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Cooperation Works if Majority Can Punish Freeloaders
plasmid writes: "Some Swiss economists ran an investment game... they found that if the majority could punish freeloaders, cooperation flourished. I think this has implications for cooperative peer-to-peer systems and, to a lesser extent, for open source development. I'm so inspired I plan to go out an punish someone right now, as a matter of fact." I had just read this article the other day (go memepool), so this Nature piece seems oddly apropos.
I guess we'll start seeing bigger upload/download ratios on Warez servers now... :(
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Funny that Swiss Economists should come up with this conclusion.
Swiss - Sit back and watch the rest of the world fight tyranny and just rake the money in wherever and however it was attained
Economists - Earn money based on pseudo-science and predictions which are as reliable as those gained by examining chicken entrails.
Therefore should'nt we just punish Swiss Economists
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
Evolution of Cooperation; Axelrod, Robert; ISBN: 0465021212.
A must read. Discusses computer simulations, game theory and implications for everyday life. When to leave your sinking dot-com, how to reduce gang-violence etc. Very simple algorithm controls society.
Professor Peter Fragobritz and University of Northern South Dakota in 1979 developed a computer program on the C64 to model the human behaviour exhibited by catatonics. No matter what you typed into the programme, it wouldn't respond. He found he could port his programme to an IBM Selectric, and indeed even to manual typewriters. Proves a lot, doesn't it?
So next time I get moderation priveledges, I'm going to mod down people who haven't posted anything :)
This is a real experiment that has been done
several times. I think groups were typically
2*10 people.