Comments on: Biology and game theory http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2557 This is a supplemental blog for a course which will cover how the social, technological, and natural worlds are connected, and how the study of networks sheds light on these connections. Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:24:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: lepidoptera http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2557#comment-1489 lepidoptera Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:44:43 +0000 http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2557#comment-1489 This sentence is very misleading: "However, as this article discusses, due to evolution and lessons learned from previous generations of bats, the bats shares the excess blood would benefit the colony as a whole and in essence allows for others to benefit as well." The reason why bats will share with other bats is that bats have memories and punish bats that don't share. A bat that doesn't share will be not shared with later on, and non-sharing bats have a measurably higher death rate. The existence of punishment changes the payoffs of the game. Doing something "for the good of the colony" does not exist in biology (or human behavior) without appropriate modification of payoffs to make it "for the good of the individual" as well. This sentence is very misleading: “However, as this article discusses, due to evolution and lessons learned from previous generations of bats, the bats shares the excess blood would benefit the colony as a whole and in essence allows for others to benefit as well.”

The reason why bats will share with other bats is that bats have memories and punish bats that don’t share. A bat that doesn’t share will be not shared with later on, and non-sharing bats have a measurably higher death rate. The existence of punishment changes the payoffs of the game.

Doing something “for the good of the colony” does not exist in biology (or human behavior) without appropriate modification of payoffs to make it “for the good of the individual” as well.

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