Equation 15 · Part 2 · Why We Punish Strangers: The Evolution of Human Cooperation
Symbol c
What this part means
the call it.
Its job in the formula
c is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
Full expression→Symbol c→Article meaning
Where the article explains it
A plain cooperator who does not punish pays a fixed cost, call it c , simply by cooperating, regardless of how many other group members defect.
The passage around this formula
which falls as the residual pool of defectors, 1 - x - y , shrinks. Once a group happens to reach a state where . punishing costs less at the margin than plain, unpunishing cooperation does, and ordinary within-group selection stops working against the punishing type in that group. If groups that reach this state also out-compete or out-reproduce groups that never do — amplified, the authors argue, by cultural transmission mechanisms such as conformist imitation of locally common strategies, which are not available to purely genetic evolution — group-level selection can carry punishment, and the large-scale cooperation it sustains, to frequencies individual selection alone…
Learn the underlying idea
A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
Open the illustrated variables: a letter stands for a value guide →
See this notation across published equations →
Sources cited in the surrounding passage
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.