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Evolving Cooperation
...in a cheater's world. And here's a related essay by Arnold Kling on scientific statements and empiricism versus group trust cues.
Posted by Rand Simberg at July 03, 2006 12:48 PM
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The Evolution of Niceness
Excerpt: Over at TerraDaily News there's an interesting discussion of a British study about cooperation. According to the study they describe, cooperation (as opposed to selfishness) is a successful evolutionary strategy in small groups. While being selfish is ...
Weblog: Science Made Cool
Tracked: July 5, 2006 09:30 AM
Comments
Interesting article, but great Ghu what a bunch of cruft! Popups, "context-sensitive" advertising links with image-heavy balloon alts, the whole nine yards.
Do NOT visit with IE version 6 or less. Firefox or Opera highly recommended.
Regards,
Ric
Posted by Ric Locke at July 3, 2006 02:06 PM
Second link goes right back to T.M.
Posted by Tom at July 3, 2006 02:21 PM
Umm, I read a paper about this years ago (2002?) in Nature or Science. They (don't remember names) simulated a population of agents with tags, and you could see patterns how agents who helped others with very closely similar tags thrived and reproduced more every generation. (Assuming helping costs you less than the actual benefit is), while those helping everyone gradually disappeared. Let's call them type A and type B. But then soon everyone was of type A and everybody helped everybody else. But soon an even only friend-helping "exploiter" agent breed was born by random mutation and the cycle repeated.
So, help, but only your friends.
Posted by mz at July 3, 2006 03:53 PM
Remind me NOT to play poker with those guys!!
They don't advocate cheating, but they don't NOT advocate it either.
Posted by Steve at July 3, 2006 05:15 PM
And how are these not evolutionary just so stories?
Posted by Jon Jackson at July 3, 2006 10:01 PM
And how are these not evolutionary just so stories?
Because they're replicable, in the computer sims.
And what if they are? They are the best available scienctific theory until someone comes up with a better one. (Hint, "God made 'em that way" is not a scientific theory.)
Posted by Rand Simberg at July 4, 2006 05:02 AM
Bet you my lunch money the results were front loaded.
Posted by Jon Jackson at July 6, 2006 12:14 PM
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