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"a good model for understanding the biology of monogamy and mating in humans"

Are humans that close to prairie voles? Because bonobos, our closest actual relation evolutionary speaking, are highly sexualized and totally polygamous.

http://brembs.net/bonobos.html

Of course, if one is seeking to bolster some culturally-determined myth of monogamy (so as to uphold property rights and inheritance, perhaps) then you've got to look pretty far afield for examples of monogamous species.

Here's another source.

Just recently I read about the best successful strategy being "Co-operate at first step, then Tit from there on.

http://brembs.net/ipd/tft.html

So I guess it is best to co-operate first and if it misused ,then take restrictive action next.

Who knows, that Iranian kid could have some brilliant idea.

K

Wow! I've been /.ed. Well, I never... :-)
Once I realized it, I felt so compelled... I, I just had to address the /. discussion, I think I've lost my free will. Now where did I put it? Anybody here seen it? Maybe these pesky flies stole it? :-)
Of course, our original study makes no mention of free will, it is not a scientific concept. However, spontaneity even in flies makes us ponder what, if anything, this might entail for our subjective experience of free will in a macrocosm we believe to be largely deterministic. Therefore we addressed the issue with an ironic question in our press release: "Do fruit flies have free will?"
http://brembs.net/spontaneous
Of course, the media will drop the question mark, because questions don't sell. Some journalists even told me their editors told them to emphasize the free will thing precisely for this reason. That's fine with me. The debate got re-ignited and that's a good thing, I believe. The discussion here shows that. You can see all the coverage and blogosphere discussion linked at:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/
Scientifically, the most important aspect (which understandably got a little buried by the media) is that we found evidence for a brain function which appears evolutionarily designed to always spontaneously vary ongoing behavior. There is tentative evidence that such a function may be very widespread in the animal kingdom, including humans. Why would all brains have this function? If this were indeed the case, we might have discovered the first evidence for something truly fundamental to our understanding of brains.

Take it easy folks,
Bjoern

Wow! I've been /.ed. Well, I never... :-)
Once I realized it, I felt so compelled... I, I just had to address the /. discussion, I think I've lost my free will. Now where did I put it? Anybody here seen it? Maybe these pesky flies stole it? :-)
Of course, our original study makes no mention of free will, it is not a scientific concept. However, spontaneity even in flies makes us ponder what, if anything, this might entail for our subjective experience of free will in a macrocosm we believe to be largely deterministic. Therefore we addressed the issue with an ironic question in our press release: "Do fruit flies have free will?"
http://brembs.net/spontaneous
Of course, the media will drop the question mark, because questions don't sell. Some journalists even told me their editors told them to emphasize the free will thing precisely for this reason. That's fine with me. The debate got re-ignited and that's a good thing, I believe. The discussion here shows that. You can see all the coverage and blogosphere discussion linked at:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/
Scientifically, the most important aspect (which understandably got a little buried by the media) is that we found evidence for a brain function which appears evolutionarily designed to always spontaneously vary ongoing behavior. There is tentative evidence that such a function may be very widespread in the animal kingdom, including humans. Why would all brains have this function? If this were indeed the case, we might have discovered the first evidence for something truly fundamental to our understanding of brains.

Take it easy folks,
Bjoern

Link to the published work
http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action ?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000443

More at the author's blog
http://bjoern.brembs.net/

I actually worked in the same lab as Bjorn Brembs while in grad school. You can read more about the experiment at his website.

http://brembs.net/spontaneous/

Bonobos are probably the most sexual primates. They use sex the same way we shake hands. Females practice "GG (genital-to-genital) rubbing" with each other as way of strengthing interpersonal bonds (they have *enlarged* equipment). Also, they are the only other primates (i think) besides humans that practice face-to-face sex on a somewhat consistent basis.

Unfortunately, their native habitat is being destroyed and they are endangered. The parent post is totally correct in saying they are very close to us genetically; and we've still got a long ways to go until we are like them sexually:) here's an interesting link.

Cooperation in competition to win and GT? Check out Tit-for-Tat, as well as a bunch of other things for more examples.

A similar set of ideals has been previously applied in psychological and darwinian non-zero sum games where there is a reduced personal gain but higher group gain from cooperation. These games challenge participants in finding an optimal outcome for both in cases where there are multiple iterations of choices to cooperate or 'defect' from cooperation - the website details only a new variant of these.

One model is that of the cold war. If both countries cooperate in an arms reduction treaty, they both win some, but for the individual country, a win can be made if their competitor cooperates and they 'defect' and build more arsenal.

This game has a matrix of possible points scored by each side depending on their individual choices.

In the above situation, the two scores delimited by commas indicate the score for each country. If the countries both cooperate, each receives three points. However, if they disagree, one country will win, but the sum score is less. The interesting situation is if both defect - the value placed on these scores may also determine how the game is played through multiple iterations by two players.

Another variant is the prisoner's dilemma game. Two criminals are captured, and the DA will cut one of them a deal if they squeal on the other. Of course, if both squeal on each other, both loose big. If both are quiet, they will get a lesser charge. The dilemma is that the best group outcome is that they will both fare better if they are both quiet, but they don't know what the other will do.

The article listed is similar to this, but different that there is a cost involved in punishing the 'bad' player that doesn't pay into the investment pot. Here the game asks you to punish the uncooperative player with costs now, but the punishment might make them more likely to contribute in future rounds of the game. Interesting.

I've been involved off and on in education for some years as a volunteer and as part of non governmental organizations concerned with education. The contrarian blowhards have been beating the anti computer drum for years (for example the Waldorf school people, or Fritjoff Capra of Tao of Physics fame).

Now, I'm a contrarian myself, but I have two problems with the way these people think. The first is the straw man argument. They like to hold up a particularly feckless attempt to use computers in education as a model for the whole, rather than searching for the best (e.g. Seymour Papert's Logo work). The second problem is one of false dichotomy -- you really should be doing X (for example lab work) rather than computers -- as if "doing computers" should be a subject matter that displaces something else.

For example, take Cliff Stoll's observation in the article [the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet - to which 94 per cent of America's public schools are now connected] "discourages study, reflection, and observation". Note the heavy paraphrasing from the article, to be fair to Mr. Stoll.

Sure, downloading somebody's unsubstantiated opinion is not going to do anything for a student's intellectual ability. But look at how bad biology texts are -- we are perilously close to that situation with textbooks today. Perhaps they would be better off downloading an essay on evolution by an eminent biologist. Like the open-sourcers say -- use the source. Go back to the Federalist papers and see what the founders actually thought. Read Milton on free speech, Jefferson on the problem of slavery, Einstein's letters to Roosevelt on the atomic bomb, or find out how a dictator thinks by reading Mein Kampf. You can get it all on the Internet.

I'm not an expert in educational systems, but I see two great possibilities for using computers, both of which are hobbled by fatal flaws in our educational values.

(1) The Internet. Criticizing the Internet for having educationally valueless content is silly -- the same can be said for your local library. However, sending children off to do assignments on the Internet without training in critical reading and thinking is folly. Unfortunately, kids are trained in the mechanics of reading more than the philosophy and art of reading -- questioning the provenance of an idea, going to original sources, detecting rhetoric and logical fallacy.

(2) The computer as a creative tool. The fact is, all kinds of creative activities such as art, music or computer programming are given short shrift. How can the computer be used as a creative tool if the student doesn't have outlets for creativity?