Slashdot Mirror
Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Favors Cooperation's Collapse
First time accepted submitter Ugmug (1495847) writes Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner's Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term. But now they've come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature."
This is explained in Dawkins' book. It's an evolutionary stable strategy.
Rand
Strategies that are too selfish "kill the host". Or invite retaliatory action. This is the same whether it's a virus like ebola or bad actors in society.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The notion that "tit for tat" is relevant to evolution in the iterated prisoner's assumes that defection is detected -- an unrealistic assumption. The only reliable evolutionary system in which cooperation is sustainable is one in which the replicators (genetic and memetic) share a common fate aka vertical transmission. This is why the meiotic lottery works in multicellular sexual species and it is how symbiosis between species can evolve in ecologies where migration is restricted -- migration being the origin of the evolution of virulence via horizontal transmission. However, since restricting migration is not practical in much of nature, there is an "optimal virulence" in which a replicator tests the limits of its ability to, in essence, "take the money and run", and exploits to that limit.
Seastead this.
Well, until the END! Then YOU die!
This reinforces that scale matters. On the local family / pack basis communism (ultra cooperation) is the best solution. As you move outward in social groups the best evolutionary strategy shifts to socialism and at the most extreme end of the social structure capitalism becomes the best strategy. Neither liberals or conservatives will find this politically correct to their liking but it is real.
He would be an example of the more devious personality that the researchers seem to be fingering as the optimal strategy. After Jobs personally brought Sculley to Apple from his previous jobs at PepsiCo, Sculley sucked up to Steve Jobs at every opportunity, but eventually he stabbed him in the back. Nice. And it worked, the board took his side in the fight but Sculley turned out to be completely incapable of running Apple... he kept the Mac prices high and invested the enormous profits into lots of speculative ventures staffed by Apple engineers (Newton was the best known example, then there was Pink/Taligent), almost all of which were money pit failures.
After Jobs was ousted in the late '80s, he never spoke to Sculley again (JS acknowledges).
I was expecting Matt Pat.. Instead I got a bunch of nobodies.
If no one pays taxes, I live in a lousy infrastructure.
If everyone pays taxes, I live in a nice infrastructure, but had to pay taxes.
If I admit not paying taxes, no one else wants to pay taxes either.
If I make everyone believe in paying taxes, while I secretly do not pay taxes, I benefit from the infrastructure for free.
Dang. Didn't realize this was a Ph.D thesis material!
Gently reply
The riot Index. Everything is in balance.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Basically cooperation is the best strategy as long as there is also a built in punishment system for the selfish. For instance if a disease wipes out too many hosts then it will fail to spread very quickly. If it wipes them all out then it won't spread anymore.
But evolution often will sacrifice to deal with the selfish. So our immune systems are sitting here primed and ready to have a go against all kinds of invaders; our immune systems are fantastically costly. But in a pristine system evolution might eliminate our immune system and then we would be wiped out by the first disease to come along.
The same with having the police. Police are expensive but we keep them around to deal with those who won't cooperate in ways that we find so egregious that we make laws.
But just as we have seen with our bankers there are those diseases that will subvert our punishment systems to not only ignore them but to actively abuse the us. AIDS would be an example of this (and yes I am saying bankers are as bad as AIDS).
So I would think that if you look carefully I think that what you will find is that what evolution will do is to evolve systems that punish the non-cooperative(bad diseases), reward the cooperative (things like digestive bacteria) and then continue living just fine.
Even within animals that group together there are often many systems for punishing animals that don't play by the rules.
But there is one huge problem with evolution from the standpoint of the individual. It might take a 95% die off for evolution to develop a way to fight off a disease, or the disease might end up being just deadly enough to continuously hurt individuals while not killing enough to drive evolution.
But this is where we might have just jumped some kind of hurdle. We demolished smallpox, we have polio on the ropes, malaria might have a bullet heading its way, and other diseases are lined up in the crosshairs. But taking out diseases to the point of extinction takes global cooperation. In Pakistan they recently killed 4 polio workers which will now probably dissuade polio workers from going back into that area and I suspect that if they were there then polio was there as well.
The key is that when gaming any relationship like evolution there are a huge number of rows and columns to work with. But quite simply we have way too many animals that cooperate in pretty magical ways for it not to be a key evolution friendly solution.
Just so you know, most of the people doing the work applying Game Theory to Sociology are just jacking off.
Seriously. These are the people who found Psychology too rigorous and got thrown out of the Economics departments for making shit up.
Here, check this shit out. Look especially at the last sentences:
In other words, "Cooperation works in social systems until I change the rules to get the outcome I want. Vote Rand Paul 2016."
Seriously, Dr Plotkin, do U even Science, bro?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful."
Only if there is an unlimited number of new prisoners to dupe, and there is no communication between the two groups. Besides which, all Prisoner's Dilemma demonstrates is that in a distorted environment such as a prision, it pays to assume the other prisoners are potentially hostile. In Prisoner's Dilemma the prisoner isn't playing the other prisoner, he's playing the prison guards. If there 'researchers' actually had any experience of a real life working environment, they might have realized this.
...is to "cooperate".
Now, I'm going to play some Plague Inc. Evolved and free-ride my way to the end of humanity by letting random mutations creep in without me spending any DNA points, because if you look at the edge of the universe, there is actually a free lunch.
It’s a somewhat depressing evolutionary outcome, but it makes intuitive sense
"Intuitive sense" sounds awfully wishy-washy considering they just pulled the models out of their asses.
Title should read "Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Can Favor Cooperation's Collapse".
Interesting idea, but logic dictates that if you try and make the game more favourable for cooperative styles of play, Game theory is utterly destroyed.
To propose a paper where you only test 1 change is cause for concern, in the long run. Game theory is flawed at the onset - only Psychopaths and Accountants answer the question the way the original author intended.
Thus I propose this: studies which are front page on /. which promote selfishism and neglect to tweak the experiment in the opposite direction should be prefixed with "Claim: ".
Thoughts?
Thus the top 5% have 95% of the wealth.
The entire article could be summed up as "How our confirmation bias made us change the rules until the results confirmed our bias."
In a second analysis, they allowed the payoffs to vary outside the order set by the Prisoner's Dilemma. Instead of unilateral defection winning the greatest reward, for example, it could be that mutual cooperation reaped the greatest payoff, the situation described by a game known as Stag Hunt. Or, mutual defection could generate the lowest possible reward, as described by the game theory model known as the Snowdrift or Hawk-Dove game.
What they found was that, again, there was an initial collapse in cooperative strategies. But, as the population continued to play and evolve, players also altered the payoffs so that they were playing a different game, either Snowdrift or Stag Hunt.
"So we see complicated dynamics when we allow the full range of payoffs to evolve," Plotkin said. "One of the interesting results is that the Prisoner's Dilemma game itself is unstable and is replaced by other games. It is as if evolution would like to avoid the dilemma altogether."
"See? When I change the rules of poker to be like blackjack, the game evolves into a game of blackjack on its own! Fascinating! It is as if evolution would like to avoid the poker altogether."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
rather the gaps in knowledge that occur in complex systems means the co-operation is stable and effective in those areas where information is richest and processed most effectively and rationally. in other features of this knowledge landscape the bare features of game theory aren't even possible let alone the tenets to be applied to measurement of strategies.
As civilised and open knowledge structures grow, and they decentralise to become an infrastructure it becomes much more difficult for non-cooperative strategies to persist, let alone grow.
"I pay for electricity" -- if you live in a rural part of the US, you are able to buy electricity because the government coerced money from consumers and Forced At The Point Of A Gun electric companies to run universal service.
"The police don't protect me, they merely sort out the mess after it happened" -- and the notion that police can identify and apprehend the perpetrator has no deterrent effect whatsoever, eh?
"firemen mostly clean-up the mess" -- you have got to be trolling here.
"I don't have kids, so I shouldn't pay for schools" -- I suppose that's true, if you want to live in a society that's mostly illiterate and ignorant.
"I don't go to libraries" -- I see nothing in your post to make me disbelieve you.
I feel like the old rejoinder "if you don't like government, move to Somalia" is just trite, but holy fuck, you sound like you think Somalia is an ideological paradise. Or Afghanistan. At least there, they've got Top People working to make sure that half the population doesn't get schooling...
Of course non-cooperation is going to get you ahead. I can choose not to help other people and I'm therefore more likely to get ahead of them but is it ethical?
Terrorists and Psychopaths do this all of the time. However, isn't it way better to live in a cooperative environment? Would you rather choose that? Aren't there more measures of what's good rather than did I just win the game? If I get ahead but have feelings of guilt from not cooperating with others did I really win?
I don't need police if I can carry a weapon to defend myself. And yeah, the firemen argument was dishonest from my part. Where can I sign up to carry a gun, not pay the police, not pay for schools, not pay for libraries (I actually buy my books, don't rent them), but pay for firemen ?
Try Iraq, where we destroyed the dictator, his army and police.
You can set up your own gated home behind big walls.
But then the local tribal leader is going to come over with a dozen or a hundred of his followers who can outgun you, and do whatever they want with you.
Non-cooperation works in the short term, but it ends up laying waste to the entire system.
We're seeing right now what happens when psychopathology gains the upper hand in a social system. They live high and mighty for a time until their inability to cooperate for the greater good tanks everything and the empire falls apart. There's a long and colorful history of empires which have succumbed to this kind of 'game theory'.
Sounds to me like this study isn't taking the long view.
The whole idea behind this 'research' is fundamentally wrong. The main objective of most games is to win by killing your opponents. But in order to win in evolution, the main objective is to reproduce. And to be able reproduce and make sure your offspring does well, you'll have to make the circumstances for survival as good as possible. So teaming up makes way more sense.
I don't need police if I can carry a weapon to defend myself.
In your dreams. That gun may keep the occational mugger away. It won't stop a sniper, it won't stop a gang, mafia, or even other people who decides to set up a government complete with police and taxmen. Most land is claimed by the last kind - you could set up office on a boat in international waters, and hire some firemen only. Note that real-world pirates tend to have RPGs and machine guns, you got a plan for that?
Try patrolling a ghetto where you don't fit in. (wrong race or ethnicity.) At nights. Having only your gun to rely on. See if that actually works. Chances are you get in a firefight someday. Perhaps you win because you're so good. Then more people show up, having heard the noise. How much ammo can you carry? Can you handle how some of them go around the block to confront you from behind?
The denser the population the more laws, rules and regulations get passed and the worse they get enforced. There is a certain reality that we are all hurdling through space on a rock and we are all doomed as well as the entire human race. As population swells and personal morality drops people become frightened and unable to cope with life. Politicians tossing out reams of laws as pablum to the people in order to get or keep a voting base is simply a form of corruption in itself. People do need to have a spine. To be able to stand and take the arrows and slings of fate while being aware that you are in a losing battle is just part of life. These days we have so many cowards who hide with alcohol or drugs and make all kinds of false justifications for their cowardice that I do not know how we expect to survive as a nation.
Why do the chimps here think this research has any relevance to humans? Does man live in a state of nature?
real-world pirates tend to have RPGs and machine guns
to download copyrighted material?? sick bastards!
“It’s a somewhat depressing evolutionary outcome, but it makes intuitive sense.”
No, it doesn't. Explain how unicellular animals became multicellular without cooperation. Explain how humanity went from hunter-gatherer to landing a probe on a comet without cooperation. No doubt there are exploiters (we have all kinds of infections and parasites), but evolution has given us detectors (immune systems) to combat them.
If someone claims that selfishness is a virtue, demand that they provide actual evolutionary evidence from Mother Nature who has had billions of years of experimental history to investigate their claim. It's time that we collectively responded to Ayn Rand libertarians who would rather live in their imagined apocalyptic hellscape than reality. Demand that they face explain why Mother Nature permits only limited exploitation. Life is relentlessly harsh, sure, but nowhere do I see systems that have evolved in a zero-sum universe. It all seems ever-so-slightly positive-sum, which permits a variety of cooperative strategies to flourish.
How about greed in small businesses and Government?
It comes down to choice of the person/persons running the corporation. Should look into why more and more people will do the minimum at their job not to be fired instead of going the extra mile to exceed job expectations. Just because a few corporations are bad, don't make them all bad.
Why is it that the submitter assumes that self interest is for some reason "less rosy" or "grim"? Following ones self interest is only "bad" if one has been brainwashed into thinking so. Only an idiot thinks that a whole is something other than its parts.
... for something fictional which man made up.
Where resource are plenty cooperations is advantageous. If resource are scarce, sharper, bigger tees win.
Population statistics show that a culture where there is a somewhat inflexible elite class with a great deal more resources than the commoner class does not survive when the fitness landscape gets rugged and the carrying capacity of the environment gets tight. This type of culture has a population implosion and a pretty good possibility of extinction. (ref, the "HANDY" model).
I seems to me that a selfish model leads to just such a state and it will eventually collapse. The article does not deal with such issues as the environment or the establishment of elites.
You are literate therefore you almost certainly attended a school. In the first world that means you received some degree of your education at the expense of taxpayers (up to 100% if you attended a public school, less if you were homeschooled at your parent's expense and only used the curriculums and assembled body of knowledge created in support of the public school system), and owe society the same in return.
You may think you can defend yourself but realistically you aren't prepared to do so in the absence of the relative safety that civilization provides by means of a code of laws enforced by the police.
It's also unlikely that you have the capacity to feed or clothe, yourself or otherwise maintain your lifestyle without the transportation, sanitation, and communications infrastructure that was created and is often maintained by government and payed for by taxes (hell even the amish use public roads and get telephones set up at the edge of their property these days)
I'm pretty sure I heard about this. Someone did a lot of research and Monte Carlo simulations, over millions of generations. They found that a Tit For Tat strategy with periodic forgiveness was an optimal cooperation strategy.