'Snowdrift' game tops 'Prisoner's Dilemma' in explaining cooperation (2007)
These experiments are nonsense.Firstly, from the article: “In principle, natural selection predicts individuals to behave selfishly” is a faulty premise. Obviously humans who cooperate to raise children to sexual maturity will have more descendants.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".The way I see is: while our worldview is "everything is a competition" 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 explaining by science, which is code for "publish or perish". If we had a different worldview I'm sure we would shoehorn everything to fit.