The complexity of cooperation

What Hacker News says

1. rramadassFeb 2025
   You are not quite right and there are "organized groups" active on HN influencing sensitive topics. The equivalence you are making i.e. "society is divided, the HN community is a reflection of the society and therefore the community is divided" does not say anything about how specific groups may exploit the situation and push their agenda. They are not all rational actors nor is it a zero-sum game.

   To understand what i mean take a look at;

   1) Nassim Taleb's book Skin in the Game - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_Game_(book). Specifically his The Minority Rule which basically states that an intransigent minority can almost always prevail over a flexible majority. It is the asymmetry which is being used to game the system.

   Nassim Taleb's article The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority - https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

   Nassim Taleb & Naval Ravikant video on The Minority Rule - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwlW2aamDFc

   2) Also see Game Theory(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory) and the books The Evolution of Cooperation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation), The Complexity of Cooperation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Cooperation) by Robert Axelrod

   Veritasium's video on Game Theory and Axelrod's tournaments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

   Influence decision models: From cooperative game theory to social network analysis - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15740...

   A Survey of Game Theory as Applied to Social Networks - https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.26599/TST.2020.9010005

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2. rramadassJan 2024
   A few more relevant books but coming from different angles;

   1. Why We Do What We Do : Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci. - From Psychology angle.

   2. The Evolution of Cooperation and The Complexity of Cooperation both by Robert Axelrod - From Game Theory angle.

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3. hos234Nov 2019
   > One of the things that I find challenging is getting people to think beyond a few months. We really are victims of short-term thinking.

   That's why we evolved groups to overcome individual weakness. Then bigger groups to overcome group weakness. Understanding how and why groups form/evolve/break/merge etc will change how you think about what can and can't be done by yourself.

   Check out Robert Axelrod's Evolution of Cooperation, and Complexity of Cooperation.

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4. rramadassSep 2026
   This looks quite interesting; thanks for sharing.

   A related concept is Jugaad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad Often interpreted as "good enough" with no connection to Quality at all. Even when the context/environment changes to afford better quality (both manufacturing and cost) quality is never pursued unless mandated by National/ISO standards etc.

   One way to maybe understand this is through Robert Axelrod's books; The Evolution of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation and The Complexity of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Cooperation

   But the actors are never fully rational, there is always a clique which manipulates/influences and therefore there is never a "fair" market. Human motivations and behaviour are always the key and so you need Behavioral Game Theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_game_theory (see book of the same name by Colin Camerer)

   Finally, Nassim Taleb's ideas are also very relevant here. Markets work on "Trial and Error" and "Chance", there is no "fair/efficient invisible guiding hand" but only a guiding hand by cliques which have no "skin in the game" when it comes to downsides and "asymmetric risk" benefiting corporate capitalism. But the system as a whole functions because it is somewhat "Antifragile" i.e. the chaotic interactions and successes/failures within the system somehow strengthens the whole.

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5. rramadassOct 2024
   Robert Axelrod's two books;

   The Evolution of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

   The Complexity of Cooperation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Cooperation

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6. rramadassJun 2022
   Right, Thanks for the pointer to Mancur Olson's book; I didn't know of this.

   I have read about this in Robert Axelrod's The Evolution/Complexity of Cooperation books where you can beat the "optimal" strategy by cheating (i.e. forming vested groups) as above.

   Nassim Taleb also talks about this in his books - https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

   It is also why i don't think we can have a True Democracy but only various shades of Oligarchies masquerading as Democracies.

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