Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Why isn't this headline, "Game Theory Called Into Question for Failing to Predict Observed Examples of Cooperation?"
Fitness of a species is not relevant. It's all about fitness of individual genes. Read The Selfish Gene.
On the contrary, for sexually reproducing species it doesn't matter how fit you and your genes are. Without a species, the genes are dead-enders.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They need a better model.
Yes, in order to get their result they put constraints on the payoffs - and they also implicitly assume that the players can't ever stop playing.
In real life, there's typically three choices: cooperate, betray, or end the relationship. Typically as people get to know each other they increase their level of cooperation up to a level that both are comfortable with. But then if there's a betrayal the other person will often permanently end the relationship - either by walking away or by hitting the other person over the head with a large rock and hiding their corpse in some bushes.
And often there's someone else waiting eagerly to cooperate with the person who got betrayed - who will help the person who got betrayed end the relationship with the betrayer - with a rock to the head if necessary.
There are probably some situations out there in nature where their model does apply. And where cooperation doesn't happen. But it would be silly to assume that their model applied to every situation in human relationships.
You fall into the common error of equating the selfish gene with selfish individualism. Life is more complicated than that. There are times when protecting your family or the wider community at the risk of your own life is absolutely what is best for the survival of your genes.
And for sure, 'dove' is a lousy strategy in iterated prisoners dilemma. Hit him if he hits me first works fairly well though.
Spite often benefits the group over time - the individual sacrifices a little bit to increase the group benefit (which should be returned to him in aggregate as a non-zero-sum game). It can also benefit the individual by trading one thing of value for another in order to alter an adversary's value equation (like the legendary nuns who cut off their noses to avoid being raped by the marauders). Sometimes the costs are quite high but it's always a lesser-value for greater-value trade (as far as the individual values those things).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well please find an economic system that deals with the issue of sacristy, and insures its contributers exceed its detractors. At the same time insuring personal liberity.
The Kula Ring in the Trobriand Islands, where the residents of different islands developed a tradition of exchange of 'gifts,' distinct from barter-like trade. There are a number of other 'gift economies' among isolated, pre-industrial cultures. Participation is managed by social expectation and taboo, so one can argue that these systems will necessarily break down once you have enough sociopaths. One can also argue that such communities are better at recognizing and isolating sociopaths so they can't propagate their genes/behavior.
Nor is 'free market' an especially good way to deal with scarcity. If it were, then you wouldn't need social support programs. Or maybe you're going to tell me that anyone receiving social security of SNAP is not truly participating in the economy...
I don't even know where you're going with 'personal liberty.' The economic system has so little to do with what you're allowed to say, which god you're allowed to worship, or how you spend your free time as to be completely orthogonal.
What game theory has to say about that is to point out that these systems only work so long as the number of participants is small enough. Once the number of participants gets too large, it is impossible to effectively punish the leachers, and the entire system falls apart.
I guess we need to add to GP's original question the criteria of "works on a large scale"
Shachar
This is a lie often peddled in states with this system.
There are several concrete counter-examples that prove it false, ranging from Nordic countries (which view consensus and cooperation as primary tools of both political and economic systems) as well as much bigger Japan which has more of a top down system but where bosses initially even committed honourable suicide when they had to let workers go because it was considered such a significant loss of face.
These systems exist on large scale. What they require however, is a culture that promotes selflessness rather than selfishness. In the Western countries, such culture exists in Japan and Nordics. And to a lesser extent in Germany and Scotland. All of these are functional states (with exception of Scotland) where people routinely vote for and say in polls that they are willing to pay more taxes so that those who are not viable humans can live a decent life.
So when I'm approached with offers to make more than $10k in a few weeks because I've empirically demonstrated programming skills worth that kind of pay, but I don't get the job because I don't have a degree that cost enough, it's because I'm stupid and lazy? See, the weird thing about that is, I would have thought that spending thousands of hours practicing a cognitively intensive discipline of my own volition, and becoming adept at it, meant exactly the opposite.
I honestly would never have guessed that the words "stupid and lazy" actually mean, "doesn't have parents who can afford to pay ridiculous sums for a scrap of paper, and didn't take on unnecessarily debt." And I'm descended directly from a long line of Lord Baltimores too, so it's not even a matter of pedigree. Maybe if I were smart I'd win the lottery, right?
Today's snobs are the most vacuously interesting.
There is some real life applications for this. Since I am a bleeding heart liberal I see the Republicans being reckless with government shutdowns and pushing the envelop on filibusters etc as this "I will first show you I am reckless then let us play chicken". (If you are a Republican you might strongly disagree with this example).
I also see this as the explanation for being reckless revenge and disproportional response. Typically in India riots would erupt on the rumor Some boys of set A teased some girls of set B. The sets could be caste, religion, language. In the over the top response for something minor the riot inciting group suffers as much damage as all others. It is totally irrational. But the purpose is to set the stage for others for all future interactions, "Malabar Muslims or Dharavi Tamils or Biharis are known to be violent. Be more careful around them".
Or like John McEnroe's tantrums in the tennis matches is to intimidate the line judges into giving him the benefit of doubt in the future calls.
So the theory is not without its merits. But, as usual, the title is more provocative than warranted.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact