The evolution of cooperation and lying




(2013)

 

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(wider faces....agriculture...differing selection, differing epi.)


Evolution of lying

https://phys.org/news/2013-05-evolution-lying.html?utm_source=feedly

...Cooperation evolves

Many species – most notably our own – have evolved quite extraordinary capacities to cooperate. We might take cooperation as an obvious  of life, but long-term cooperative gain requires a  to put aside narrow self-interest in the short term. And that doesn't evolve easily.
Cooperation makes it possible for some individuals to cheat, prospering off the cooperative efforts of others. Cooperate too readily and you might get taken for a ride. Cooperate only grudgingly and you don't reap the benefits of working together.
 and  find that even the simplest models of cooperation – such as the prisoner's dilemma game, explained in the video below – can lead to complex rules about when an individual should cooperate and when it should try to cheat.
Peer into the natural world, and the range of possible behavioural patterns that have evolved to fetter cheating and allow cooperation to flourish becomes even more complex.
In some species individuals reciprocate directly. Well-fed vampire  regurgitate blood meals for starving bats that have helped them avoid starvation (also by regurgitating) in the past. Others reciprocate less directly....
 
comment: But one wonders if the next step, using representations of representations (symbols) as unfounded socially manipulatory devices (lie big, lie often) for personal, individual position and gain (restricting access to concentrated resources via dominance based on hierarchy rather than vice versa) didn't come later or at least didn't diffuse until later. Cooperation... may have more with the stickiness of information once expressed. It remains, even a part of plural, living systems. More than cooperating with others, cooperation (and altruism) might reflect that expressed stickiness, a reflection of itself.

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