Summer Reading from the EDGE Archive

Summer Reading from the Archive Reciprocity. Cooperation. Reputation. Trust. These building blocks of complex biological systems, from ecological dynamics to human social networks, are the subject of a fascinating body of work by philosophers, biologists, mathematicians, and beyond. This week we feature Austrian mathematician Karl Sigmund, whose research exists at the complicated intersection of mathematics and biology, and Gloria Origgi, an Italian philosopher and epistemologist who has pioneered work on knowledge creation on the Internet. In Karl Sigmund's 2004 Edge talk, "Indirect Reciprocity, Assessment Hardwiring, and Reputation," he discussed the mathematical dynamics of cooperation and his role in the development of the new field of mathematical biology. Building on Sigmund's work on reciprocity, Origgi's 2015 talk, "What is Reputation?," went a step further as she questioned the perception and reality of reputation online—and what happens to knowledge when its provenance is unknown. Between the lines of these two discussions lies a glimmer of hope. Deeper understanding? Better algorithms? Or maybe simply thinking about these properties of network dynamics will change how we relate to the information we receive and share. Enjoy. —Russell Weinberger, Edge --------------------------------------------------------------- INDIRECT RECIPROCITY, ASSESSMENT HARDWIRING, AND REPUTATION A Conversation with Karl Sigmund [December 2004] These ideas fed into our work on indirect reciprocity, a concept that was first introduced by Robert Trivers in a famous paper in the 1970s. I recall that he mentioned this idea obliquely when he wrote about something he called "general altruism." Here, you give something back not to the person to whom you owe something, but to somebody else in society. He pointed out that this also works with regard to cooperation at a high level. Trivers didn't go into details, because at the time it was not really at the center of his thinking. He was mostly interested in animal behavior, and so far indirect reciprocity has not been proven to exist in animal behavior. It might exist in some cases, but ethologists are still debating the pros and cons. In human societies, however, indirect reciprocity has a very striking effect. There is a famous anecdote about the American baseball player Yogi Berra, who said something to the effect of, "I make a point of going to other people's funerals because otherwise they won't come to mine." This is not as nonsensical as it seems. If a colleague of the university, for instance, goes faithfully to every faculty member's funeral, then the faculty will turn out strongly at his. Others reciprocate. It works. We think instinctively in terms of direct reciprocation—when I do something for you, you do something for me—but the same principle can apply in situations of indirect reciprocity. I do something for you and somebody else helps me in return. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS REPUTATION? A Conversation with Gloria Origgi [November 2015] That is basically what interests me—the double question of understanding our own biases, but also understanding the potential of using this indirect information and these indirect cues of quality of reputation in order to navigate this enormous amount of knowledge. What is interesting about the Internet, and especially about the Web, is that the Internet is not only an enormous reservoir of information, it is a reputational device. It means that it accumulates tons of evaluations of other people, so the information you get is pre-evaluated. This makes you go much faster. This is an evolutionary heuristic that we have, probably since the birth of the human mind. Follow the people who know how to treat information. Don't go yourself for the solution. Follow those who have the solution. This is a super strong drive—to learn faster. Children know very well this drive. And, of course, it can bring you to conformism and have very negative side effects, but also can make you know faster. We know faster not because there is a lot of information around, but because the information that is around is evaluated; it has a reputational label on it. [ [Read...]( ] [EDGE.ORG]( Copyright (c) 2021 by Edge Foundation, Inc., 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001. All Rights Reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](