TED Talks “Paul Zak: Trust, morality – and oxytocin” Fascinating that generosity and empathy can be manipulated by manipulating levels of a single hormone! Also kind of scary that there may be people who do not produce or respond to oxytocin.
Ted Talks “Robert Wright on optimism” There’s some really interesting stuff here, especially for its implied use of multilevel selection. Wright’s understanding of “non-zero-sumness” is all about shared outcomes. He does not see just the positive side of non-zero-sum games, but also the negative: the potential for shared disaster. He suggests that once we realize Read More
TED Talks “Dan Ariely: Beware conflicts of interest”
NPR Planet Money “When Congress Plays Chicken” Interesting bit here about the conflicting psychological assumptions that are made by game theorists, and about small-group dynamics.
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Love and Anarchy: Emma Goldman’s passion for free expression burns on” From this article: “If people feel free and equal, the anarchist insists, order and cooperation will emerge as a natural result of that beneficence. Above all else, the anarchist is out to prove that cooperation, not competition, is the Read More
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Evolutionary Ethics: An Oxymoron“
PLoS ONE “Network Fluctuations Hinder Cooperation in Evolutionary Games“
Scientific American web “Tentacled Snake Uses Sneaky Strategy to Catch Fish”
Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) “The validity and value of inclusive fitness theory” Another paper that is written in reference to Nowak et al. (2010). This one is a pretty comprehensive review of the inclusive fitness literature (in particular its triumphs) and a comparison of the new model suggested by Nowak et Read More
Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) “Promiscuity and the evolution of cooperative breeding” This is clearly a paper written to rebut Nowak et al. (2010). But this is also a really valuable paper, as it uses rigorous modeling to show that measures of promiscuity probably will not be capable of distinguishing between competing Read More
