"Here’s the game part: The researchers broke up a big group of volunteers into five teams they called “generations.” They gave the players designated the first generation 100 points, or “units,” and told them to take some for themselves, up to 20 units each, and then pass the remainder on to the next generation. If the overall pool had 50 units or more at the end of the round, the next generation would get a reset—100 units to start all over, a model of sustainability. If the pool had fewer than 50 units, the next generation got what it got.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good: Two-thirds of players were 'cooperators,' taking 10 units or fewer and ensuring the survival of the species. The bad: A minority of “defectors” always tanked the game. In 18 rounds of this Intergenerational Goods Game, just four had a first generation abstemious enough to give generation 2 a full reset to 100 units. Of those, only two reset for generation 3. Nobody made it to generation 4.

"In a game designed to test how people might plan ahead for a sustainable world, all it took to reliably bring about the apocalypse were a few selfish schmucks—which sounds pretty familiar, actually, but does seem like a ruefully ironic outcome for a paper called 'Cooperating With the Future.'"

Article: The Miami Building Collapse and Humanity’s Tragic Fight for the Future