Game theorists offer a surprising insight into the evolution of fair play
findarticles.com
findarticles.com
Each player of the pair begins with a set amount of money, say $5. Each puts any part or all of that $5 into a mutual pot, without knowing how much the other player is investing. Then a dollar is added to the pot, and the sum is split evenly between the two. So if both put in $5, they each wind up with $5.50 ($5 $5 $1, divided by 2). But suppose the first player puts in $5 and the second holds back, putting in only $4? The first player gets $5 at the end ($5 $4 $1, divided by 2), while the cheater gets $6 ($5 $4 $1, divided by 2--plus that $1 that was held back).
It seems to me that there isn't actually anything to be gained from cooperation. If both players "cheat" completely (put $0 into the pool), they still get $5.50. In that sense, the Nash equilibrium (both are cheating) is also socially optimal. Kind of untypical for something where you want to demonstrate the advantages of cooperation.
You can fine the cheater by taking away some money, as long as you're willing to give up the same amount yourself. In other words, you can punish a cheater if you're willing to pay for the opportunity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task#Policing_s...
This experimental evidence supports the hypothesis that a Wason task proves to be easier if the rule to be tested is one of social exchange (in order to receive benefit X you need to fulfill condition Y) and the subject is asked to police the rule, but is more difficult otherwise. Such a distinction, if empirically borne out, would support the contention of evolutionary psychologists that certain features of human psychology may be mechanisms that have evolved, through natural selection, to solve specific problems of social interaction, rather than expressions of general intelligence. In this case, the module is described as a specialized cheater-detection module.
... groups with four members played the following public goods game. Each member received an endowment of 20 money units (MUs) and each one could contribute between 0 and 20 MUs to a group project. Subjects could keep the money that they did not contribute to the project. For every MU invested in the project, each of the four group members, that is, also those who invested little or nothing, earned 0.4 MUs. Thus, the investor's return from investing one additional MU in the project was 0.4 MUs, whereas the group return was 1.6 MUs.
Your return on an investment of 1U is 0.4U, so it's always best for you personally to keep a unit. But the group return is 1.6U so the group as a whole is enriched for every unit invested.
Think about how weird this is. If people were willing to be spontaneously cooperative even if it meant a cost to themselves, this would catapult us into a system of stable cooperation in which everyone profits. Think peace, harmony, Lennon's "Imagine" playing as the credits roll. But people aren't willing to do this. Establish instead a setting in which people can incur costs to themselves by punishing cheaters, in which the punishing doesn't bring them any direct benefit or lead to any direct civic good--and they jump at the chance. And then, indirectly, an atmosphere of stable cooperation just happens to emerge from a rather negative emotion: desire for revenge. And this finding is particularly interesting, given how many of our societal unpleasantries--perpetrated by the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the crowded freeway, the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame computer virus--are one-shot, perfect-stranger interactions.
One punishes a cheater that one will never encounter again partly on the presumption that other people also do this to cheaters they encounter. Thus one engages in a behavior that, if performed universally, will reduce the likelihood that one will encounter a cheater.
This is almost exactly the same as iterated games where you play the same person over and over and thus confront the other player's action as an instance of a type of decision (a strategy). The fact that it isn't the same person doesn't mean you won't think in terms of types.
Yeah, you can try to free ride and just hope that other people punish cheaters for you and that you'll benefit without ever having to do it yourself (since punishing incurs a cost). But if the choice is between no one punishing cheaters and everyone punishing cheaters, then you choose the latter. If you're thinking in terms of types, those are the two choices. Even if it doesn't totally make sense in a particular context to do this, people habitually think this way.
Human beings think in terms of types and systems of actions, and choose actions at least partly based on what types and systems of actions they are endorsing. These game scenarios rely on that in the same that iterated games do. It's tit-for-tat all over again, just one level more abstract.
In Zahavi's view, altruism is a form of signalling: the altruist is doing so well, they can afford to lose a good deal of material benefits. The altruist then benefits from the high regard of the peers who witnessed the facts (e.g. potential partners of the opposite sex).
From this perspective, the crucial step in the experiments presented is not the punishment, but the subsequent public exposure of the in-game behavior.
A website lists the wrong doers to humiliate them. Each crime gets its own list. Pay 5$ for "the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the crowded freeway" or 1000$ for "the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame computer virus" or 100,000$ for "the child molestor".
I hope this would not work out, but i fear it would.
Though I am sure that there is an unintended consequence somewhere in the idea. Sometime all we can do is watch the system in action, and try to fix it...if it let us.
For example, the US government is in a slow motion train accident that's taking a long time to happen. It's very hard to stop the train in time and fix the stuff that's broken.
I don't think this works. Although co-operating works great for the majority, that just means it allows a few to 'cheat' and get the biggest payoffs.
http://www.amazon.com/Supercooperators-Mathematics-Evolution...