the evolution of cooperative behavior

[bcbm]

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/11/2012/the-evolution-of-cooperative-behaviour

[cyu]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all

7 experiments, using 2,068 participants—suggest that we are not intuitively selfish. But does this mean that we our naturally cooperative? we live in a world where it pays to play well with others: cooperating helps us make friends, gain social capital, and find success in a wide range of domains.

the relationship between processing speed and cooperation only existed for those having primarily cooperative interactions in life. This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—human “goodness” may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.

[bcbm]

But does this mean that we our naturally cooperative? we live in a world where it pays to play well with others

we've always lived in a world where it pays to play well with others so that is about as close to 'natural' as you can get. humans are a social, cooperative animal

[Rafiq]

Yes but slavery was very 'cooperative' too...

[bcbm]

and?

[Rafiq]

I just don't see how anyone has ever tried to argue that humans aren't cooperative. Even the Randscum agree with this.

[bcbm]

i don't think this article is about anyone suggesting they aren't cooperative, but explaining how that cooperative behavior evolved.

[Beeth]

We cooperate owing to self-interest. If we calculate the odds and realize that we may win without cooperation, we may as well abandon it and start competing. It all boils down to self-interest.

[cyu]

If cooperation is going to be a successful evolutionary strategy, of course it's going to have to protect the welfare of its carriers.

Some behaviors are going to have short term gains, followed by long term losses ...and vice versa.

If I kill this family now to prevent them from exposing my corruption, it may be a temporary benefit ...until their friends and relatives discover it and exact vengeance.

If I chase this groups of people off their orchards in order to establish settlements, it may be a temporary benefit ...until they start firing rockets into my cities.

If I prop up this nation's corrupt politicians in order to get more oil from them, it may be a temporary benefit ...until they fly my passenger planes into my skyscrapers.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

We cooperate owing to self-interest. If we calculate the odds and realize that we may win without cooperation, we may as well abandon it and start competing. It all boils down to self-interest.

Maybe you think like that, but I don't. I think social human behaviour is in our genes, we evolved to be social. I think social human behaviour is natural, and that egoistic human behaviour is also natural, but not at the scale seen today. I think egoistic behaviour today is encouraged by the capitalist system, and that is why there is so much of it.

[cyu]

Not much of an example, and actually thinking about it, it's pretty f**king sad examples like this aren't easier to find in NYC.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/nyregion/a-rare-choreography-for-riders-caught-between-an-f-and-an-m.html?_r=0

at Delancey Street, the F is downstairs, hopelessly out of view from the other train’s platform.

There are no station announcements to signal to riders which train will arrive first. so the travelers help one another, communicating the hints they have trained their senses to capture: the pitch of a screech when a train comes to a halt — unique depending on the line, some insist

“It’s kind of funny. You don’t really see people help other people in Manhattan very often.”

an orderly line formed, stretching from the upstairs M platform, down a flight of stairs to the F, then back up a separate staircase. (Riders say this formation allows word to travel fastest when the proper train arrives.)

soon the perfect rumble arrived. Eyes turned to the top of the staircase until the call rang out from on high — a subterranean Paul Revere summoning his charges. “Train!” the young man shouted, and down the line the word traveled.

the effect can be jarring, like watching a flash mob convene without any music. “This is probably an F,” she said as a train could be heard swooshing toward the station. She was right, and soon the masses converged.

Even those with a language barrier have taken to the routine. Saul Krus speaks little English, but can communicate to the people behind him that a signal has been given.

ofren the riders maintain a kinship

[cyu]

Interesting to see this in The Economist. Would be interesting to hear the backroom discussions that led to the publication of this story.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21570673-strange-example-co-operative-behaviour-arachnids-come-my-parlour

as they looked in more detail at their specimens, they realised it was actually two species. a female was as likely to look after and guard another’s brood as she was her own.

The species in question are similar, which would seem to rule out another common cause of collaboration: that different creatures bring different adaptations to the party, thus dividing the labour of staying alive into specialisms.

[cyu]

Evolution of cooperative behavior in pop culture?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziL905aXGnE

"Cooperative games were not that popular 10 years ago... I think there was one... 20 cooperative games came out in 2012."

[cyu]

http://www.sociology.org/books/the-case-against-competition

seven to eleven year old girls were asked to make “silly” collages, some competing for prizes and some not. Seven artists independently rated their works on each of 23 dimensions.

children who competed for prizes made collages that were significantly less creative than those made in the control group.

By the end of the book one is left with the conclusion that the worship of competition is at best a bunch of ideological hookum, and at worst the sign of a political and economic system built upon a psychological pathology.

Kohn suggests it is an issue of self-esteem. People are driven to compete simply because it is a way to feel good about themselves.

[Comrade #138672]

I just don't see how anyone has ever tried to argue that humans aren't cooperative. Even the Randscum agree with this.Still, quite some people (especially the Randians) celebrate the supposed inherent "selfishness" of humans and tend to downplay the necessity of cooperation.

'It's Nature. Capitalism is only Natural. There will always be an elite (ruling class), because people are inherently "selfish". Capitalism is just the best system for this. True, it may not be perfect, but it still beats the unnatural "altruistic" Socialism.'

The currently dominant "incentive" idea is rooted in this bourgeois fantasy of human "selfishness".

[cyu]

Sometimes I think that there are Randroids that are honestly grasping about for a decent ideology to hang on to - given that they've given up on religion and adopted atheism, what else is there for them to guide their behavior?

Some really do see the problems in the Soviet Union and China as conclusive "evidence" that communism / socialism can't work, so they're sort of left flailing about and randomly grabbed the first thing that floated by - which past plutocrats made readily available...

But there are factions within the modern pro-capitalist "libertarian" movement that are starting to adopt the concept of cooperation - perhaps partly because of the increasing amount of academic work regarding cooperation in recent years.

Some are still trying to somehow force the cooperative block into their existing pro-capitalist framework (personally I doubt they'll succeed at this, even if it's a nice attempt), while others are starting to talk less about Randroid self-centeredness and are coming up with worldviews mixing cooperation and the old "libertarian" sub-focus on civil rights. Personally I think the second group will eventually fork itself off from the pro-capitalists and become another wing of leftist thought =]

[cyu]

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2013/09/generosity-leads-to-evolutionary-success.html

The fact that there are extortion strategies immediately suggests that, at the other end of the scale, there might also be generous strategies. You might think being generous would be a stupid thing to do, and it is if there are only two players in the game, but, if there are many players and they all play generously, they all benefit from each other's generosity.

In generous strategies, players tend to cooperate with their opponents, but, if they don't, they suffer more than their opponents do over the long term. "Forgiveness" is also a feature of these strategies. A player who encounters a defector may punish the defector a bit but after a time may cooperate with the defector again.

Stewart and Plotkin crafted a mathematical proof showing that, not only can generous strategies succeed in the evolutionary version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, in fact these are the only approaches that resist defectors over the long term.

no selfish strategies will succeed in evolution. The only strategies that are evolutionarily robust are generous ones.

[cyu]

http://priceonomics.com/why-selfish-people-cooperate/

Stewart referred to the strategy that populations consistently took up as “generous tit for tat.” It was a strategy that chose an equitable split of the “points.” Generous tit for tat responds to people that refuse to cooperate by defecting in turn. But against cheating opponents, it periodically cooperates to offer the other player a chance to reciprocate. If tit for tat is a friend who reciprocates generosity, then generous tit for tat is a parent who is not naive, but still keeps offering you second chances.

Stewart and Plotkin’s analysis found that the larger the population they studied, the more successful the generous strategies were in the simulation. Only small populations were vulnerable to the extortionist zero determinant strategies. But rather than challenge game theory’s sunny findings about cooperation, zero determinant strategies have vindicated them. by showing the advantages of a more generous tit for tat strategy over regular tit for tat, it provides evidence for the benefits of generosity.

[cyu]

http://www.companionanimalpsychology.com/2013/11/can-dogs-cooperate-with-each-other-and.html

once they had learned the puzzle on their own, dogs were able to learn how to solve the task when it required them to cooperate with a partner. This was the case whether the partner was canine or human. They could even solve the problem when their partner was delayed, and it required them to wait before taking action.

“In the case of cooperative problem-solving, it is not yet clear whether the dogs’ ability to solve such tasks arises from group hunting shown in other social carnivores and, in particular, in wolves, or from abilities evolved during domestication.”

[cyu]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jeab.64/abstract

behavior is now moving to the center of evolution studies. Learning is one of the main ladders of evolution by establishing functional benchmarks within which genetic adaptations can be advantaged. cooperation came before major advances in human cognition or culture, existing abilities in social referencing, joint attention, perspective-taking skills, and relational learning ensure that the behavioral subcomponents of symmetrical equivalence relations would be reinforced.

[cyu]

http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/helpful-dolphins-120502.htm

Certain bottlenose dolphins in Brazil have apparently taught themselves to work as a team with artisanal fishermen

the most helpful ones also turn out to be particularly cooperative and social with each other

Through synchronized behavior with humans, cooperative dolphins drive mullet schools towards a line of fishermen and 'signal,' via stereotyped head slaps or tail slaps, when and where fishermen should throw their nets. Fish that escape the nets often swim right into the mouths of the dolphins

"Cooperative" dolphins turned out to spend more time together, even when not assisting humans. They appeared to have their own social network within the larger local population of bottlenose dolphins.

The human side of this dolphin-fishermen interaction is maintained through inter-generational information transfer, that is, teaching by elders, and it is likely that a similar process is used to transmit complex behavioral traits between generations of dolphins

Cooperation alone is not necessarily very brainy, since some of the world's "least cognitively complex" organisms, such as bacteria, are very cooperative. "Selection for cooperation," McNally said, "drives the evolution of intelligence."

[cyu]

http://www.theemotionmachine.com/imagining-positive-conversations-can-improve-cooperation

the group of individuals who were told to “Imagine you and your group members reaching a consensus that the best solution to the problem would be to all donate to the central fund” decided to donate a lot more of their money.

We each value “individual needs” vs. “social needs” differently. we can breakdown these into 4 main groups:

•Cooperators – people who prefer to maximize joint welfare

•Altruists – people who strive to maximize the others outcomes

•Individualists – people who aim to maximize their individual outcome

•Competitors – people who strive to maximize the difference between their own and others outcomes

imagined group discussions positively influenced people to be more cooperative despite their prior individual motives.

When individuals imagine positive conversations and positive outcomes in their relationships, they are more likely to believe in their plausibility, which prepares them to actually be more positive and cooperative in their real world relations.

[tallguy]

We evolved under conditions of low genetic dispersal. That is to say, although we were migratory, we did so in groups of more or less related, familial, tribal groups. If you are a member of a given group, then you can reasonably expect to be on the receiving end of cooperative, even altruistic (at least at the level of the phenotype) behaviour. If you are not a member of a given group, you may receive cooperative behaviour if you have something to offer, but are far less likely to receive altruistic behaviour. Even then, though, you may receive an initial, token gesture of altruism as humans also have developed a tendency to be reasonably welcoming to strangers just in case, they have something to offer.

We are social group animals.

[cyu]

you may receive an initial, token gesture of altruism as humans also have developed a tendency to be reasonably welcoming to strangers just in case, they have something to offer.Reminds me of http://news.yahoo.com/generous-tit-tat-winning-strategy-163235315.html (though I wouldn't put it exactly like they put it - see also http://www.revleft.com/vb/revenge-ever-justified-t179128/index2.html )

Generous Tit for Tat is the name of the biologically most successful strategy for playing the prisoner’s dilemma.

Tit for Tat — First line: be nice (never nasty first); 2nd line: do whatever the other guy did on the last move; Tit for tat retaliates only once, letting bygones be bygones.

one little tweak to Tit for Tat optimizes the program. This is where we get Generous Tit for Tat. The second line of code (the one that says, do whatever the other guy did last time) get modified to not always retaliate, but nearly always retaliate. Mathematically, that translates to not retaliating one in 10 times after sustaining an attack. This mod stops the echoes.

“For every nine parts Moses, you need one part Jesus,” as the Radiolab hosts put it. “This is a strategy that just seems to be woven into the fabric of the cosmos. It works for computers. It works for people. It probably works for amoebas. It just works.”

[cyu]

http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/infoservice/presseinformation/press-releases-2014/press-release-01-30-2014-teaching-young-wolves-new-tricks/

all wolves managed to open the box after watching a dog solve the puzzle, while only four dogs managed to do so. Wolves more frequently opened the box using the method they observed, whereas the dogs appeared to choose randomly whether to use their mouth or their paw.

researchers examined the animals’ ability to open a box without prior demonstration. They found that the wolves were rarely successful.

Their skill at copying probably relates to the fact that wolves are more dependent on cooperation with conspecifics than dogs are and therefore pay more attention to the actions of their partners.

During the process of domestication, dogs have become able to accept humans as social partners and thus have adapted their social skills to include interactions with them, concomitantly losing the ability to learn by watching other dogs.

[Comrade #138672]

We cooperate owing to self-interest. If we calculate the odds and realize that we may win without cooperation, we may as well abandon it and start competing. It all boils down to self-interest.Except that we are not always capable of performing this calculation reliably, so we have to rely on simpler rules. We tend to prefer cooperation just to be "safe", in addition to it being more beneficial overall.

[cyu]

we have to rely on simpler rules


Yep, it's also a matter of efficiency - the more time you spend on various calculations, the less time you have for actually doing real things =]

[cyu]

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/08/wolves-cooperate-dogs-submit-study-suggests

wolves were the tolerant, cooperative ones. The dogs formed strict, linear dominance hierarchies that demand obedience from subordinates. dogs were bred for the ability to follow orders and to be dependent on masters.

In every matchup, “the higher ranking dog monopolized the food”. “But in the wolf tests, both high- and low-ranking animals had access” and were able to chow down at the same time. dominant wolves were “mildly aggressive toward subordinates, but a lower ranking dog won’t even try” when paired with a top dog. “They don’t dare to challenge.”

Wolves were able to follow the gaze of their fellows to find food. when they have a disagreement or must make a group decision, they have a lot of communication. for even the smallest transgression, a higher ranked dog “may react aggressively” toward one that is subordinate.

It’s not about having a common goal. It’s about being with us, but without conflict. We tell them something, and they obey.

dogs are waiting for orders. presented sealed containers of sausage to open, not one of the adult dogs succeeded; most did not even try. eight of the 10 wolves opened the container in less than 2 minutes. So did dog puppies. as the dog grows independent behavior is inhibited.

adult pooches could open the container when their human owner told them to do so. Because dogs “suppress their independence, it’s difficult to know what their normal problem-solving abilities are”.

[cyu]

https://theconversation.com/the-human-race-evolved-to-be-fair-for-selfish-reasons-31874

sensitivity to advantageous inequity, or protest when you receive more reward than another, has only been recorded in humans and chimpanzees.

Brosnan and de Waal propose that the motivation to seek equal rewards, despite disadvantaging oneself, is to prevent dissatisfaction of the co-operative partner and avoid any negative outcomes that may follow. The main negative outcomes are the likelihood of conflict and loss of future advantageous co-operation with the partner.

Also, one’s reputation is tainted, reducing the chances of forming future beneficial partnerships. When we humans “play fair” we are doing so, according to Brosnan and de Waal, “for the sake of continued cooperation”.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm going to get a bit flaky about this not because I'm a hippy but because I do this for fun, not competition (see what I did there?). So I don't necessarily have the references to back this up. But some points (thoughts, rambling) about co-operation, competition and psychology.

Humans are pretty much unique in the amount of time our young are dependant. If human children were born at the same stage of development as (for example) horses, then fetuses would gestate for about 4 years and every woman would need hips like an elephant. So; despite the fact that stags rut and male wolves fight, and males of all mammalian species generally compete for mates, humans need co-operative behaviour in a way other species don't. In our x-million year evolution, we have evolved to be co-operative because otherwise we'd have died in the Olduvai Gorge 2.6 million years ago. It is functionally necessary. Anyone who claims otherwise - that humans only compete - should have their legs broken and be left in the Rift Valley naked and with no more than a blunt rock, and told to fend for themselves. We not only need biological parents, we need nurturers, which means we need stable communities (not necessarily genetically-related families).

Game-theory is very nice (I mean interesting, some of it is horrible) but some people play to win and some people play to keep playing. Whether they're different personality types or different responses at different times (you're tired, you want it to end, you try to 'win' and end up losing; your happy and having fun, you want it to continue, you 'play to play' and lend Monopoly money to the bankrupt players) I'm not sure.

Sometimes competition doesn't work. I proposed an experiment (well, a data-analysis exercise anyway) to a colleague recently involving analysis of scores of sports fixtures. Is there, in (for example) English Premier League games (that's football/soccer for those who don't know) an effect related to expectation? If Manchester United (a very successful team) play Fulham (a not-very successful team) does either team 'try'? Do Man U not just assume they'll win, and Fulham assume they'll lose? If however, Fulham play Brighton & Hove Albion (another not-very successful team) do both teams try harder thinking they might win? If this basic supposition is correct we'd expect Man U to get 2 early goals against Fulham and then relax, while Fulham give up, with a 2:0 result; we'd expect games between Fulham and Brighton to be 5:4 (either way). I haven't looked at the data to see if these patterns exist, but it's possible they do.

Economics seems to have a strange effect on psychology. A recent study was done using game theory to test co-operative and competitive behaviour among different groups of people: 1-economics students, divided by year-cohort; 2-other students, divided by year-cohort; 3-ancilliary staff divided by years of service (matching the student intake years). The results of these game theory experiments were, basically, that students of whatever year, and ancillary staff of whatever year, scored the same for co-operation as first year economics students, and continued to score the same no matter how long they'd been working or studying at university. Yr 2 economics students however showed a marked decrease in co-operative behaviour, and Yr3 economics students showed even more marked divergences from (let's not forget) the behaviour of all other humans in the survey. Two explanations immediately present themselves: first, that economics courses progressively select for competitive behaviour, so more co-operative people drop out (deciding it's 'not for them') or the departments actually weed them out (they're 'not up to standard'); or, second, that studying economics makes you more competitive and less co-operative. Both are interesting ideas to explore, I think.

[Skyhilist]

I just don't see how anyone has ever tried to argue that humans aren't cooperative.

Wait really? I hear common arguments that "human nature" makes it so that people can't be cooperative all the time. Of course they are terrible and fallacy-riddled arguments, but I still hear them all the time in my own life.

[Sasha]

Anyone mentioned the book "an age for empathy" from Frans de Waal already, its really good and exactly about this stuff.

[cyu]

I think the world is on the verge of a course correction from the "wrong turn" it took when Darwin first published his revolutionary research. Not that there's anything inherently wrong about his findings, but that they put (or were used to put) too much emphasis on competition - and as a result, it has increased all sorts of societal ills since his time - including world wars.

I think the realization that cooperation is what has made humans great is going to turn this whole mess around in our lifetime. It won't happen overnight, but the development of the internet is probably going to make that as "overnight" as possible.

[Blake's Baby]

You do realise that Kropotkin was saying this in the 1860s or something?

[Sasha]

The book I tipt has quite a long piece on kropotkin and his ideas.

[Blake's Baby]

Thanks for the recommendation Sasha, I'll look out for it, it does sound interesting.

[cyu]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150508105656.htm

playing with a helpful partner increases the expectation of others to reciprocate pro-social behavior and generally be helpful. That applies to not only the teammate, but to others as well. when playing with a helpful teammate, you're nicer to the other team you just competed against that tried to beat you, even though you don't expect them to give it back to you.

participants were given a chance after playing the game to behave aggressively toward their partner or foe by blasting them with a loud, undesirable noise.

those who played cooperatively with a partner were less aggressive.

he had individuals play "NBA Street Homecourt" with either a helpful teammate or unhelpful teammate who students thought was another student but was in fact an experimenter specifically instructed to play the game a certain way.

playing with a helpful teammate can inspire players to behave pro-socially without the expectation of receiving anything in return.

[The Disillusionist]

I'm glad to see someone else talking about evolutionary theory as it relates to the political realm. Careful though... people don't often take very kindly to this stuff.

Cooperation is one of my favorite topics. It's a far, far more complex topic than I can even begin to touch on here.. When analyzing human cooperation, you have to take into account all kinds of factors, like logic, emotion, punishment, ease of participation, and voluntary nature of participation.

On top of that, there are a number of competing theories about cooperation. The kinship theory argues that cooperation evolved because individuals cooperating with their family members increased the inclusive fitness of those individuals (since their family members share a portion of their genes, an individual that helps family members survive will increase its own genetic fitness. It's the same idea behind parenthood.) I'm skeptical about the relevance of this theory on large-scale modern human cooperation, but it was probably very important during the early stages of the evolution of cooperation and may have helped to lay the foundations for modern cooperation.

Another popular explanation is the theory of reciprocal altruism, a theory that states that by sharing excess resources with others in the expectation that they will receive other resources from those others in the future, humans increase their fitness by ensuring a buffer source of resources in times of shortage. This relationship, which can be very complex and has many forms, is thought to have co-evolved with other aspects of human sociality. It's my thought that reciprocal altruism in its various, complex forms has been the more predominant engine for modern human economic cooperation than kinship, though it still cannot completely explain everything.


Overall, I would disagree that the world is about to take a turn from competition based evolutionary theory to cooperation based evolutionary theory. Both aspects are very important, and in fact, I would argue that neither one could be explained without the other. Also, the racist misunderstandings characterized with the Social Darwinist movement were rejected by mainstream social scientists and evolutionary scientists way back in the early-mid 20th century.

Seriously, if there was one idea that I could automatically beat into the heads of every leftist it would be that Social Darwinism has been rejected by mainstream scientists for a long time, and it is indeed highly vilified among modern evolutionary scientists.

Also, though I'm a fan of Kropotkin, he didn't fully understand evolutionary theory, and it drives me a little crazy that he seems to be the last major evolutionary theorist in the leftist realm that anyone ever thinks about. His ideas are way outdated.

[cyu]

The kinship theory argues that cooperation evolved because individuals cooperating with their family members increased the inclusive fitness of those individuals (since their family members share a portion of their genes, an individual that helps family members survive will increase its own genetic fitness. It's the same idea behind parenthood.) I'm skeptical about the relevance of this theory on large-scale modern human cooperation
Personally I wouldn't even call that cooperation, but altruism. I don't really want to get bogged down in semantics, but I like to draw a distinction between behavior that benefits both parties, versus behavior that sacrifices yourself for others (or sacrificing others for yourself, or sacrificing everyone).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation
Curiously, rationality and deliberate choice are not necessary, nor trust nor even consciousness

If not even consciousness is required, then what is required? I'd say as long as it benefits you and others, then there are strong reasons for selecting for that behavior, since you're not really going to meet political opposition from people that are being helped by the behavior. And if all parties aren't even sentient, of course there would be no "political opposition", but as long as they are all benefitting, then that only serves to perpetuate the behavior.

[The Disillusionist]

Personally I wouldn't even call that cooperation, but altruism. I don't really want to get bogged down in semantics, but I like to draw a distinction between behavior that benefits both parties, versus behavior that sacrifices yourself for others (or sacrificing others for yourself, or sacrificing everyone).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation
Curiously, rationality and deliberate choice are not necessary, nor trust nor even consciousness

If not even consciousness is required, then what is required? I'd say as long as it benefits you and others, then there are strong reasons for selecting for that behavior, since you're not really going to meet political opposition from people that are being helped by the behavior. And if all parties aren't even sentient, of course there would be no "political opposition", but as long as they are all benefitting, then that only serves to perpetuate the behavior.

Cooperation and altruism can't be separated, they're two sides of the same coin, driven by the same cognitive mechanisms (the reward center of the brain is activated upon cooperating/behaving altruistically).

Also, you need to remember that you are talking about evolution. Cooperating doesn't need to be conscious because it has evolved not as a conscious mechanism, but as a cognitive drive. For example, using an inter-species example, those birds that clean crocodile teeth are not aware that they are behaving altruistically, but they are. That's unconscious cooperation.

Humans are harder to come up with an example for, because we conscious of the majority of our actions, but people often aren't aware of how much they cooperate in order to fit into society. Not running a red light is cooperation, but people don't often think of it as such, they just don't run red lights. Why not? Because as a result of the interaction of cultural learning and cognitive mechanisms of guilt and fear, their brains would make them feel bad if they did.

I would be careful about extending this argument too far to the world of politics though. If cooperating never met any opposition, and we all just did what was best for each other mutually, capitalism never would have come into existence. There are other factors at play here as well.

[cyu]

If cooperating never met any opposition, and we all just did what was best for each other mutually


There are two different issues here I think. In most cases, people don't oppose you when you're helping them, but on occasion, the bane of tit-for-tat strategies also comes into play here - ie. "noise". For example, a typical tit-for-tat strategy might go like this: I help you today, you help me tomorrow, I help you the day after that, etc. When "noise" creeps in, for example, I accidentally hurt you, or you misunderstand my help as an attack, then the tit-for-tat strategy is thrown off into a series of tit-for-tat attacks. Misunderstanding can also creep into cooperative behavior in which the other party believes you are in fact hurting them, and thus blocks you politically.

A second issue is that even if cooperative behavior were never blocked, it doesn't mean there would only be cooperative behavior. There is always a wide range of behavior, starting with children who behave almost randomly. Laws are an attempt to filter the field of random behavior - allowing "positive" (however that's judged) behaviors to continue, and blocking "negative" behavior. Belief systems are an attempt to guide behavior before they have to be filtered by law.

Why anything like capitalism or murder or genocide comes into play, I'd say is similar to the same reasons why a person might have genes for cancer. Nobody has a perfect genome. Genetic mutation is also random, as memetic mutation is also often random (although humans tend to have more direct control over memetic mutation). Even if we could automatically fix all our own cancer causing genes, it still wouldn't make our genes "perfect" - we wouldn't have telepathy, or teleportation, or whatever.

In any case, the evolution of cooperative ideologies can be an accidental act (some may consider religion to be one of these examples, while others might say it was actually the intentional work of social engineers of the distant past) or it can be an intentional act. If someone doesn't see the value in cooperative ideologies, they won't go looking for them. If someone doesn't feel hunger when his body needs food, then he won't go looking for food either...

[cyu]

I thought they would start fighting who is the dominant predator in the reef, but to my big surprise, they swam off together side by side.

the grouper approaches and shakes its head. This is the signal "Come on, let's hunt."

When the grouper hunts on its own and the prey escapes into a crevice, the grouper does a pointing gesture. This attracts the moral eel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giNH6oHPGmw

If someone goes through their studies looking only at how things improve by competition, and they are exposed to an example of inter-species cooperation for the first time, how would they investigate this phenomenon? It shouldn't be surprising if the experiments they devise still attempt to make sense of the situation through competition.

Makes me wonder if the reverse is also true - if someone has only looked at how things improve by cooperation, and is exposed to an example of competition for the first time, would they devise experiments to understand the situation through the lens of cooperation?

[Blake's Baby]

I'm reminded of a cautionary tale from an anthropologist about searching for gender-bias in non-Western societies.

The story is (and this anthropologist says it really happened to her, and I have no reason to doubt this) that she interviewed an old man half-way up a mountain in Central America (I forget which country and it's far to difficult to go and dig my notes about this out from wherever I stored them so you'll just have to trust me on this one). The old man was sitting on his verandah; the man's wife was in the house. The anthropologist never saw here. Anyway the old man starts telling the anthropologist that he was married in 1953, when the old woman shouts from the house '1952!', so the old man says that he's been married since 1952, and they've lived at the house for 25 years, and the old woman's voice comes from the house '27 years!', so the old man tells the anthropologist that they've lived at the house 27 years, and they've got five daughters and nine grandchildren, and the old woman's voice says '10 grandchildren!'. Anyway, the conversation goes on, and the old woman, unseen in the house, corrects the old man a bunch of times but the old man never directly acknowledges these interventions, he just assimilates the new information into his own story with no acknowledgement either of his own error or the source of the new data (assuming that is, that the old woman is right and the old man wrong - but given that he accepted all the corrections I think we have to assume that is the case).

The anthropologist went off considering that this must be a very patriarchal society. She never met the wife, who was reduced to the status of a disembodied voice whose presence was adjusted to, but never directly acknowledged.

Then the anthropologist started to wonder what her conclusions would be if she'd talked to the old woman, with the old man in the house, making corrections to his wife. She thought probably, she'd conclude that it was a very patriarchal society, where even if he was not physically present the husband could assume that it was acceptable to assert his authority over his wife even in her interactions with other people.

What then, would be the signs of a society that was not patriarchal? If opposite signs can be used to decide that a society is patriarchal, how could you spot a matriarchal society, or a one with no gender-based power-structures?

I hope the relevance to this discussion is fairly obvious. If not, I'm sure my wife will soon shout out something that I can use to get my point across. I guess what I'm saying is, if you look for evidence that society is based on competition, you'll find it.

[Luís Henrique]

Maybe you think like that, but I don't. I think social human behaviour is in our genes, we evolved to be social. I think social human behaviour is natural, and that egoistic human behaviour is also natural, but not at the scale seen today. I think egoistic behaviour today is encouraged by the capitalist system, and that is why there is so much of it.

Evidently, social human behaviour is not in our genes, otherwise it wouldn't change at a historic pace. That we are social is not in our genes, but in the fact, indeed, that we have no longer genes for that kind of thing; we didn't "evolve" to be social, but we are social, in an specific, human, historic sence, because any "genetic" tendencies we might have had otherwise - to be asocial, eusocial, whatever else - devolved. We do not have elaborate instincts as most animals do; on the contrary, our instincts are few, primary, very basic, atrophied indeed, and do not instrumentalise us for living as actual humans.

And of course capitalism does not encourage "egotistic behaviour"; on the contrary, a capitalist society is definitely more socially intertwinned than any other form of human social organisation we might have had in the past. It cannot exist without co-operation at a planetary level - something that has never happened before. It is a fact that such co-operation appears to us as its opposite, as brutal competition; but this is a very different problem, that has little to do with either genetics or the individual ethics of egotism or altruism.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

I think I radically disagree. I think we have evolved to be co-operative, precisely because any hominins that were not co-operative died. The specific forms of our co-operation are not hard-wired in, granted. There is no bit of DNA code for 'the corporation' or 'the municipality' or 'the market' but there is a biological urge to flock together.

There is no human society, as far as we can tell, that was ever not a society. That sounds tautological but the very fact that we discuss society at all means that humans are a gregarious mammal, rather than a habitually-solitary one. We form groups. More like cows than bears, for example. But, because of the specifics of human biology, particularly in terms of child development, we need long-term stable groups to ensure species survival, in a way that most other mammals don't. In that respect, we're more like social insect like bees, maybe. I don't see that that can be other than hard-wired into our systems through our DNA.

Certainly individuals can wander away from the herd (hive?). But they're not a viable means of increasing the amount of ecological niches humanity can occupy, as one human is neither capable of reproduction nor of raising offspring without the support of a social network. So, it seems to me that the social network is what underpins human survival.

[cyu]

I'd say evolution happens on many levels. Human languages evolve over time as well, and that happens independently of our genes. So does things like concepts of morality, family, even corporate and military forms of organization. Some of that might feed back into our genes though - for example, if the ability to communicate with other humans is a survival advantage, then one might expect human brains to become better at processing language. If humans are forced to live in social groups in order to better get what they need, one might expect evolution of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron and the like.

Still, genetic evolution happens very slowly compared to memetic evolution. Changes in technology and points of view happens probably more than thousands of times faster. One century, they may believe in survival of the fittest race, and kill each other off in race war. Another century, they may believe even in inter-species cooperation, and learn to join the interstellar community ;)