SUPER Cooperators.

Original title: Super Cooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed.

Title of this edition: Super Cooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed.

Author: Martin A. Nowak, Roger Highfield.

Gender: Science Divulgation.

Saga: —.

Editorial: Free Press.

Edition year: 1, 2011.

Prizes: …

Synopsis [Warning: Spoiler]: Martin A. Nowak is Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University.

This book is a small resume of his career and the problems he has been working on. His life has been dedicated to mathematics. His studies are about evolution and cooperation, and how is evolution with cooperation the true game played by life.

Personal Review: I was preparing a course for the Santa-Fe institute about complex systems when we came across this book. Was one of the suggested readings. It´s not a practical book, it´s just a nice travel into the lands of evolution and cooperation.

It´s very dangerous to resume in a few words what the book is about, but I will try to give you an idea. Basically, evolution, the subsistence of the most fitted, it’s not enough to explain some of the things we see in life. What else we need? Cooperation. is cooperation and evolution the key to life. Cooperation gives individuals a emergence power that they are not able to reach by themselves, and that in combination with evolution is what governs life.

To study this combination of evolution and cooperation, the correct tool is game theory, and that is what the book is about. Different experiments of game theory and how Nowak has been working on them and what he has found.

I think is a nice book and I learn quite a loot. Especially, I learn that a huge work has been done in this area, which was not know by me, and that interesting results has been developed.

I came across this video just a second ago. i think is interesting.

on of the most interesting part of the book is when it speaks about different games, and how rules can decide between better strategies. For isntance, if you play a game with other player and you decide to cheat and take advantage of him that strategy is going to work in the long term only if you never play again with him or if there is no way of new players to know about it. If you are supposed to encounter that player again or you reputation indicate you are a defector, then that strategy is terrible bad.

Hmmm maybe Nowak himself can explain this better.

I suggest to get a copy of the book and read it. It’s nice, its short and is written in a way accessible for all.

(And now I must prepare to my final test on the course, which is already on-line).