Posted 20 Sep 2012 / 0
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “No third-party punishment in chimpanzees” This is pretty astonishing, but perhaps not entirely surprising. As numerous other studies have shown, there are many qualitative differences in the cognition and resulting behaviors of humans and chimpanzees. Whether the fact that chimps do not maintain a sense of ‘social justice’ Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Primates, Psychology, Punishment
Posted 20 Sep 2012 / 0
CreationRevolution “If Morality Evolved, Is It Righteous?” It is striking how this reaction lacks any self-consciousness. Research like that referred to in this post is a potential means of understanding how religions and their particular constructed righteousness (in other words their morals, what they believe ought to be) can succeed.
A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Creationism, Cultural Evolution, Game Theory, Punishment, Web
Posted 20 Sep 2012 / 0
The Society Pages “Progressing from game theory to agent based modelling to simulate social emergence” This is a nice albeit pretty choppy explanation for why we should not listen to orthodox/traditional game theorists. The only argument I see missing here is that game theory relies on the assumption of a well-mixed population: even the Prisoner’s Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Emergence, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Individual-based Models, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Web
Posted 20 Sep 2012 / 0
Public Library of Science ONE “Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World” In the race to build the next over-simplified model of cooperative dynamics, it will be interesting to see how the media runs with this one. Is this a “scientists discover the evolutionary rationale for honorable police” moment? I think it is important to take Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Cooperation, Ethics, Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Punishment, Social Networks, System Stability
Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “Native invaders – challenges for science, management, policy, and society” This article makes an important point: the “alien” criteria for invasives is a bit arbitrary when the problem with invasives is their ability to explode in population and inordinately impact other populations. Perhaps we need to re-think the way Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Coevolution, Competition, Ecology, Habitat Destruction, Invasive Species, Pollution, Predation
Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “A world of their own” This is an absolutely fascinating article. I was not aware that there were any cultures outside of Amazonia that have maintained such isolation. As Burton points out, we need to decide how to balance our curiosity and potential charity with respect for the wishes Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Extinction, Human Evolution, Marine Ecosystems, Memetic Fitness, Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0
F1000 Posters “The Evolution of Sustainable Use: a flash-based classroom tool for teaching population biology and sustainable resource management“
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Carrying Capacity, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, My publications, Population Growth, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of Fisheries
Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “To the Trickster Go the Spoils” I really appreciate that Freeman Dyson acknowledges so clearly in this article that the fact that he has found a deceitful solution to the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma does not warrant radically shifting our understanding of human cooperation. The IPD and other game theory constructs Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Fluidity of Knowledge, Game Theory, Reciprocity, Web
Posted 17 Sep 2012 / 0
Slate “Rachel Carson Didn’t Kill Millions of Africans: How the 50-year-old campaign against Silent Spring still distorts environmental debates” There is a lot of interesting stuff here, including a fascinating view into how scientific findings get processed by the public (both left and right leaning). The ad hominem attacks on Carson are interesting because they seem Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Chemistry, Coevolution, Ecology, Environmental Justice, Evolution, Health & Medicine, Pollution, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resistance Evolution in Parasites, Web
Posted 10 Sep 2012 / 0
MITnews “Weapon-wielding marine microbes may protect populations from foes“
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Altruism, Competition, Cooperation, Evolution, Microbial Ecology, Mutualism, Superorganisms, Web
