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Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Quanta Magazine:
The physicist Freeman Dyson and the computer scientist William Press, both highly accomplished in their fields, have found a new solution to a famous, decades-old game theory scenario called the prisoner's dilemma, in which players must decide whether to cheat or cooperate with a partner. The prisoner's dilemma has long been used to help explain how cooperation might endure in nature. After all, natural selection is ruled by the survival of the fittest, so one might expect that selfish strategies benefiting the individual would be most likely to persist. But careful study of the prisoner's dilemma revealed that organisms could act entirely in their own self-interest and still create a cooperative community.
Press and Dyson's new solution to the problem, however, threw that rosy perspective into question (abstract). It suggested the best strategies were selfish ones that led to extortion, not cooperation.
[Theoretical biologist Joshua] Plotkin found the duo's math remarkable in its elegance. But the outcome troubled him. Nature includes numerous examples of cooperative behavior. For example, vampire bats donate some of their blood meal to community members that fail to find prey. Some species of birds and social insects routinely help raise another's brood. Even bacteria can cooperate, sticking to each other so that some may survive poison. If extortion reigns, what drives these and other acts of selflessness?"
Press and Dyson's new solution to the problem, however, threw that rosy perspective into question (abstract). It suggested the best strategies were selfish ones that led to extortion, not cooperation.
[Theoretical biologist Joshua] Plotkin found the duo's math remarkable in its elegance. But the outcome troubled him. Nature includes numerous examples of cooperative behavior. For example, vampire bats donate some of their blood meal to community members that fail to find prey. Some species of birds and social insects routinely help raise another's brood. Even bacteria can cooperate, sticking to each other so that some may survive poison. If extortion reigns, what drives these and other acts of selflessness?"
Real Life isn't Spherical Cows. They need a better model.
Sometimes the 'fittest' thing to do is to help your community because having a strong community helps you more than going it alone.
Why isn't this headline, "Game Theory Called Into Question for Failing to Predict Observed Examples of Cooperation?"
Unfortunately this test is all too often ignored.
.: Semper Absurda
[Theoretical biologist Joshua] Plotkin found the duo's math remarkable in its elegance. But the outcome troubled him. Nature includes numerous examples of cooperative behavior. For example, vampire bats donate some of their blood meal to community members that fail to find prey. Some species of birds and social insects routinely help raise another's brood. Even bacteria can cooperate, sticking to each other so that some may survive poison. If extortion reigns, what drives these and other acts of selflessness?"
I'm not sure Joshua Plotkin read the paper. It does not claim (as I understand it) to represent every scenario, merely a special case of a specific scenario. Explicitly, it requires the organism to have enough intelligence to remember what happened in previous games, so a bacteria without memory is not covered under this model. The strategy requires multiple rounds be played.
Also worth mentioning that 'good for the individual' is not the same as 'good for the species,' and nature selects the latter
I know almost nothing about vampire bats (except don't get bit, you'll need rabies shots!), but if someone understands how it relates to the prisoners' dilemma, I'd be interested in hearing it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In other news, some people believe economic theory.
It's that simple. They have a neat mathematical model which is interesting, but if it doesn't make accurate predictions when applied to a more realistic scenario then it's missing something.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
except it's the selfish assholes who equip themselves to guard what they have against anybody else getting it. The selfish assholes survive because they have the keys to the grain silo, everybody else (read: who hasn't got a copy of the key) can go die in a field. Selfish asshole (=selfish gene) survives, the meek inherit the Earth. From six feet beneath it.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The phrase that makes me roll my eyes is "survival of the fittest." That's not what natural selection is. It's a gradual increase in variation with the death of the unfit. An organism doesn't have to be "the fittest," it just has to find an unoccupied niche. Thus the various "strategies" different organisms will take for survival -- be it cooperation, selfishness, or some combination of the two -- will vary depending on the organism.
Ants are pretty cooperative. Big cats are pretty selfish and territorial. But wild/feral horses are an interesting combination of the two. They have herds of mares with a few stallions. The stallions attack any other stallion that comes near and once a young stallion grows to a certain age they banish it from the herd. The stallions act pretty selfishly while the mares act rather cooperatively (however, they have a hierarchy so there's some selfishness involved, too).
I think the problem is trying to theorize a formula for understanding the behavior of organisms, or a most successful behavior, in general. There's just way too much diversity in nature for something like game theory to cover all its ground. Perhaps it works when you pigeon-hole it into capitalist economics, but I don't think it's a very comprehensive theory for explaining how animals do or ought to act.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."