11–20 of 117 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I despise these contrived experiments and think they should be ridiculed. Cooperation evolved in humans because: a. Our young are helpless, and take over a decade to reach sexual maturity. Those who cooperate to raise the young have more descendants. b. Cooperation is a sexual fitness signal because of point a The end. Edit: fix a word, thanks.
More descendants, too. :-)
I don't want to be gratuitously negative here. So let's start with the fact that it's great to have a model of cooperation as something out there to be improved upon, or refuted, or defaulted to in the absence of obviously better models. However, if the idea is that a model is good at "explaining" cooperation by setting up a hypothetical where people choose it a lot, then I guess the "best" model would make people ch…
I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that SD is closer to the average case for cooperation than the PD, so it might be a better tool, in general, for talking about and reasoning about cooperation. (Both PD and SD have the nice property that they are simple and straightforward, and both have the problem that they are only approximations.)
I don't want to be gratuitously negative here. So let's start with the fact that it's great to have a model of cooperation as something out there to be improved upon, or refuted, or defaulted to in the absence of obviously better models. However, if the idea is that a model is good at "explaining" cooperation by setting up a hypothetical where people choose it a lot, then I guess the "best" model would make people ch…
I despise these contrived experiments and think they should be ridiculed. Cooperation evolved in humans because: a. Our young are helpless, and take over a decade to reach sexual maturity. Those who cooperate to raise the young have more descendants. b. Cooperation is a sexual fitness signal because of point a The end. Edit: fix a word, thanks.
These experiments are nonsense. Firstly, from the article: “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants. Secondly, in these simulated games it seems likely to me the participants would be, at least to some extent, randomly selecting cooperate / defect because a potential mo…
I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Something like taking resources from your offspring to give to someone else would be more in line with the definition of selfless (e.g. taking food from your own malnourished child to give to another child).
The benefits of cooperation can't be modeled so simplistically, since the concepts of both long-term reputation and long-term retribution need to be taken into account.
The iterated game (which they studied here) accounts for retribution, but not reputation.
The iterated game proves the participants are randomly selecting an option, because they know it's a game.
Otherwise we need to create a model that explains why participants aren't consistent.
The benefits of cooperation can't be modeled so simplistically, since the concepts of both long-term reputation and long-term retribution need to be taken into account.
These experiments are nonsense. Firstly, from the article: “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants. Secondly, in these simulated games it seems likely to me the participants would be, at least to some extent, randomly selecting cooperate / defect because a potential mo…
>> “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. I'm fairly certain that cooperating to raise your own offspring is still considered selfish behavior. Something like taking resources from your offspring to give to someone else would be more in line with the definition of selfless (e.g. taking food from your own malnourished child to give to another child).
Why? Because it leads to more descendants? In that case, the premise is a tautology.
These experiments are nonsense. Firstly, from the article: “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants. Secondly, in these simulated games it seems likely to me the participants would be, at least to some extent, randomly selecting cooperate / defect because a potential mo…
These experiments are nonsense. Firstly, from the article: “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants. Secondly, in these simulated games it seems likely to me the participants would be, at least to some extent, randomly selecting cooperate / defect because a potential mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I despise these contrived experiments and think they should be ridiculed. Cooperation evolved in humans because: a. Our young are helpless, and take over a decade to reach sexual maturity. Those who cooperate to raise the young have more descendants. b. Cooperation is a sexual fitness signal because of point a The end. Edit: fix a word, thanks.
These experiments are about trying to explain what you mean by "cooperate". Your points feel right, but even if they're true they aren't very helpful in actually explaining behavior. For example, your explanation seems to directly apply to adoption, but most people don't choose to adopt despite the enormous number of orphans in the world. Why not?
It's not clear to me what you mean by this.
In the example of the experiment in the example cooperate means the snow is cleared faster.
In my example cooperate means raise the young together.
> but most people don't choose to adopt
Because our biology drives us to want to have our own offspring. It seems obvious that if our biology drove us to want to raise other people's offspring we wouldn't be having this conversation. Although this has been an extraordinarily successful strategy for dogs and cats.