
Survival of the Friendliest (2017) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/75/story/survival-of-the-friendliest-rp
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roenxi
I had a friend once who saw a real-life situation as Prisoners Dilemma and his
take-away was that cooperation was unlikely. My opinion was that prisoners
dilemma shows us that two parties who communicate and cooperate in such a
situation would quickly develop an unassailable advantage.

There is a real failure in how individualism is promoted. We should promote
the freedom of the individual _because_ the optimum strategy is to cooperate;
which means a free individual poses little threat to the collective but
massive upside if they think of a better way of behaving.

This is also why authoritarianism is a bad idea - if the natural equlibrium
position is cooperation, and cooperation massively outperforms the
alternatives _and then_ the situation is forced away from equilibrium, what
exactly is going to happen? Nothing good.

Just look at modern human society. There is no way that cooperation isn't the
superior strategy. There are nearly no arenas where an individual can
effectively compete with a team without people agreeing to artificial rules.

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481092
Is this the common view? I always saw "fittest" as that which is more fit for
a niche regardless of what power trait was implemented. I mentioned this
elsewhere in this [1] comment, being surprised that someone assumed "fit" was
defined in a more malicious manner but I guess this day and age, the
definition seems to be more biased towards competitive manners rather than
socially inclusive.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615981)

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deogeo
Related, "The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation":
[http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html](http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html)

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gumby
The confrontational approach is an archaic holdover of a Victorian worldview.

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m3kw9
Biggest ass kisser wins

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ape4
Don't go to war, stay behind and mate.

