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Title: The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod ISBN: 0-465-02121-2 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: September, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.87 (23 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: learning about co-operation
Comment: It is really a fantastic book where you can get a lot about the importance of the inter-relationships among people and companies.
Rating: 5
Summary: Yes, Life-Changing, and Hyper-Connectable
Comment: A lot of interesting material is spun up from a simple premise: a two round tournament of programs for playing Prisoner's Dilemma. Game theory is one of the great cross-disciplinary topics. As the web is woven with nodes as distinct as Jean Jacques Rousseau and why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (a personal favorite for Socratic historical discussions), somehow it not only all makes sense, but you are left with the impression that the topic and the book combine to achieve the brass ring of writing: repeatedly fetching the proufound while remaining clear and simple. (Ironically, this book makes a good companion to readings on Complexity and Emergence. But that makes some sense since those topics have turned to automata and the realization that complexity is most often a function of simple constituents iterated.)
The read this and pass it on advice from the other reviewer here is good, and apropos, as this is about the infection of cooperative strategies in populations.
Rating: 5
Summary: A true classic
Comment: This book has information for military theorists, biologists exploring gene regulation, antitrust policy-makers, and Miss Manners. It is a wonderfully clear explanation of how almost any two entities, interacting over time, develop a mutualism more profitable than greed.
The experimental support for these claims comes from a series of contests. Dozens of authors provided computer programs to play in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma - a simple model, but one that describes a surprising number of real-world phenomena. Most importantly, it's a testable model. It almost puts a common aspect of social interaction into a test tube. What came out of that test tube was startling in its clarity and simplicity.
The book is very readable. Axelrod segregates the mathematical and non-mathematical discussions with some care. Math-free readers see the whole set of experiments and conclusions, clearly explained, and need to skip only a few paragraphs during the main discussion. The last few chapters reward math-positive readers with additional precision and rigor. Even then, the math is accessible to someone with good high-school algebra skills.
Axelrod's discussion truly timeless, except for references to the Cold War as current events. I can accept that. Even though that un-war is mostly over, it's a critical part of modern history and it still informs current policy. Any insight into that madness helps, and Axelrod is very helpful.
This book stands above any one category. It's one of very few that I recommend to the bookshelves of every educated person.
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Title: The Complexity of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod ISBN: 0691015678 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 18 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.12 |
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Title: Strategy of Conflict by Thomas C. Schelling ISBN: 0674840313 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: July, 1980 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone ISBN: 038541580X Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity by John H. Holland, Heather Mimnaugh ISBN: 0201442302 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas C. Schelling ISBN: 0393090094 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 1978 List Price(USD): $19.20 |
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