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Paper: Evolution Favors Cooperation Over Selfishness

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

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."

8 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. I thought this was well known. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ...

    1. Re:I thought this was well known. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is not new on evolution scale, either. Ethologists have been studying the evolution of altruism for decades now, with a lot of papers published along the same lines. There are even some mathematical models that can compute the most efficient group size for cooperation (animals/people then form groups of that size and cooperate, while competing between groups), which correspond well to real world.

  2. Volunteer or else! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:Cooperation wins big time. by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Cooperation is selfishness by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Cooperation wins big time. by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. Couldn't it be "both"? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Couldn't it be "both"? by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, I have an aversion to anything that states, as an absolute, that evolution "favors" anything. Evolution is not a conscious force that picks sides, deciding what is good and what is bad. The only thing that evolution favors is 'that which survives', and it's heavily contextual. A trait that enables survival in one circumstance might hinder survival in another circumstance.

      Evolution doesn't judge. 'That which survives' is not inherently or morally superior to 'that which does not survive'. The 'that which survives' is not inherently better at surviving than 'that which does not survive'. It was just better at surviving in specific circumstance that it was in. Or sometimes, it might even be that it just got lucky-- it just happened to survive. Luck of the draw.