Equation 13 · Part 1 · Why We Punish Strangers: The Evolution of Human Cooperation
Symbol w_p
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is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.
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is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.
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The passage around this formula
The first is cultural group selection, formalized by Robert Boyd, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles and Peter Richerson. Their starting problem is that punishing free-riders is itself a public good — everyone in a group benefits if free-riders are deterred, but only the punisher pays the cost of deterring them, so a population of willing punishers should in principle be invaded by cooperators who never bother to punish, a “second-order” free-rider problem sitting on top of the first [ 9 ] . Their proposed way out rests on an asymmetry between the two roles. A plain cooperator who does not punish pays a fixed cost, call it c , simply by cooperating, regardless of how many other group members…
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