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Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future
Cooperation is the cornerstone of human evolutionary success. Like no other species, we champion the sacrifice of personal benefits for the common good, and we work together to achieve what we are unable to achieve alone. Knowledge and information from past generations is thereby often instrumental...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6342912/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30670732 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36486-x |
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author | Danku, Zsuzsa Perc, Matjaž Szolnoki, Attila |
author_facet | Danku, Zsuzsa Perc, Matjaž Szolnoki, Attila |
author_sort | Danku, Zsuzsa |
collection | PubMed |
description | Cooperation is the cornerstone of human evolutionary success. Like no other species, we champion the sacrifice of personal benefits for the common good, and we work together to achieve what we are unable to achieve alone. Knowledge and information from past generations is thereby often instrumental in ensuring we keep cooperating rather than deteriorating to less productive ways of coexistence. Here we present a mathematical model based on evolutionary game theory that shows how using the past as the benchmark for evolutionary success, rather than just current performance, significantly improves cooperation in the future. Interestingly, the details of just how the past is taken into account play only second-order importance, whether it be a weighted average of past payoffs or just a single payoff value from the past. Cooperation is promoted because information from the past disables fast invasions of defectors, thus enhancing the long-term benefits of cooperative behavior. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6342912 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63429122019-01-25 Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future Danku, Zsuzsa Perc, Matjaž Szolnoki, Attila Sci Rep Article Cooperation is the cornerstone of human evolutionary success. Like no other species, we champion the sacrifice of personal benefits for the common good, and we work together to achieve what we are unable to achieve alone. Knowledge and information from past generations is thereby often instrumental in ensuring we keep cooperating rather than deteriorating to less productive ways of coexistence. Here we present a mathematical model based on evolutionary game theory that shows how using the past as the benchmark for evolutionary success, rather than just current performance, significantly improves cooperation in the future. Interestingly, the details of just how the past is taken into account play only second-order importance, whether it be a weighted average of past payoffs or just a single payoff value from the past. Cooperation is promoted because information from the past disables fast invasions of defectors, thus enhancing the long-term benefits of cooperative behavior. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC6342912/ /pubmed/30670732 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36486-x Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Danku, Zsuzsa Perc, Matjaž Szolnoki, Attila Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title | Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title_full | Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title_fullStr | Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title_full_unstemmed | Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title_short | Knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
title_sort | knowing the past improves cooperation in the future |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6342912/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30670732 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36486-x |
work_keys_str_mv | AT dankuzsuzsa knowingthepastimprovescooperationinthefuture AT percmatjaz knowingthepastimprovescooperationinthefuture AT szolnokiattila knowingthepastimprovescooperationinthefuture |