# Reading Responses (2)
### *Super Cooperators* & *Gossip*
The Prisoner's Dilemma is not only applicable to prisoners. The Dilemma describes the actions in which people take when they are faced with a problem. In this table, there are two outcomes: cooperation or defection.
Within the prisoner metaphor, if you were to cooperate but your partner defected, you would receive four years in prison, while they only get one. If you both defect, you both get three years (which is wholeheartedly undesirable as you know if you both cooperate there is a better outcome). And yet, why do people feel inclined to NOT cooperate?

Nowak wrote, "the first ingredient of cooperation is information". We are in an information society, with so much information readily available at our fingertips, and once again, people still do not cooperate. What exactly is the information we are looking for?

The environment is harshly affected in a similar manner to the Prisoner's Dilemma. If there is already litter on the ground, people may feel it is appropriate to litter as they were not the first ones to drop something. However, every person everywhere knows the harm that littering and trash does to our world. So is the first step of cooperation *really* information? I am not too sure. Maybe it is a different type of information that people are looking for? Gossip perhaps? [Reagle](https://readingthecomments.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/dtys4tyk/release/2#gossip) wrote "that it is central to understanding humanity". Gossip has been and forever will be engrained in the human lifestyle from sharing secrets at the playground to yentas on the phone with each other at the 65 and up housing development (like [Beverly Goldberg](https://miro.medium.com/max/750/1*2cRourjTZeRs5AVD2LQQlQ.jpeg) from [*The Goldbergs*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2712740/)).

Maybe it isn't gossip. Maybe it is something else entirely. How do you get people to cooperate even when they already *know* it is in their best interest? Knowledge means nothing if no actions are taken.