You Scratch My Back … I’ll (maybe) …

Review: The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

Axelrod had a very nice idea for an experiment. Take a much-studied behavioural model – the (iterated) Prisoner’s Dilemma from game theory – and run a computer tournament between alternative strategies to try to understand the mechanisms driving cooperation.

Programs of various degrees of sophistication and complexity were submitted from experts in the field and the laurels were awarded to perhaps the least sophisticated and least complex among them. The entire strategy is clear from its name: TIT FOR TAT.

The book describes the experiment, shows how the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a reasonable model for many kinds of human interactions and explores the reasons why TIT FOR TAT was so successful.  It shows, for example, soldiers discovering the strategy for themselves during trench warfare in World War One without any face-to-face negotiation.

When run in populations, it was shown to be evolutionarily stable.  In other words, when discovered and entered even in small numbers into the population, it grows in influence, driving out more selfish strategies.

A second book delved deeper and an almost-as-simple program – TIT FOR TWO TATS – emerged as an interesting alternative strategy.

Inappropriate Behaviour

Review: Opening Skinner’s Box by Lauren Slater

The book describes 10 milestone experiments in psychology in a very quirky way.

The experiments addressed a wide range of topics including behaviour conditioning, blind obedience to authority, recovered memory, bystander response in an emergency and even one debunking psychology itself. The approaches taken very often went way outside what would be considered ethical norms today and the conclusions drawn were often counter-intuitive, showing the subjects in a very poor light and suggesting that that’s how we humans actually are.

The book is very readable, not least because the author is a perfect subject for psych-analysis herself. The book defies the norms of scientific investigation and needs to be read with a hefty dose of skepticism but I understand the facts are fairly reliable even if the conclusions can be described as colourful.

It’s a book for people-watchers.