The Trust Machine
When does it pay to cooperate?
Cooperate or defect, meet your opponent again, and discover what a little forgiveness changes.
Open experimentTed’s Public Workbench Interactive Experiments
Game Theory
Playground
Your best move depends on someone else.
What happens next?
Make a choice. See what it sets in motion. Then change the rules and try again. Six small experiments explore why we cooperate, get stuck, make threats, and sometimes build the wrong road.
01
Predict
What do you expect?
02
Choose
Make a move that matters.
03
Discover
Follow the incentives.
04
Change
Adjust one assumption.
05
Connect
Try the idea elsewhere.
The First Collection
Six Ways to See the Game
Why Are We Stuck?
Can everyone be unhappy and still stay put?
Play both sides of a two-person game. Change the payoffs and find out who has a reason to move.
Open experiment
Nobody Wants to Go First
What would make your team take the first step?
Help eight teams choose a shared technology. Test expectations, pilot support, and commitments.
Open experiment
Can You Be Unpredictable?
Is your next move easier to guess than you think?
Face a pattern-seeking opponent, then build a random strategy and compare it with an even mix.
Open experiment
Would You Actually Do It?
Will a threat survive the moment of decision?
Enter a market, make a threat, and work backward through the choices. See what a deposit changes.
Open experiment
The Shortcut That Made Everyone Late
Could an extra road make your commute worse?
Open a shortcut, let drivers choose their routes, and compare the result with a coordinated plan.
Open experimentOne More Road. A Longer Commute.
Good Intentions Meet Other People’s Choices
The Traffic Paradox puts individual choices on a shared road network. Add a shortcut, inspect the route flows, and see why the fastest route for one driver can make everyone slower.
Open the Traffic Paradox →65 min
Before the shortcut
80 min
After drivers settle
A theoretical result for 4,000 drivers under this experiment’s default road costs. Change the assumptions and test it.
Small Models, Useful Questions
Game theory studies choices whose outcomes depend on other people’s choices. Here, you can inspect the points each player earns, replay the same random sequence, and ask which assumptions fit your own situation.
Every experiment includes step-by-step math using pre-algebra, a separate expert section with formal equations, and a scenario link. The numbers describe the model. The questions are yours to take into a team, a negotiation, or a shared project.
The learning-by-playing approach is inspired by Nicky Case’s The Evolution of Trust. These experiments use their own models and implementation.
A Workbench That Can Grow
This first collection starts with cooperation and ends with shared costs. Fourteen more experiments are planned.
Explore the planned collection
Cooperation, Negotiation, and Information
- The Public Goods Lab — planned
- The Last Fish — planned
- The Bargaining Room — planned
- The Auction Lab — planned
- The Signaling Game — planned
- The Expectations Game — planned
- The Common Knowledge Lab — planned
- The Evolution Arena — planned
Designing the Rules
- The Correlation Experiment — planned
- Stable Matching — planned
- The Coalition Calculator — planned
- The Voting Lab — planned
- The Incentive Designer — planned
- The Mechanism Design Studio — planned
Planned experiments are ideas for future additions, not playable pages.