March 15, 2005
Fairness and punishment
A neat article from NewScientist on human cooperation. We cooperate with those who are not genetically similar to us and that makes us unique in the world. Old theories suggested that we cooperate because it makes things better for both parties even when they are enemies, like the prisoner's dilemma. But they also talk about how people only want to cooperate when things are deemed "fair."
I was a grade school Phys. Ed. teacher for a summer and, let me tell you, children spend pretty much their entire time playing games, trying to cheat, and then complaining when other people cheat because things are not fair.
They also discuss how (adult) humans will often act against their self interest in order to cooperate with others, which trashes just about every working theory of capitalist economics...
Part of the article is quite sad, and has unfortunate implications for Bonobos:
"So if many people really are true altruists, as it seems, why haven't greedier, self-seeking competitors wiped them out? One possibility...is that evolution actually is wiping these people out - it just hasn't finished the job yet...humans evolved to cooperate when our ancestors lived in small, isolated groups of hunter-gatherers. In this setting, they learned through repeated interaction with others that cooperation generally pays because it induces other members of the group to return a favour in the future...true altruism is what evolutionary biologists call a "maladaptation". Evolved to respond in a certain way to a given situation, we find it hard to act differently in the changed circumstances of the modern world."
I would like to say "dont worry, it has a happy ending in which cooperation was shown to be advantagous to large groups" but that's only when those who do not cooperate are punished, and those who do not punish are also punished. It's always seemed to me that punishment is so primitive, and I guess there are reasons for it to be.
Posted by bluprnt at March 15, 2005 02:53 PM