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Super Cooperators
This page is taken from my written notes after attending a talk entitled "Super Cooperators: The mathematics of evolution, altruism and human behaviour" by Martin Novak and Richard Highfield. The talk was held at the Royal Society, London, Tuesday, 5 April 2011.
My NotesMartin Novak was an entertaining talker, even starting with some good jokes in his thick Austrian (Terminator-like) accent. His talk was brief as they wanted to get onto a panel discussion and then open it up to the audience. The talk was on a topic I have been reading about over the years. I first came across cooperative behaviour in "Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System" by Trevor Ashworth and later in the book "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod. Novak was talking about cooperation and how it is not the rational choice. The rational choice is to be selfish. A rational choice is one that gets you the largest reward possible from an interaction with another individual no matter what they chose. He illustrated this with an analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma, which I won't elaborate on as I assume you know this scenario and its choices. (See here for the Wikipedia article on Prisoners' Dilemma) Cooperation arises out of selfish competition from repeated interactions between regular participants leading to the develop of reputation, trust and forgiveness. Novak's book has built on earlier work, since the 1980s, and with his own analysis he now proposes the five pillars of cooperation.
Five Pillars of Cooperation
Direct Reciprocity describes how learning to cooperate, to forgive, to develop reputation and to punish non-cooperators develops. It is complicated, but involves repeated encounters and the development of reputation. Indirect Reciprocity is an interesting development. It is why language developed according to some, so that we can gossip about each other and pass on each others reputation. There were some interesting asides on the role of gossip, which is mostly to talk about other people and what they did. One study I have seen saw gossip as a way of establishing and publicising group norms and then punishing those who transgressed those norms. Reputation can be spread indirectly without language, but only through the limited ability to directly observe others interacting. Imagine how Chimps indirectly learn about reputations. Language and writing can spread a reputation in an unlimited way, and is a lot more powerful. Take at Christ, and Buddha for example. As David Haig said. For direct reciprocity you need to be able to recognise a face. For indirect reciprocity you need to recognise a name. The other three areas were briefly touched on and I think 3 and 4 are fairly obvious. We sacrifice ourselves for those in our family and those in our immediate group. The spatial selection I did not get a note on, and will have to read the book. One great insight he had was that cooperation is actually a cyclical process, never really settling down. There is no equilibrium, no optimal strategy.
Cycle of Cooperative Behaviour
This makes wonderful sense to me. You can apply this cycle to personal relationships, to society, to organisations, to groups etc. He also noted that in some game-experiments some cultures have a very different application of strategy. For example in Greek and Egyptian groups when given the option to punish others choose to punish cooperators. In the USA groups they punished the non-cooperators. Romanians in another game, that enabled the giving of rewards, they rewarded only those known to them, but refused to reward those outside of their group. In the Swiss group they rewarded equally. I am looking forward to reading the book, and then I will add my thoughts on that. Book Details:"SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed" by Martin Novak and Richard Highfield. Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Updated: 12 April 2011 Contact: nickluft@gmail.com |