This doesn’t really seem like news to me. Axelrod has been talking about the evolution of cooperation with his computer tournaments for decades.
3 thoughts on “The Evolution Of Niceness”
Is it selfish to exist? It takes a lot of skills for a species to survive and even being nice as described at the link requires the capability to not be so nice.
“When the other player defects, a nice strategy must immediately be provoked into retaliatory defection.[7] The same goes for forgiveness: return to cooperation as soon as the other player does. Overdoing the punishment risks escalation, and can lead to an “unending echo of alternating defections” that depresses the scores of both players.”
A lot of people for get the second part. It isn’t just forgiveness though, they have to know there is a way out.
This afternoon I walked down a path outside an office building. A blackbird was standing next to it. As I passed it did not move except to speak what I hypothesize was a polite greeting.
Is it selfish to exist? It takes a lot of skills for a species to survive and even being nice as described at the link requires the capability to not be so nice.
“When the other player defects, a nice strategy must immediately be provoked into retaliatory defection.[7] The same goes for forgiveness: return to cooperation as soon as the other player does. Overdoing the punishment risks escalation, and can lead to an “unending echo of alternating defections” that depresses the scores of both players.”
A lot of people for get the second part. It isn’t just forgiveness though, they have to know there is a way out.
This afternoon I walked down a path outside an office building. A blackbird was standing next to it. As I passed it did not move except to speak what I hypothesize was a polite greeting.
On the other claw,
https://youtu.be/B3lsJmwNO40?si=ELO3SrpGFjsENer3
Didn’t John Nash get his PhD for this in 1950?