Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

Are dolphins on their way to domesticating humans?

Posted 07 May 2012 / 0

Global Animal  “Dolphins Team Up With Fisherman” Now if only the dolphins can somehow get over that little “needs to breathe air every two minutes” problem with humans through artificial breeding. Seriously, though, this is really interesting as an analog for the kind of coevolution that probably occurred between humans and wolves. Just as was Read More

A Minor Post, Cetaceans, Cooperation, Human Uniqueness, Intelligences

I am not the only one who likes to narrowly interpret creative works through my scientific lens

Posted 07 May 2012 / 0

Literature, Evolution, & the Brain “The Evolution of Cooperation & ‘They Cage the Animals at Night‘” It is fascinating that this blog represents the work of many people, all of whom are looking at literature through the lens of evolution. I encourage this approach — I had better, as I take it myself — but this Read More

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Science in Art & Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: Ultimatum Game “conceptual” images

Posted 15 Mar 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. To complete the set of Evolutionary Games Infographic images that Greg Riestenberg and I have been working on, we created a set of “conceptual” matrices for the Ultimatum Game (UG). These are meant to complement the conceptual images we Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First “sequence” images

Posted 05 Mar 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. This semester I have been working with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program, to come up with a new series of images designed to explain some common evolutionary games. Our first images for the Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: New “conceptual” images

Posted 06 Feb 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. For the past two semesters I have been working with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program, to come up with a new series of images designed to explain some common evolutionary games (I am Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

What kind of in-group does Facebook represent?

Posted 05 Feb 2012 / 0

On the Media “Life in Facebookistan” I am fascinated by the idea that we all belong to many overlapping social groups, and I wonder how these groups might be subject to multilevel selection. “Facebookistan” is an interesting conceptualization of a large international group: Facebook users. With characteristic incisive questioning, On The Media suggests that this might Read More

A Minor Post, Multilevel Selection, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts

Is the European Union going rogue or playing altruist on airline emissions?

Posted 07 Jan 2012 / 0

Contrails captured by NASA scientist Louis Ngyyen Global carbon emissions continue to increase, threatening future generations with catastrophic climate change. And while most of the world agrees that something needs to be done to curb our carbon emissions, several decades of international talks have provided little progress at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Most famously, the Read More

Altruism, Articles, Climate Change, Cooperation, Economics, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Pollution, Public Policy, Punishment, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainability, Web

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First “examples” matrices

Posted 21 Nov 2011 / 1

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. To complement the “conceptual” images we created to depict the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, and Stag Hunt games, Greg Riestenberg and I have been developing a series of “example” images showing how the payoffs of these games are produced Read More

A Major Post, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield’s “SuperCooperators”

Posted 03 Nov 2011 / 0

Martin Nowak has accomplished a lot for a mid-career scientist. His theoretical work exploring how cooperation evolves has illuminated the importance of a great number of evolutionary mechanisms. He has also been unafraid to tackle real-life problems of cooperation, including questions like “why do we get cancer?” and “how did language evolve?”. Nowak likes to Read More

Altruism, Books, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, History, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Kin Selection, Language Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Mutualism, Punishment, Reciprocity, Religion, Superorganisms, Sustainability

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First images

Posted 31 Oct 2011 / Comments Off on Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First images

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. This post described earlier versions of our “conceptual” evolutionary games infographics for the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, and Hawk-Dove games. The latest versions of these images are posted here. Below are galleries showing these earlier versions: You can browse Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, Teaching Tools