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In fact, in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the strategy that works best depends directly on what strategy the other player is using and, in particular, on whether this strategy leaves room for the development of mutual cooperation. This principle is based on the weight of the next move relative to the current move being sufHciently large to make the future important.

— Robert Axelrod The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

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More quotes by Robert Axelrod

What makes it possible for cooperation to emerge is the fact that the players might meet again.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

Proposition 5. ALL D is always collectively stable.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

The two-person iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma is the E. coli of the social sciences, allowing a very large variety of studies to be undertaken in a common framework.

The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Proposition 3. Any strategy which may be the first to cooperate can be collectively stable only when w is sufficiently large.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

Proposition 4. For a nice strategy to be collectively stable, it must be provoked by the very first defection of the other player.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Axelrod (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.