Cooperation means that one individual pays a cost for another to receive a benefit. Cooperation can be at variance with natural selection. Why should you help competitors? Yet cooperation is abundant in nature and is important component of evolutionary innovation. Cooperation can be seen as the master architect of evolution and as the third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and selection. I will present five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation: direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, spatial selection, group selection and kin selection. Global cooperation and the cooperation with future generations is necessary to ensure the survival of our species.
Further reading:
Nowak MA (2006). Evolutionary Dynamics. Harvard University Press
Nowak MA & Highfield R (2011) SuperCooperators. Simon & Schuster.
Hauser OP, Rand DG, Peysakhovich A & Nowak MA (2014). Cooperating with the future. Nature 511: 220-223
Hilbe C, Šimsa Š, Chatterjee K & Nowak MA (2018). Evolution of cooperation in stochastic games. Nature 559: 246-249
Hauser OP, Hilbe C, Chatterjee K & Nowak MA (2019). Social dilemmas among unequals. Nature 572: 524-527
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