Prisoner's Dilemma

When I first heard the phrase, "Prisoner's Dilemma", the only thing I could really think of was that, if there are prisoners in trouble, whoever tells first, gets the lesser punishment.

When I read what it actually meant, "Two men are arrested, but the police do not possess enough information for a conviction. Following the separation of the two men, the police offer both a similar deal—if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates/assists), the betrayer goes free and the cooperator receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each 'rats out' the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept quiet. What should they do?" My thought was kind of close, but not a lot of detail.

You gave us the task of only one person gets an "A" for the semester, how would the class as a team decide who will get the "A". What we did in class was that each person suggested an idea and then everybody voted on which idea would be best for settling how we would decide who gets the "A". After the votes were tallied, the winning option was running an obstacle course. Sean ended up winning, so he received the hypothetical "A".

How it relates to the Prisoner's Dilemma, to be honest, I can't really see how they fit together, but maybe it works like they both have the team come up with who's gonna get whatever the prize or punishment. They differ because one is an agreement between the whole team, while the Prisoner's dilemma, is more about how much do you trust your partner to not tell on you, while you have to choose to either be good to your partner or to yourself.

To me the Prisoner's Dilemma seems more like a Competition, because you're having an internal conflict with yourself trying to figure out who you are gonna be true to, your partner or yourself. While your partner has to figure out the same thing.