physorg | Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner's Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term.
But now they've come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature.
"It's a somewhat depressing evolutionary outcome, but it makes intuitive sense," said Plotkin, a professor in Penn's Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences, who coauthored the study with Stewart, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab. "We had a nice picture of how evolution can promote cooperation even amongst self-interested agents and indeed it sometimes can, but, when we allow mutations that change the nature of the game, there is a runaway evolutionary process, and suddenly defection becomes the more robust outcome."
Their study, which will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines the outcomes of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a scenario used in the field ofgame theory to understand how individuals decide whether to cooperate or not. In the dilemma, if both players cooperate, they both receive a payoff. If one cooperates and the other does not, the cooperating player receives the smallest possible payoff, and the defecting player the largest. If both players do not cooperate, they both receive a payoff, but it is less than what they would gain if both had cooperated. In other words, it pays to cooperate, but it can pay even more to be selfish.
4 comments:
...It would be extremely interesting to hear these experts' thinking on the evolutionary future(?) of a generous host group supporting a huge population of useless destructive parasites....
If by generous host group you mean the racist settler population that invaded, murdered and stole the ancient homelands of indigenous american peoples, and then proceeded to kidnap and steal the labor value of an uncooperative and captive african population for a few centuries, it would indeed be interesting to hear the experts.
The primary sin of the current uncooperative population is having survived centuries of predation by the parasitic and racist colonial thief/murderer population. Also, study of the many competing interests among the "host" group ruling elites is also a subject of intense interest. The delusional ranting of a confused old head of cattle whose full clerical value was extracted over a decade ago, and who was over-generously let out to pasture instead of put down for leather and glue - not so much http://youtu.be/S_uad3-RsQk
The key issue here is what behaviors lead to successful evolutionary outcomes - it is NOT about being Nice Guys. Historically, since the beginning of humanity, the weak groups are defeated by the stronger, nothing unusual about that. The difference here, this time, is that the winners did not kill off the LOOOZerz when latter were no longer of any use, as has been customarily done in a historic stream of genocides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Rather, the the winners issued the LOOZerz ebt cards, Sec8 apts, etc,, paid them to breed OOW exponentially, and for a finishing touch, put a Fuzzlamic bunch of them in the White House, the negative evolutionary effects of which we are currently graphically viewing as we speak......
The key issue here is what behaviors lead to successful
evolutionary outcomes - it is NOT about being Nice Guys. Historically, since the beginning of
humanity, weak groups are routinely defeated by the stronger, nothing unusual or unnatural about
that. The difference here, this time, is that the winners did not
kill off the L-O-O-O-Z-erz when latter were no longer of any use, as had been
customarily done throughout history in a long stream of genocides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Rather, they were pampered cradle-to-grave as parasites......
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