Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation (Dahlem Workshop Reports)

Rating:
Summary: If you want to cooperate....
Review: Evolutionary theory has stressed competition, but cooperation is incredibly common in nature. Mitochondria, originally bacterial infections of cells, are now essential components of cells. Most plants depend on fungal associates to help them get water and nutrients. Social animals abound at all levels of complexity. Most complexly social of all are humans. Until recently, this widespread mutualism, mutual aid, and general sociability was understudied and undertheorized. This book is a major step toward creating theories of how such systems can have arisen in a competitive world. I am not competent to judge the papers on mitochondria and other cell-level wonders, but the other papers are authoritative and original. The studies of human society and cooperation are absolutely brilliant, and put together new and powerful theories of the evolution of human cooperation. The political implications of these theories are alluded to, but not discussed in depth. Basically, humans are designed to be grassroots cooperators. We have a range of mechanisms to regulate society, detect and sanction cheaters, discuss how to maintain the system, and so on and on, and most of these abilities have roots well back in our primate heritage. The idea that people are selfish, including Thomas Hobbes' fantasy of "savages" living in a "warre of each against all" until a king shaped things up, does not stand investigation. Impressive in this book is new evidence from behavioral economics showing just how cooperative people are, and new models that can deal with that in terms of evolutionary and economic theory. Somebody should get a Nobel in economics somewhere along the line!
I fear only that ordinary readers and the popular media will not find this book; it is formidably difficult reading--you have to know biology, anthropology, theoretical economics, and even cell physiology to get through all of it. Help! I hope somebody is writing a popular knockoff, to counter the idiotic garbage put out by those who have confused political ideology with evolutionary theory and given us floods of nonsense about the "selfish gene," the impossibility of social cooperation, the naturalness of selfishness, and even the biological inevitability of rape and spouse abuse!
In any case, this book puts the study of cooperation on a sounder scientific footing. We need social applications, before it is too late.

Rating:
Summary: If you want to cooperate....
Review: Evolutionary theory has stressed competition, but cooperation is incredibly common in nature. Mitochondria, originally bacterial infections of cells, are now essential components of cells. Most plants depend on fungal associates to help them get water and nutrients. Social animals abound at all levels of complexity. Most complexly social of all are humans. Until recently, this widespread mutualism, mutual aid, and general sociability was understudied and undertheorized. This book is a major step toward creating theories of how such systems can have arisen in a competitive world. I am not competent to judge the papers on mitochondria and other cell-level wonders, but the other papers are authoritative and original. The studies of human society and cooperation are absolutely brilliant, and put together new and powerful theories of the evolution of human cooperation. The political implications of these theories are alluded to, but not discussed in depth. Basically, humans are designed to be grassroots cooperators. We have a range of mechanisms to regulate society, detect and sanction cheaters, discuss how to maintain the system, and so on and on, and most of these abilities have roots well back in our primate heritage. The idea that people are selfish, including Thomas Hobbes' fantasy of "savages" living in a "warre of each against all" until a king shaped things up, does not stand investigation. Impressive in this book is new evidence from behavioral economics showing just how cooperative people are, and new models that can deal with that in terms of evolutionary and economic theory. Somebody should get a Nobel in economics somewhere along the line!
I fear only that ordinary readers and the popular media will not find this book; it is formidably difficult reading--you have to know biology, anthropology, theoretical economics, and even cell physiology to get through all of it. Help! I hope somebody is writing a popular knockoff, to counter the idiotic garbage put out by those who have confused political ideology with evolutionary theory and given us floods of nonsense about the "selfish gene," the impossibility of social cooperation, the naturalness of selfishness, and even the biological inevitability of rape and spouse abuse!
In any case, this book puts the study of cooperation on a sounder scientific footing. We need social applications, before it is too late.