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Ron Bailey reports on a new study that reveals the reasons why people cooperate -- and why they don't.
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|6.23.06 @ 8:35AM|#
Intriguing stuff, but I would be interested to know if the experiments controlled for the source of the 'allotment'.
Being generous with other people's resources--or perceiving all resources as belonging to the cooperative--may not be the same as being generous with something you beleive as being your own...
I wonder if there is any difference in cultures with strong individual property rights vs. those where resources are presumed to belong to all...in the latter case it might be reasonable to expect that 'stingy' allocations by adminstrators of resources--not property owners--would be viewed unfavorably and punished (via political proxy when direct economic control is unavailable).
|6.23.06 @ 9:04AM|#
Douglas Hofstadter has written quite a bit about this sort of thing. There are other interesting phenomena that occur only once the games become iterative.
In an iterative game, it becomes clear that altruism isn't the governing characteristic of cooperation - self interest is. There was a programming competition in which the goal was to 'win' the most money in an iterative Prisoner Dilemma type game. Your algorythm could be altruistic and never defect, it could be aggressive and seek to defect first, and so forth. Almost no programs, even those that developed 'long memories' of the tendencies of different opponents, could beat the very simple Tit for Tat model. In Tit for Tat, the program always cooperates with an opponent until that opponent defects, at which time Tit for Tat defects exactly once in retaliation for each instance. It is extremely successful, especially against learning programs. It was more successful even than Massive Retaliation, a strategy of defecting 10 times for each instance an opponent does.
All of this is from memory, so I might have some of the details wrong. I believe the cooperation games were in "Metamagical Themas", his collection of Scientific American articles. It is worth a read.
bonk|6.23.06 @ 9:19AM|#
im sorry but this was the most idiotic and superficial articles i have ever read on this website.
|6.23.06 @ 9:27AM|#
Cool stuff, Ron.
I wonder if the evolutionary explanation for the high degree of cooperation among human beings may have something to do with tool-making: The guy who makes the best hunting tool is not necessarily the most talented user and vice-versa. Perhaps cooperation within family groups (which evolution tends to favor even without tool-making) enabled intra-family to trade tools for food. Once that practice was established, it would set the stage for trading with other families, and those who had enough capacity for trust and cooperation would have a better chance of benefiting from trade and raising more successful offspring.
|6.23.06 @ 9:29AM|#
Bailey, you stooge! You should know it's not properly called altruism is it's reciprocal; altruism is pure sacrifice, it is properly called trading or, as you say, cooperation if you expect something better in return.
Altruism! you should know better.
SPD|6.23.06 @ 9:31AM|#
I don't know if I'd agree with that, bonk; Ron Bailey's articles include some of my favorites on Reason. I wonder what would Ayn Rand would have said about these experiments?
|6.23.06 @ 9:32AM|#
JL: Why I find this set of games interesting is precisely because they are not tit for tat. Perhaps what they are revealing is the result of how tit for tat games are played out in each society--that is, those societies in which cheaters are most certainly punished (defections are paid back immediately with punishments) are those that turn out to have a stronger ethic of cooperation.
Bonk: Sorry you didn't the article.
|6.23.06 @ 9:35AM|#
Whoops, Randian pre-answered my question.
|6.23.06 @ 9:37AM|#
Ron,
I thoroghly enjoyed the article. Did the studies show any regional tendencies. For example, were those that were least cooperative from cultures with tighter familial bonds. Where clans and villiages were primarily family members, with the exception of matrimonial exchanges? It would be interesting to compare different cultures in these sorts of games and see how the results flesh out.
|6.23.06 @ 9:43AM|#
Are the tribes with the different views of altruism/punishment close neighbors of each other? Do they interact in the real world?
Interesting article!
Jeff P|6.23.06 @ 9:45AM|#
There is a difference between altruism (doing a good deed or deeds, even life-changing ones) and altruism (the philosophical demand that morality stems only from putting the needs of others or society or the church etc). Even the "pay it forward" trend doesn't clash with any tennant of Objectivism (and by that I mean the philosophical works, NOT the novels), as opposed to Dr. Laura-esque insistance that all of us have a moral obligation to be miserable for the sake of others' happiness.
Jesse Walker|6.23.06 @ 9:56AM|#
Jason: The classic book on the tit-for-tat Prisoner's Dilemma game is The Evolution of Cooperation, by Robert Axelrod. Very readable, very interesting.
|6.23.06 @ 12:05PM|#
Capitalism explains advanced technology much better than evolution. Evolution gave people the mental tools (e.g. ability to communicate, cooperate, empathize, compete) that are prerequisites for building the world-spanning network of "cooperation", but evolution is too slow to explain such a rapid phenomenon.
Being paid and paying others is a very important part of the first world's luxury. Capitalism allows people with successful ways of doing things to do more (by accruing more money to start more projects) and people with ideas that sound great but fail in practice to have less influence (bankruptcy).
In some sense, capitalism is to invention, production and distribution what evolution is to genes. I'm not suggesting that investigations of cooperation like the one Ron cited are uninteresting or not worthwhile. I'm merely pointing out that the type of cooperation being studied is far removed from the "cooperation" involved in capitalism and it's capitalism that brought the things in Ron's introductory paragraph.
|6.23.06 @ 1:11PM|#
I would like to run experiments comparing the results with perishable vs. unperishable goods.
With perishable goods sharing is a good strategy. If you keep them, they rot and you have to throw them away, anyway. If you share a) you no longer have a waste disposal problem and b) you may get some reciprocity out of it.
With non-perishable goods there is no pressing need to share.
|6.23.06 @ 1:28PM|#
The moral of the story is that if you want to live in a world of caring generous cooperative people, make sure that you thoroughly thrash all the greedy, chiseling scoundrels you come across. It may cost you, but the world will be a better place.
I guess it depends on how you define greedy, chiseling scoundrels. The Soviet Union definition didn't exactly lead the world to a better place....
bonk|6.23.06 @ 1:57PM|#
the central paradigm here is wrong.
evolution doesnt work by pure competition as a rule, evolution works through what is most advantageous for survival. evolutionarily speaking, groups that cooperate are more successfull than the same group of individuals that struggle and compete.
furthermore, if we assume that transhumanism offers a teleological end to evolution (a grand assumption, i admit), then its clear that cooperation is necessary to evolve to the next level: the merging of (super)human consciousness with the machine. of course some degree of competition is necessary, but not to the degree that the opponent is crushed, but rather to the degree that competion produces a better end result for both parties. case in point: price and quality increases through increased competition. in the end, the human species benefits.
Larry A|6.23.06 @ 2:20PM|#
One possible explanation for the large size of human brains is that we need them in order to keep tabs on the cooperators and cheaters amongst us. That works very well for relatively small communities where everyone's reputation precedes them. Yet we live in a world filled with cooperating strangers. How can that be?
The thousands of folks who provide my electricity don't do so because they are caring, generous, and cooperative. Or because they think I'm a nice guy or that I "deserve" electricity. They do so because I pay my bill on time, and therefore their wages get paid.
We can set up a world of cooperating strangers because we have rules and devices (computers) which can "keep tabs on the cooperators and cheaters amongst us."
The "altruists" among us go into government service and generally screw this process up.
|6.23.06 @ 2:20PM|#
Jesse:
Thanks. Primary sources are better. The name sounds familiar, so I am certain that Hofstadter was summarizing Axelrod.
I am intrigued by the notion of somehow merging the two approaches. The single instance games Ron writes about seem to be tests of societal predispositions regarding an aggregation of the concepts of fairness (given an unearned boon of cash, what is a 'fair' allocation), punishment, and cooperation. The iterative games provide a context of predictable consequences for players to consider, and I suspect these factors dominate whatever societal predispositions one may have over time.
I'm curious how much the societal views hold up in games that repeat.
|6.23.06 @ 2:30PM|#
Another way of thinking about it is the whole notion of altruism vs. rational self interest as motivators for cooperation.
|6.23.06 @ 3:19PM|#
I think the ultimate winning strategy was Tit For Tat With Forgiveness. Which, if I can get religious, is the basic teaching of the bible.
Merging the two approaches is intriguing for the concept of a final iteration. If a society is predisposed to the idea of a "judgment day", there is a definite final iteration. If a society is predisposed to the concept of reincarnation or resurrection, there may never be a final iteration.
|6.23.06 @ 3:24PM|#
Good wiki on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
|6.23.06 @ 9:11PM|#
Capitalism explains advanced technology much better than evolution.
Comment by: anon2 at June 23, 2006 12:05 PM
no feces. maybe that's because evolutionary theory doesn't attempt to explain advanced technology.
|6.24.06 @ 8:28PM|#
One hypothesis about the development of altruism would be the weakened olphatory sense.
There is an instinct in all animals whose young is dependent of maternal care to feed those young when they present certain visual clues, but usually the parents can tell by smell whether it is their young or not.
With humans, their sense of smell is not so developed so when they are confronted by visual clues by a helpless young, they have an ingrained response, while the response "but it is not my kid" is a reasoned one. And since neural paths are shorter, thus faster,for instinctual behavior, the instinct comes on top.
And the evolutionary pressure is towards feeding the young regardless. A parent who, in the doubt will not feed the young, will have no descendents, while one, who in the doubt, feeds anyway, will.
Which means that the "feed anyway" genes are advantageous once you lose your sense of smell.