This morning I received a bottle of champagne (coincidentally my favourite alcoholic drink) from a family of complete strangers, as thanks for my doing them a favour, one I enjoyed doing and for which I had refused payment. Biology geeks might see the connection between this “exchange” and the death of John Maynard Smith on Monday.
23Apr04 — 4
You jammy git, what kind? Bollinger?
Yet again, I seem to be missing the point – as a biology based person I demand to know the “connection” I am not seeing…..
Hello CS, good to have you back. The champagne is Mumm—more than fine by me.
And JMS, as he was known, applied game theory to biological questions. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, that some have used to model the way members of a population can choose to co-operate with or cheat on their fellows, the most successful strategy on average is “Tit-for-Tat”. In other words you start out by assuming others will be good to you, and reciprocate others’ “goodness”. Of course, if they “defect”, then you do the same to them.
Or in the less elegant words of the fictional Don Vito Corleone: “You do me a favoh, I do you a favoh, paisane…”