Customer Reviews

The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration

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4 star:		(1)
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A sequel to his prior book, "the evolution of cooperation".
Iterated prisoner's dilemma is the center of this book,
with a particular focus on the collaboration in the interests of competiion.

No mathmatical background required and usefull referenced included.

This books covers what Robert Axelrod been up to since "The Evolution of Cooperation." Extensions to the original "Prisoner's Dilemma" have required new agent behaviors for stable solutions.

"Coping with Noise" deals with agents that make mistakes in their defections and cooperation.

"Promoting Norms" covers the fact that pure self-interest isn't a stable strategy and to promote stability requires norms - common behaviors among agents. The most interesting result from his work is NOT that agents should punish defectors - that is intuitive - but agents who DON'T punish defectors (of norms) must be "persuaded" to punish defectors to keep the norm stable. I guess we all need both the carrot and stick!

"Choosing Sides" covers landscape theory - the creation of population aggregates because similar agents tend to clump together.

There are other interesting sections and I like this book. I would normally give a five to this book; however, this is also a thin book. If there were more coverage of the material and a more in depth discussion of other peoples work, I would have given it a five.