Professionals VERBALIZED Proverbs

Winners play a tit-for-tat-like strategy, whereas losers use costly punishment. (Dreber et al. 2008)

Professionals VERBALIZED Proverbs

Dreber et. al.'s new Nature article (Dreber et al. 2008) is delicious. Delicious as Chinese dumpling: although relatively vapid in page 1 and page 4, the articles was extremely fascinating in two middle pages. The pages spoke proverbs. Proverbs were, are and shall be prevailing from East to West, from Old Testament to New Testament.

Queried how could dynamic science deemed as static proverbs, I would answer: it is science which revives and reactivate proverbs, which unveils the nature of FORCE. The professionals verbalized proverbs. I am looking forward to more of their proverbing.

Following in italic are some proverbs in the paper. In addition, page 4 is the end page and nearly blank.

Sometimes cooperation could be maintained by forgiving an opponent’s defection. At other times, defection in response to defection was able to restore cooperation. (So, both Old Testament and New Testament spoke the truth?)

Costly punishment did not re-establish cooperation.

Frequency of cooperation increases as the benefit-to-cost ratio increases.

Punishment increases the frequency of cooperation. ... however, does not increase the average payoff.

We find no correlation between the use of cooperation or defection and payoff, but a strong negative correlation between the use of punishment and payoff.

For maximizing the overall income it is best never to punish: winners don’t punish.

Winners tend to respond by using D(efection) against D(efection), whereas losers use P(unishment) against D(efection).

The response to another person’s defection is the only strategic feature that is clearly correlated with winning or losing the game. Winners play a tit-for-tat-like strategy, whereas losers use costly punishment.

The higher frequency of cooperation is usually offset by the cost of punishment, which affects both the punisher and the punished.

It is possible, however, that in longer experiments and for particular parameter values punishment might increase the average payoff.

Punishment might enable a group to exert control over individual behaviour. (...or, GOD over people?)

Costly punishment might force people to submit, but not to cooperate. (Maybe the submittal looks like cooperation, as long as it is fixed by sociological mechanisms: involuntary altruism?)

In the framework of direct reciprocity, winners do not use costly punishment, whereas losers punish and perish.

Seven patterns in the experiments: a, All-out cooperation between two top-ranked players. b, Punish and perish. c, Defection for defection can sometimes restore cooperation. d, Turning the other cheek can also restore cooperation. e, Mutual punishment is mutual destruction. f, Punishment does not restore cooperation. g, ‘‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’’

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(Chicago Manual of Style, Author-Date format; Powered by Zotero)

Dreber, Anna, David G. Rand, Drew Fudenberg, and Martin A. Nowak. 2008. Winners don't punish. Nature 452, no. 7185:348-351.

We Are the CHOSEN

Credit: New York Times David Longstreath/Associated Press

May Love and Peace be with my brethren.

Nearly Impossible

- So it is, because it still is, it is just because it is still not isn't.
- Yes.
- But so unstable...
- Not unstable only, it's fragile; it's extremely transient.
- Yes, much more transient than we thought, but - how is it possible? I mean, in spite of its transience, why we are still able to witness it?
- Sounds puzzling. But just consider it: how can we witness? How is it possible we witness it via eyes, and brains?

Zhou, S. & Zhang, D. A Nearly Neutral Model of Biodiversity. Ecology 89, 248 (2008).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/06-1817.1

Google Oikos?

In last Friday's morning when I thought that "finally this batch of data has been analysed", a new idea came up. As different situations of species-abundance matrices and environmental variable matrices in ecological communities correspond to different analyses, to choose a analysis combination is somewhat an art, and often difficult for a beginner, but still a program can give proper advices according to results of preparatory tests.

So I thought of Google Analytics, an analytic tool, a web service for website managers. Since much data can be organized and analyzed with it, and real-time results in the forms of tables and figures (some items change daily) can be sent to users in time, analyses on ecological community data will not be a tough task.

For beginners, this system can give advices and provide corresponding ways to do it, from ANOVA to its nonparametric counterpart, from regression to correlation, from principle component analysis or factor analysis to correspondence analysis or detrended correspondence analysis, from redundancy analysis to canonical correspondence analysis or detrended canonical correspondence analysis, or else multi-dimensional scaling, no matter users believe "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." like Python, or "There's more than one way to do it." like Perl, they can get results in the way they prefer, as long as they have basic knowledge and master basic skills in this field - even not, a good user interface and detailed help files in the system can provide much help.

Rights of former algorithm and program developers should be protected. Google can pay for it with its AdSense profit, and the amount can be determined by agreements, but the service should be free to users, while users' privacies should be protected too. Data access should be controlled by users, falling to different secrecy categories.

As success of facebook reveals a trend of social networking service, web services of analytics may also benefit from social networking. With users' consentience, the system can synthesize data attained with same or varied protocols, after standardization and comparison. Community data and ecosystem data, as well as the analytic results and revelations can be situated on Google Earth. This may leads to global discoveries and conclusions.

How do we call this Google service on ecology? I suggest "Google Oikos".

17:03 2008-1-13

I Love Ecology but I'm not Conservative

"Pass the point of no return, no backward glances: ... the bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn ..." (The Phantom of the Opera)

I Love Ecology, but I'm not Conservative

Robert E. Ricklefs reviewed William Cronon's perspective in the "Introduction" Chapter of "The Economy of Nature" (5e). Cronon challenged two cliche ideas:

1. Natural ecosystems have tendencies to restoration.
2. Nature would be purified if human was excluded.

Ricklefs' idea is that ecology's proceedings support Cronon, and I deeply agree with him. On the first theme, the largest tendency lies in the largest temporal scale: Evolution, although I don't know how the idea of restoration arose and maintained in the evolutionary progress. Movements in evolution showed more tendencies of acceleration, tendencies of complexity and tendencies of uncertainty, caused by lots of non-linear mechanisms and by-products, rather than tendencies of restoration.

On the second theme, I personally think that Homo Sapiens, if not other intelligent species, is what the arrow of time point to. Evolution enabled, or even "demanded" emergence of such an intelligent species. Given enough time, a living planet without an intelligent species ever is not an evolutionary stable system. As to the mechanism, researches on entropies in evolutionary dynamics may be illuminating.

It's said that many ecologists are conservative, one proof is their adoption of computer program and web services. I don't know whether this is because of conservation ecology's influences. Danger of biodiversity's loss and global environment's degeneration is pressing, but that doesn't mean it's human's original sin who brought the danger. We are tied to the chariot of evolution, and the better way is not trying to return to the past, but spend more on researches revealing rules behind. After all, as Hubbell said, there is not still a workable theory of biodiversity, to guide our ecological protection practice.

More attentions should be paid to theoretical researches in ecology, while in a large scale, an open attitude to potential change may be needed. The world may never restore a state as we thought, because "the heaven will never return, neither has it been." It may be more wise to be obedient to evolutionary rules, so I love ecology but I'm not conservative.

Harrison
2:03 2008-1-13

An Interview with Albatross Song

"Applied sciences can be done by everyone, but theoretical sciences summon geniuses." (Albatross)

An Interview with Albatross Song

It's both a pleasure and an honor to have an interview with Albatross Song. I remember most details of last visit to Albatross, and was fairly grateful for his reception: delicious food and comfortable lodge he provided, and especially, the illuminating answers he gave to me.

Albatross's research field now is ecological and economics modelling of nature conservation zone, and he is applying for a doctor candidate's position in Germany and United States. His interests continued from biology to ecology, from evolution to history, from economics to politics, from cyberspace sociology to complexity, but focused on the dynamics of organizations on each level, as well as driving forces behind, from an evolutionary viewpoint. It's really exciting. For example, why freedom? Why equality? Why love? Albatross and his colleagues are and will fix them in a mathematical and evolutionary way.

Due to my curiosity and zest, the interview lasted long and cost much time of Albatross. However, I still had many questions unasked. Nonetheless, the log I made in fragments is enlightening to me.

1. Search skills of books in foreign languages: Google Scholar for PDF; douban.com and Amazon for introductions and online selling; use the search engine of Chinese National Library's website. If you can't get access of the defined book (recently published, most likely) still, refer to the author's personal homepage. Maybe you can find a PDF there, but in a different name: that's why you can't find it with Google. The third and fourth way is really useful for me. I added the search box to my firefox browser's toolbar on my return, with the add-on "Add to Search Bar".

2. "Applied sciences can be done by everyone, but theoretical sciences summon geniuses."

3. Global media. Reuter's: real-time reporting; New York Times: the greatest tabloid in the world; AFP and German Spiegel: continental views.

4. Why did douban.com survive? What's its lesson?
a) Democracy and equality; b) Encouragement of accumulative reputation value.
A rectifying mechanism should be working to ensure b is working. Indirect rewards are better than direct ones; virtual coins are not good enough.

5. Quotes before a chapter or a speech: interesting, indicating and generalizing, probably poetical.

Other questions about software preferences, music recommendations, vocational planning and advices on studying mathematics, were not advanced in the interview in time. Really a pity. Hope I can consult Albatross again before long.

Harrison
2008-1-7