Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Axelrod on cooperation

[truddick (truddick]

From: Dave and Diane <daveanddee [at] verizon.net>
Subject: [C-L]_ Re: rules and regs, cooperation and self-preservation
>> EVERYONE is going to act according to ego and self-interest-except in
>> cases of mental illness.

>According to a research paper by Robert Axelrod, this is not true.
Depends on how Axelrod is defining it.  Evolution by natural selection would
require that the individual who cooperates does so because it provides an
advantage to that individual.  Ego and self-interest do not prevent
cooperation when it's seen as beneficial to the individual on some level.
I don't want to go into the kind of detail this discussion deserves, because
after all this is not "evolution-l" discussion group, but:
>"... Since it is the selfish behavior of the organism that ensures its
self-preservation, there is no reason for cooperation to take place..."
That's precisely where Axelrod fails to understand that cooperation yields a
personal advantage.  The lioness who hunts alone has less food then those
that hunt cooperatively; the fish that doesn't want to swim in the school is
more likely to become prey.
The degree of cooperation in a species depends on the adaptations that
enable it to thrive in its environment.  If there was never a
survival-and-reproduction advantage to being part of a cooperative group, no
animals would be doing it.
>This questionthe problem of cooperationhas been investigated in the
>work of Robert Axelrod (1984). In his work, Axelrod uses a model known
>as the prisoners dilemma game to studying cooperation.
Right-published about 18 months before I was the "prisoner's dilemma"
champion of my doctoral course in conflict theory.
>...It is known by both players that
>acting selfishlydefectingyields a higher payoff than cooperating no
>matter what the other player does,...
BUZZ!  Wrong.  In PD, if one player defects and the other cooperates, the
defector gets a high payoff.  But if both defect, BOTH lose-and lose big.
The "win-win" or integrative outcome is produced by cooperation; defecting
creates either a win-lose or, more often, a lose-lose outcome.  (Plus some
hard feelings.)
The PD game has been analyzed by computer programs which evolved several
strategies for play through thousands of generations.   (see Journal of
Conflict Resolution from the early 1980s)   They've found that the strategy
that is most likely to succeed in any environment is a limited "tit for
tat", in which the successful strategy cooperates almost all the time, but
rarely (optimally 20% of the time) will defect in order to pay back the
other player for defecting.  NOT the one where the player defects all of the
time.  That suggests that the motive for cooperating is at least in part
personal success; it's not hard to figure out that by defecting, you're
hurting yourself.
This model would suggest that, if cohousers break the rules, they should be
sanctioned about 1 time for every 5 transgressions.  The rest of the time
the community would be better off just to let it go.
But I, like other scholars, consider these theories-based as they are on
nonzero sum, forced-choice matrix games-to be imperfect representations of
real life in all its variable-sum, continuum-of-choice, multidimensional
complexity.


___
  !    _    Thomas E. "TR" Ruddick
  !   !_)   Nunquam Vadis Levis!
      !  \