Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated

Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.

“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present,” Albert Camus wrote as he considered what it really means to be in solidarity with justice — an elegantly phrased reminder that the decisions we make today are the only fulcrum by which we move the outcomes of tomorrow. And yet the greatest pitfall of human consciousness might be our habitual forgetting of this fundamental fact.

In 1950, two mathematicians working...