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Paper: Evolution Favors Cooperation Over Selfishness
Beeftopia writes "Conventional wisdom has suggested selfishness is most beneficial evolutionary strategy for humans, while cooperation is suboptimal. This dovetailed with a political undercurrent dating back more than a century, starting with social Darwinism. A new paper in the journal Nature Communications casts doubt on this school of thought. The paper shows that while selfishness is optimal in the short term, it fails in the long term. Cooperation is seen as the most effective long term human evolutionary strategy."
Cooperation is seen as the most effective long term human evolutionary strategy.
Bands - tribes - of folks had to cooperate to hunt, gather food, fight off invaders, etc ....
And I am pretty sure Scientific American has had articles on this for quite a few years.
Conventional wisdom has suggested selfishness is most beneficial evolutionary strategy for humans,....
Maybe if you're reading 19th century papers ...
Voluntary cooperation.
Economists, in their cavalier way, often ignore or minimize this trumpeting their politics.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Cooperation wins big time.
Yep. Look at the effectiveness of, say, police forces and armies over individual armed men.
The radio is one of the deadliest, most precise weapons ever invented. Because it facilitates cooperation.
What? Ayn Rand could be wrong? The shock and horror of it!
Seriously though the question is difficult to answer on anything more than a philosophical level. It is a bit vague to quantify and would need to be rephrased to be practically measurable.. Maybe I should put my beer down and go read TFA....
Never put your beer down! Priorities!
Petr Kropotkin wrote a series of essays in the late 1800s that became the book "Mutual Aid". It lays out in beautiful and exquisite detail the premise here, that co-operation is a primary factor in evolution, rather than simple dominance, as he felt Darwin suggested. It is truly a masterpiece work and I highly recommend that anyone interested in the subject read it.
Kropotkin went on to become (very much posthumously) one of the most-read and best regarded philosophers of the Anarchist political movement; his politics were largely molded by his observations that are laid out in Mutual Aid.
I can do more with your help than I can on my own. But to get your help, I'm going to have to cooperate with you and offer you my help in return. So it's not really a choice between selfishness and cooperation. It's a choice between selfishness and stupidity. Do I be stupid, reject your help and limit myself to only what I can accomplish without help? Or do I be selfish, cooperate with you and reap the gains of having your help?
It's the same thing as you see with a mortgage. If you're greedy you forgo the immediate benefits and make a large down-payment because long-term you'll gain a lot more in reduced interest payments. If you're stupid or desperate you'll make the minimum down-payment and keep the money in your pocket right now, but pay several times what you "saved" in increased interest payments.
No, the radio is one of the most deadly innovations because it facilitates coordination. Coordinating 5 people can result in far more damage than hundreds cooperating, assuming the right tactics.
You win the most pedantic comment of the year award!
No, I win the most didactic comment of the year award.
XOR logic fails in understanding complex systems. It could be that Selfishness is beneficial until it isn't And I'm sure that Cooperation is beneficial until it isn't. Pure "communism" has failed every place it has been attempted, even when completely voluntary. The reason is because there is no incentive in pure cooperation.
The same lack of understanding is also available in pure selfishness. It is doomed because there are times when cooperation is required to achieve more complex goals.
I would postulate that a mix of knowing when each is optimal would be even better, which would require more than a simple XOR operation.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The "American Dream" as it was (house, car, giving your kids better opportunities than you had) didn't require stepping on others. Nowadays a lot of people (but far from all) think it means getting very, very rich with as little work or effort as possible, which does require stepping on people.