![\"\"](\"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/090110timsleep.jpg\" "\\"Robber")
<\/a>Deadly Duo<\/p><\/div>\n
In this small rural mountain community (Mason County) called home, there are pork commissioners on record, e.g. Jay\u00a0Hupp, LITERALLY boasting about lusting after the resources essential to our survival and quality of life. (http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=287<\/a>)<\/p>\n There may be more varied types of cooperation in nature than a simple dichotomy, but it\u2019s easy to see greed is rampant despite cooperation being our only glimmer of hope for sustained survival.<\/p>\n But robber barons do more than simply steal the commons\u2013they set an example of avarice others emulate. Reagan comes to mind\u2013a President who made conspicuous consumption and flaunting of wealth socially acceptable\u2026fashionable even. We may each die alone, but we\u2019ll all breathe shit together!<\/p>\n It\u2019s known as \u2018The Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma\u2019 and is a type of cooperation-strategy game well-known amongst Game Theorists and Computational Scientists. In the game, players mutually benefit from cooperating (\u201ccollaborating\u201d) with each other (they each earn modest financial reward). But greater benefit can be gained, by one player, by \u2018defecting\u2019 from the mutually beneficial, collaborative behavior. This latter behavior tends to promote its own spread*, until one may be left with a situation in which no one cooperates or benefits.<\/p>\n That can spell bad news for a society or social network.<\/p>\n In fact, most social scientists studying the problems and conflicts of social cooperation believe that a society (or social network) in which the\u00a0majority<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0collaborate is unattainable, and many have conjectured that the structure of the population determines the level of cooperation.<\/p>\n But how to test this hypothesis? Answer: conduct a large-scale, synchronized, Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma game and track the decisions players make in real-time.<\/p>\n Conducted on December 20 of last year at La Espacio Zaragoza Activa, Aragon (an \u2018autonomous community\u2019 of Spain), it was the largest \u2018scientific-social cooperation\u2019 experiment ever carried out, and involved the participation of 1303 high school students from 42 schools in Aragon \u2014 all monitored over a three-hour period by a sizable consortium of researchers.<\/p>\n Data is still being analyzed, but one of the most salient findings was that\u00a0different types of people tends to arise<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0in the experimental groupings, and, that\u00a0these types tend to occur in roughly the same frequency<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n In any given social group or network, approximately 5% always try to help (cooperate with) their neighbors, with just over a third (35%) who never do (these tend to \u2018defect\u2019 from the collaboration the soonest)\u2026 the remaining 60% occasionally cooperated, depending (most often) on two factors: their\u00a0mood<\/em>\u00a0at the time, and,\u00a0what their neighbors did<\/em>\u00a0(how cooperative they were)\u00a0previously<\/em>.<\/p>\n Research panel monitoring the largest social cooperation study ever conducted to determine the problems and conflicts arising from cooperation in present day society.<\/p>\n Interestingly \u2014 but not surprising to many \u2014 there was a difference in the level of cooperation according to sex; in general, girls cooperated 10% more than did boys.<\/p>\n Also noted in the early analysis was that the type of high school program being studied had a slight impact on cooperation; students in a humanities and\/or social science program showed a 4% higher cooperation level than did those studying in a scientific technology program.<\/p>\n In terms of interesting, but negative, findings, analysis showed that there were no significant differences in cooperation levels amongst players based upon family size (i.e., whether only children or possessing siblings), nor any differences based upon geographical origin (i.e., rural or urban residence).<\/p>\n As a whole, a 35% cooperation rate was observed in the student participants.<\/p>\n So, extrapolating to the real world: if you ask your neighbors for help often, over all, there\u2019s a (slightly better than) one in three chance that he\/she\/they will cooperate (but you might improve your odds by\u00a0being neighborly to them, first<\/em>).<\/p>\n An important feature of this experiment was that it included two types of groups: one group was comprised of \u201cregular networks\u201d, where every member of the groups had the same number of social connections (classmates, neighbors), with the second group being \u201cscale free\u201d (or heterogeneous), that is, some members were connected to many neighbors, while others were connected to very few.<\/p>\n Cooperative behavior was monitored to determine if it varied when players\u00a0always interacted with the same neighbors\/classmates<\/em>, versus, when the structure of their network was changed randomly (by the researchers) after each interaction (i.e., the playing of the Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma game with different neighbors each time).<\/p>\n In this way, researchers were able to test their hypothesis that the structure of the population determines the level of cooperation (the \u201curgency of the cooperation\u201d). Early analysis of the data seems to confirm that \u201cthe structure of the interaction network\u201d influences a \u201cmedium level of cooperation\u201d.<\/p>\n More complete analyses of the data from this first-of-its-kind social experiment are expected in future journal publications.<\/p>\n The experiment was organized by researchers from the Instituto Biocomputaci\u00f3n y F\u00edsica de Sistemas Complejos (The Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems) (BIFI) at the Universidad de Zaragoza, together with the Fundaci\u00f3n Ibercivis and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M).<\/p>\n * This is known as the \u2018Rapoport strategy\u2019, after the game theorist,\u00a0Anatol Rapoport,<\/a>\u00a0who developed the algorithm for the most successful game-winning strategy, i.e., \u201ccopy your opponent\u201d (or \u201ctit for tat\u201d). Some social scientists (like Hammerstein) feel that applications of the PD game to real-life situations have limited value for providing insight into human nature, arguing that Nature provides far more opportunities for\u00a0variable cooperation<\/em>, as opposed to the either\/or (cooperate or defect) choices of the PD model, despite its usefulness in mathematical models.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social cooperation network experiments are similar to the paradox of the commons\u2013and aren\u2019t really \u2018hypothetical\u2019 at all. We\u2019re seeing this in all its variations around us daily. A man who steals a goose from the commons is arrested while another … Continue reading Ah, to Cooperate or Defect?<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
What do the results of this Experiment tell us about Social Cooperation?<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nOther Findings from the Social Cooperation Experiment<\/h3>\n
Two Tests, Two Network Types, One Hypothesis: \u201cThe Urgency of the Cooperation\u201d<\/h3>\n