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Why nasty guys rule and nice guys let them
« on: 2003-08-21 06:48:34 » |
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This is interesting. I didn't find an URL, but I posted it on the BBS here:
http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=29129
Why nasty guys rule and nice guys let them
by Colin Tudge
New Statesman, cover story, August 8, 2003
Even democracies are invariably led by the hawks in society. But we have evolved to help each other and work co-operatively, so doves will triumph in the end, writes Colin Tudge
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So why doesn't democracy work? Why has it almost never worked, except (so anthropologists tell us) in some ancient tribes, which have now been largely eliminated? Why - even in the modern societies that call themselves democratic and hold themselves up as models for the rest to follow - are nice people almost invariably led by nasty people, who screw things up?
The answer, I suggest, is provided by game theory: the notion that was formulated first by the Hungarian-American mathematician John Von Neumann in the 1930s. It describes in mathematical terms what happens when two or more individuals (or societies) interact, and so it predicts which life strategies or "games" are likely to prevail in different situations. Economists and the military were the first to seize on game theory, but in the late 20th century, the great English biologist John Maynard Smith applied it to problems of evolution. This was one of several refinements that hugely improved on Charles Darwin's initial insights of the mid-19th century, when he described the basic mechanism of natural selection. Darwinian natural selection (refined by game theory) predicts that most human beings are bound to be nice. But game theory on its own shows why the nice will lose out to the nasty unless they gird their loins, smarten up their act, put trust in their own niceness and that of others, and boot the nasties into touch. If the nice (most of us) do those things, then the future, despite all signs to the contrary, could still be rosy.
Most people will be surprised to learn that natural selection predicts innate niceness. They have heard that natural selection is rooted in competition; and in a crowded world, competition is to the death. Richard Dawkins understands evolutionary theory better than most, but even he emphasises that nature is "ruthless". Well before Darwin, theorists of all kinds took it to be self-evident that the strong are bound to bash the weak, and many post-Darwinians felt that natural selection merely ratified what had always been undeniable. But Darwin himself, gentle Whig that he was, never felt this; and he took pains to point out (although he found it puzzling) that animals are sociable. Co-operation is a winning formula - otherwise, it would not be such a common feature of nature. Also, as a good moralist, Darwin never assumed (as some post-Darwinians all too readily did) that what happens in nature is necessarily right. Nature can be vicious, but natural viciousness doesn't excuse unpleasantness in people.
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In adjusting our behaviour to others we try to anticipate how they will react. Sociality implies that we try, in general, to evoke a favourable response from the people around us. Common sense says that we will get the best response if we keep our fellows happy; and a (partly) conscious attempt to keep our fellows happy is at least the raw material of niceness.
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This is where game theory queers the pitch. Two notions are particularly pertinent: the idea of hawks and doves; and that of the freeloader.
The hawk and dove idea (which Maynard Smith in particular has discussed) begins with natural selection in its tradi-tional, Tennysonian guise of nature, red in tooth and claw. It acknowledges that survival, followed by production of progeny, is the most basic game. It acknowledges, too, that if everyone behaves peaceably and nicely and co-operatively - like doves, at least in their mythological form - then the way is open for individuals who behave hawkishly. The doves toil, and make a pleasant society in a pleasant world; but then the hawks swagger in and take what the doves have created. The doves, being doves, do not fight back. An all-dove society is in many ways splendid. No individual is hurt or treated unjustly; and because the society wastes no time and energy in fighting, and in recovering from fights, what Jeremy Bentham called "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is maximised. But, said Maynard Smith, the all-dove society is not robust. It is always liable to be invaded, not to say infected, by hawks. The hawks do not need to "invade" from outside. They arise from within - either by some genetic mutation that produces an aggressive variant, or (in creatures such as ourselves, with flexible behaviour and the ability to choose) because an individual opts to bash his or her fellows rather than play fair.
Game theory also predicts, however, that the hawks will not wax fat for ever. For a time, they will do well - and so they will multiply. Indeed, they will do so well for a time that society will soon be overrun with hawks. Then, when the hawks try to swagger in and pinch whatever they want, they find themselves confronted not by compliant doves, but by other hawks: a bloody fight ensues, in which one of the hawks is very definitely the loser. All this is inevitable, said Maynard Smith. The "evolutionarily stable state" - the state of affairs that will come about if natural selection simply runs its course - is a society with a majority of doves, but a minority of hawks. But the dovish majority will always be ruled by the hawkish minority.
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