'Snowdrift' game tops 'Prisoner's Dilemma' in explaining cooperation (2007)
These experiments are nonsense.<p>Firstly, from the article: <i>“In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly”</i> is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants.<p>Secondly, in these simulated games it seems likely to me the participants would be, at least to some extent, randomly selecting cooperate / defect because a potential monetary reward for participation isn't the same as "cooperate or everyone freezes to death in their car tonight", or whatever real-world consequences might apply where you don't get "12 iterations".<p>The way I see is: while our worldview is <i>"everything is a competition"</i> that is how we will interpret what we see. Evolution and economics being the most strident examples. Anything that doesn't automatically fit the worldview needs <i>explaining by science</i>, which is code for "publish or perish". If we had a different worldview I'm sure we would shoehorn everything to fit.