Comments on: Evolution Favors Cooperation Over Competition

By: Balance the past with Zeitgeist « The Emergent Fool

Balance the past with Zeitgeist « The Emergent Fool — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:19:52 +0000

[...] Rafe was here more than 2 years ago: “- Cooperators and defectors co-exist – “Cooperators survive in clusters” – “Cooperators can invade defectors when starting from a small cluster” – One interesting dynamic occurs when two self-sustaining “walker” sub-populations collide into a “big bang” of cooperation which largely takes over the population.”" [...]

By: Bob Sumpter

Bob Sumpter — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:49:02 +0000

If I remember correctly Dawkin’s did not provide the title for this book the publisher did. I read somewhere where I noted that the book could have been equally titles. The Cooperative Gene

By: Game Theory and Military Planning « The Emergent Fool

Game Theory and Military Planning « The Emergent Fool — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:12:56 +0000

[...] his seminal work, “The Evolution of Cooperation,” Robert Axelrod explores how cooperation surprisingly trumps competition in a similarly styled prisoner’s dilemma game. Based on an iterated prisoner’s dilemma [...]

By: Alex Golubev

Alex Golubev — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:06:39 +0000

funny that he mentions religion, because as someone pointed out to me, religion itself is an evolutionary development that is mroe advanced that a single human. it is an entity that promotes self growth and (ususally) encourages competition with other religious groups. It sounds contradictory in the framework of religion itself (love thy neighbor always or only if they share my religion?), but makes perfect sense as an evolutionary mechanism. It’s interesting to see the different structures of religion that weight self-replications (mormons), or competitiveness (____ i’m not naming names) more than other groups.

By: Rafe Furst

Rafe Furst — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:09:38 +0000

@Eric, nice essay, and thanks for clarifying Dawkins' position. I guess I fell prey to the same commentary around it, much like those who mistake Darwin's theory for being something other than it is. In retrospect, Dawkin's should have called it the Cooperative Gene, just to avoid the same pitfall! I will be careful in the future to be clear about Dawkin's own view vs. that of the "selfish gene" meme he started (oh the irony!) One thing I didn't point out in this post, but have in others is the importance of cooperation in emergence and thus in the creation of complexity and new levels of organization. Here's the relation between evolution and emergence.

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:56:33 +0000

Actually, The Selfish Gene doesn’t advocate selfishness in nature. Dawkins uses the title as a metaphor for the gene’s-eye view of the world. From a gene’s point of view (not that a gene has a point of view, mind you) only those copies that are successful – or, at least, are not harmful – will survive into subsequent generations. They could be genes that promote competition (for example, by increasing the release of adrenalin resulting in a greater “fight or flight” response) or they could be genes that promote cooperation (perhaps by inhibiting adrenaline, or by increasing the release of oxytocin during periods of stress). As Dawkins put it himself in his more recent book, The Ancestor’s Tale, “The Selfish Gene could equally have been called The Cooperative Gene without a word of the book itself needing to be changed. . . Selfishness and cooperation are two sides of a Darwinian coin.”

However, you’re quite right about cooperation being an important force in evolutionary history. I have written on this topic in great detail. If you’re interested please see my post The Sacrifice of Admetus at the following link:

http://primatediaries.blogspot.com/2008/06/sacrifice-of-admetus.html

By: The Conflict Between Complex Systems and Reductionism « Complex Adaptive Systems

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:03:31 +0000

[...] interactions also provide an opportunity for evolution of cooperation between levels so that game theory can be applied to assess and achieve medical benefits. For [...]