Re: Evolution in action (was: Re Kidney-nappers)

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Sep 10 1997 - 09:01:41 MDT


Arjen Kamphuis <mountain@knoware.nl> writes:

> Total freedom often means the law of the jungle, were murdering (or at
> least killing) competitors for recources is the smart thing to do.

I think 'often' is a dangerous word to use in this case - have you
any evidence for this? In fact, as argued by Drexler in "Comparative
Ecology: A Computational Perspective"
(http://www.webcom.com/~agorics/agorpapers.html) and a lot of
other results in evolutionary game theory it appears to depend
a lot on what kind of system and payoff matrix we use.

If you become known as a killer, people are less likely to share
resources with you, while they will cooperate against you. Hence
under some circumstances killers and defectors will be less effective
than cooperators.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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