A recent article by Graham P. Collins claims that “for quantum prisoners, there may be no dilemma”. This refers to the famour Prisoner’s Dilemma game, in which the two players are led by their reasoning to mutually defect, while they would benefit more from mutual cooperation — if they were not tempted to unilaterally defect for selfish gain, or do so for self-defence against a possible unilateral defection by the opponent.

But in a quantum situation, they could each play a superposition of “cooperate/defect”. (This is analogous to Schrodinger’s cat, who is both dead and alive until somebody opens the box and looks.) Taking advantage of “maximum entanglement” (another quantum effect) of the two choices with each other, the dilemma vanishes. Among the new quantum choices available is one which lets each player reap the maximum benefit.

This is an interesting combination of two theories from very different fields. Interdisciplinarity pays off, as always.