I’m thinking about emergent properties of co-operation and how they evolve. How does an organism develop the inherited behaviours that support complex co-operation, for example ant nests and bee hives, or even social animals like lions or wolf packs.
Evolution does not search for the “ideal” path to it does that valley thing, path of least resistance between any 2 points. Any evolutionary step has to be at least as advantageous to the organism than the previous. Otherwise the modification wouldn’t proliferate. So evolution does not favour the pure prisoners game (theory) dilemma. It cannot recreate that kind of co-operation in a short evolutionary time scale, it must develop towards that. Any co-operation result in a game must be greater for the individual than to not co-operate. So any evolutionary path that has achieved co-operation at the detriment of the individual must have got there by pure chance.
Interesting thought… must think about it more.
October 15th, 2002 at 10:18 pm
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140287752/qid=1034716416/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/026-3807654-2281217
the reviews are a bit patchy, but you get the drift.