the scientists leaving wartime defense work, and took on as consultants an even larger orbit of stellar thinkers.

And later:

Many of the social scientists hired or consulted were economists who had fallen under the spell of game theory. It was at RAND rather than in the groves of academia that game theory was nurtured in the years after von Neumann and Morgenstern's book. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, few of the biggest names of game theory and allied fields didn't work for RAND< either full-time or as consultants. 

Game theory, as the study of strategic interactions, is of course central to RAND's original purpose. And, as it turns out, so was John von Neumann. The biography sections of the book are very good at outlining von Neumann's gifts and accomplishments, of which there were many. This quote highlights how highly Poundstone clearly thought of him:

Von Neumann's brilliant accomplishments can only hint at the academic and public perception of him. To many of his associates at Princeton, the Pentagon, the RAND Corporation, and elsewhere, von Neumann was a living legend whose reputation was spread by innumerable anecdotes, some of which appeared in the popular press.

Poundstone shares many of these anecdotes. If the passage above sounds little hyperbolic to you, then you'll probably find many others of the like, such as:

The prisoner's dilemma has become one of the premier philosophical and scientific issues of our time. It is tied to our very survival.

It's an important game, yes, but I'm not sure I would go quite that far. Even with much more recent memories of the Cold War (remember, this book was written in 1992).

Other than the occasional hyperbole, the biographical section of the book seemed to me to lack flow, jumping around chronologically. That makes it more difficult than it should be to keep the sequence of the story in mind. I realise that Poundstone was doing double-duty in trying to write both about von Neumann and about developments in game theory, but I felt that I could have understood a bit more with some more logical sequencing. Other readers might not be so easily distracted.

The latter parts of the book go into some depth on prisoners' dilemma games and other social dilemmas, and the lack of appropriate solutions to these dilemmas (after all, if there were simple solutions, there would be no dilemma). The explanations here are good, but sometimes they can be a little circular. And the conclusion will not satisfy everyone:

The ability to see "opponents" as fellow beings frequently transforms a nominal prisoner's dilemma into a much less troublesome game. The only satisfying solution to the prisoner's dilemma is to avoid prisoner's dilemmas.

Despite these issues, I did enjoy reading this book. I've enjoyed reading a number of biographies in recent years, and I can add this one to the list. And I enjoy game theory, so fleshing out a bit more detail on its origins was helpful to me. If you have similar preferences, then you will also get a lot out of this book.