the pervasiveness of the Prisoner's Dilemma

While I don't think we're anywhere near Heinlein's notion of a mathematical proof for morality (as discussed in the novel Starship Troopers), applied math does seem to provide some insight into how it is that organisms evolved behaviors and tendencies like altruism, cooperation, coordinated action, and mutualism/reciprocity as survival strategies. The Veritasium video below discusses the brute mathematical realities discovered through a study of the Prisoner's Dilemma—realities that point to certain "moral" behavior patterns in a paradigm that seems to recur all throughout living nature.

There's something creepy, and maybe profound, about the idea that some level of basic morality might actually be inscribed in the very nature of the universe, like pre-carved channels waiting for water to flow through them. If this is true, and if we do ever encounter life elsewhere, this could mean that that life will evince recognizable behaviors—those of discrete beings operating in collectives in beneficial ways.