This is NOT an Outcome of Ideology
Evolution of “friendliness”
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“For most parameter combinations, the model predicts the evolution of a payoff-maximizing “homo economicus” with selfish preferences, as assumed by a great share of the economic literature. Very surprisingly, however, biological selection may create a “homo socialis” with other-regarding preferences, namely if offsprings tend to stay close to their parents. In such a case, clusters of friendly people, who are “conditionally cooperative”, may evolve over time. That is, they prefer to be cooperative, but they do not cooperate, as long as the interaction partners in the neighborhood are non-cooperative. In this way, they can protect themselves from being exploited. “But if by chance an unconditionally cooperative individual is born in the neighborhood one day, someone like ‘Mother Theresa’, the conditional cooperators may turn to cooperative behavior”, explains Christian Waloszek, one of the coauthors of this study. As a consequence, cooperation may spread in a cascade-like way and earn higher paysoffs, such that many friendly offspring are born. The “homo socialis” is established and begins to outnumber the selfishly optimizing “homo economicus”(my italics & bold).
Trespassing the “valley of tears”
“But it does not always go so well,” Christian Waloszek continues. “A superfriendly, unconditionally cooperative individual may be exploited by everyone, consequently getting a miserable payoff and no offspring. Hence, such people might die without an impact on the world.” That means, the evolution from the “homo economicus” to the “homo socialis” may go through a valley of tears. “Without random mutations it would never happen,” adds Helbing. However, if enough conditionally cooperative individuals are already around, the “homo socialis” spreads.
“This has fundamental implications for the way, economic theories should look like,” underlines Professor Helbing. Most of today’s economic knowledge is for the “homo economicus”, but people wonder whether that theory really applies. A comparable body of work for the “homo socialis” still needs to be written. Our economic thinking may have been totally misled. It may apply to the “untamed selfish beast” that characterized Thomas Hobbes picture of humans, when he called for the ordering hand of a state in his book “Leviathan” back in 1651. But since then, much has changed.”
Nature Scientific Report: Evolution of “Networked Minds” –
Scientists show that a Fundamentally New Kind of Economics is Needed
“In contrast, when agents reproduce locally, other-regarding preferences suddenly emerge after some time (see Fig. 1A). How does this surprising, sudden transition from the ‘homo economicus’ to the ‘homo socialis’ take place? In principle, mutations could create a random co-location of mutation-borne ‘idealists’ by coincidence after a long time28. This would lead to the formation of a cluster of cooperators of ‘supercritical’ size. Such clustering would dramatically increase the relative fitness of other-regarding agents in the cluster and create sufficiently high reproduction rates to spread friendliness.
The graphs show representative simulation runs on a 30 × 30 spatial grid with periodic boundary conditions. 60% of all sites are occupied with agents who can either cooperate or defect. The payoff of interacting agents is determined as sum of payoffs from prisoner dilemma games with all Moore neighbours. The payoff parameters are: ‘Temptation’ T = 1.1, ‘Reward’ R = 1, ‘Punishment’ P = 0, and ‘Sucker’s Payoff’ S = −1. The strategies (cooperation or defection) are updated simultaneously for all agents, applying the myopic best response rule to the utility function of each agent. It weights the payoffs of neighbours with the friendliness ρi and the own payoff with (1 − ρi). Agents die at random with probability β = 0.05. To keep population size constant, surviving agents produce offsprings proportionally to their payoff in the previous round. Offspring move to the closest empty site (ν = 1) and inherit attributes from the parent, here: the friendliness ρi. However, with probability μ = 0.05, the friendliness of offsprings mutates. With probability 0.8 it is ‘reset’ to a uniformly distributed random value between 0 and the friendliness ρi of the parent, and with probability 0.2 it takes on a uniformly distributed value between ρi and 1. (A) Average of friendliness and share of cooperating agents as a function of time (one generation is 1/β periods). (B) Average payoffs of cooperators and defectors as a function of time. Initially, defectors are more successful than cooperators. However, when the sudden transition from a ‘homo economics’ to a ‘homo socialis’ occurs, the payoffs for defectors increases, but the payoffs for cooperators increases even more, which implies higher production rates of agents with other-regarding preferences.”
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A participatory kind of economy
How will this change our economy? Today, many customers doubt that they get the best service by people who are driven by their own profits and bonuses. “Our theory predicts that the level of other-regarding preferences is distributed broadly, from selfish to altruistic. Academic education in economics has largely promoted the selfish type. Perhaps, our economic thinking needs to fundamentally change, and our economy should be run by different kinds of people,” suggests Grund. “The true capitalist has other-regarding preferences,” adds Helbing, “as the “homo socialis” earns much more payoff.” This is, because the “homo socialis” manages to overcome the downwards spiral that tends to drive the “homo economicus” towards tragedies of the commons. The breakdown of trust and cooperation in the financial markets back in 2008 might be seen as good example.
“Social media will promote a new kind of participatory economy, in which competition goes hand in hand with cooperation,” believes Helbing. Indeed, the digital economy’s paradigm of the “prosumer” states that the Internet, social platforms, 3D printers and other developments will enable the co-producing consumer. “It will be hard to tell who is consumer and who is producer”, says Christian Waloszek. “You might be both at the same time, and this creates a much more cooperative perspective.”
Further information follow the link below:
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JUST FOR THE RECORD;
Quintessence of LIFE according to THE HARMONY MODEL :
The Purpose of Life (Quintessence)
LIFE is a manifold complex process of nature evoking the godly nature of All Being – creativity, to revitalize the Human, Universal and Mankind’s Aesthetic Nature (H U MA N), with the ultimate purpose of creating the Harmonious Human Being through generations /1).
WHEEL88 