Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

“EvoLudo” site provides tutorials on evolutionary games related to cooperation

Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0

Evoludo

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Game Theory, Teaching Tools

“Evolution and Games” site provides tutorials on cooperation theory

Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0

Evolution and Games: “How to quit the Price equation” “Evolution of Parochial Altruism by Multilevel Selection” “Sociality: It takes grouping and cooperation” “In and out of equilibrium: Evolution in repeated games” “Repeated games and population structure“

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Game Theory, Teaching Tools

Vampire bats: the ideal organism for studying cooperation?

Posted 15 Jun 2012 / 0

Social Bat “Why vampire bats are a good experimental model of cooperation: natural, cognitive, and controllable” I particularly like Gerry’s two-dimensional space representing different systems on the basis of their complexity and natural-ness!

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Web

NY Times provides perspective on E.O. Wilson’s “The Social Conquest of Earth”

Posted 13 Jun 2012 / 0

The New York Times “Lessons from Ants to Grasp Humanity” Funny how the media likes to trot out Jerry Coyne whenever someone questions Darwinian orthodoxy. I cannot entirely blame Coyne for how he is quoted, but his quotes never seem to offer much a substantial critique. The bit on religion is interesting here: Wilson seems Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Books, Cooperation, Group Selection, Superorganisms

PNAS paper explores the role of population structure in facilitating reciprocity

Posted 12 Jun 2012 / 3

The “Early Edition” of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America just posted online a paper entitled “Direct reciprocity in structured populations“. Authored by Matthijs van Veelen, Julián García, David G. Rand, and Martin A. Nowak, the paper combines two well-explored factors that influence how cooperation evolves: repeated Read More

Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Information Design, Reciprocity, Social Networks

Richard Dawkins on E.O. Wilson’s “The Social Conquest of Earth”

Posted 12 Jun 2012 / 0

Prospect Magazine “The descent of Edward Wilson” First comment on this: what’s up with the ad hominem attacks on Wilson implying (not-so-subtly) that he is somehow slipping (look here for another example) in his old age? Given the massive departure that Dawkins has made from science in his writings on religion, he is the last one Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Books, Cooperation, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Superorganisms

David Sloan Wilson on Richard Dawkins on E.O. Wilson

Posted 12 Jun 2012 / 0

The Huffington Post David Sloan Wilson blog “Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, and the Consensus of the Many” This is a very clear articulation of the history of multilevel selection. If only all biologists (in particular those who do not work in areas investigating altruistic behavior) could be compelled to read this; a lot of Read More

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Superorganisms, Web

Understanding the effects of asymmetry and relatedness on social volunteerism

Posted 06 Jun 2012 / 0

I am proud to announce the recent publication of a new paper in the Chinese Science Bulletin with collaborators from Yunnan University and the Kunming Institute of Zoology in Kunming, China. Our paper, entitled “Cooperation in an asymmetric volunteer’s dilemma game with relatedness“, uses a game-theoretic analysis of a new variant to the volunteer’s dilemma to Read More

Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Kin Selection, Modeling (General), Mutualism, My publications

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project launches with its first release of graphic packages

Posted 04 Jun 2012 / 0

In the Fall of 2011 I began a new project with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program. Given the ubiquity — especially in recent times — of evolutionary game theory, you would think that someone would have produced a set of clear conceptual images depicting how the most important of these games work; Read More

Department of Mathematics & Science, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, Pratt Institute, Teaching, Teaching Tools

There are plenty of organs out there: more altruism would end the social dilemma of who gets available organs

Posted 29 May 2012 / 0

NPR Planet Money “Who Decides Whether This 26-Year-Old Woman Gets A Lung Transplant?” Although this feature does make some interesting observations about the economic dilemmas associated with donated organ assignment, it misses the bigger picture: if everyone elected to donate their organs upon death, increased supply would diminish a lot of the dilemma.

A Minor Post, Altruism, Radio & Podcasts, Social Norms