I guess it’s called “Braess’s Paradox” but CS students everywhere (and math, polisci, etc students too I’m sure, but I’m not one so I don’t know) know it as “that simple application of Nash equilibria that blows your mind. No, not the prisoner’s dilemma. The other one. You know, with the roads that are in a diamond shape and you add another one and it makes everything worse.”

It’s actually real!

(okay, so not quite. the deal in real life is that fewer roads makes people drive less, not that it makes them route differently. either way, I like it.)

Also, highway interchanges are so cool. I mean, besides the whole “destroying the world and particularly the United States” thing.