Symbol w_p
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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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Symbol k
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y is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.
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Equation 13 · Evolutionary Psychology
Why We Punish Strangers: The Evolution of Human Cooperation
This equation states an equality: the expressions on both sides have the same value under the article’s assumptions.
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…