SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition

I enjoyed reading the book and its many ideas regarding the evolution of cooperation. I'm a bit of a Rip Van Winkle. Nearly four decades ago I had courses that assigned George Williams book, Adaptation and Natural Selection, and William D. Hamilton's classic articles. I thought that issues were pretty well settled. I recall reading J.D. Wilson's book on group selection. Intuition (not always reliable) tells me yes, it can happen, but do you really expect to find clear examples of it out there in nature? There's a political scientist, Peter Corning, who has written his entire career about what he calls the "synergy" hypothesis; I think it's a better word since it doesn't carry a lot of baggage that the word cooperation does. Those who read Nowak should also read Corning's books. Political scientists deal with power--the capacity to get others to do things that they would not otherwise do. It's sources are four: authority, coercion, persuasion, and inducements. The "games" that should be of most interest to political scientists are asymmetric. I'd like to see more research of the kind that Nowak and his team have done on asymmetric games. Policy analysts are only now starting to apply evolutionary principles to the design of public policy in ways that support, as Pinker called it, the "better angels of our nature." The book is definitely worth reading. Are the arguments right? Readers will have to sift through the evidence and decide on their own.

Martin Nowak demonstrates in a variety of ways the patterns of cooperative behavior in nature in general and Homo sapiens in particular. The data reveal that groups of individuals who cooperate with each other are more successful in survival and thus in natural selection than groups consisting of competitors. Humans have evolved in such a way as to foster our ability to cooperate, which is one of the reasons that we are so successful as a species. My communicating my opinion of his work to other potential readers is an example of this cooperative instinct and our ability to cooperate very effectively through language. On the other hand groups always have cheaters who try to profit from the group effort without contributing to it. Cooperation in groups changes in cycles: it increases to the point that cheaters can do so with relative ease but others find out about it. Language is a major tool for rooting out cheaters. After a while the cooperative behavior in the group disintegrates and the group has to start all over again. Nowak ends the book with an enigmatic chapter that suggests that humanity can transcend this vicious cycle through the victory of altruistic love.

Very clever book from a modern mathematician (sometimes too self-convinced), who studies complex evolutionary dynamics through formal modeling, with considerable results. He surprises for practical outcomes coming from such intricate abstractions, what makes Nowak a leader in the field of human cooperation. He innovates quite a bit in understanding natural selection, against the mainstream of “Darwinism” based on selfish genes and others suppositions guided by raw individual competition. Bright, creative mind (he comes form Austria, Vienna), he carries the spirit of math geniuses from Europa, where math combines very well with good academic formation, fine culture and epistemological good sense. I learned a lot from him.

The only reason I gave this book three stars is that as a non-expert I am in no position to evaluate the arguments of Nowak and his scientific critcs. However, I have some fatherly advice for his reviewers on Amazon.1) Some reviewers have criticized the autobiographical fluff in this book--Nowak's strolls through the Wienerwald in Austria with his beloved mentor and all that. Now I agree that I likewise prefer to cut through all the autobiographical fluff to get to the scientific meat. However, the fluff by Nowak and his ghostwriter Highfield is quite forgivable because their publisher probably would not have it any other way. In their book  Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner (2003-09-17) , Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato bluntly stated that the proper way to write a popular book on a scientific or technical topic is for the author to tell an autobiographical story of how she came by the scientific meat piece by piece in the first place. The autobiographical material determines the outline of the book, the technical stuff has to be shoehorned into that procrustean outline--and any technical material that does not fit into the autobiographical outline ends up on the cutting-room floor. Rabiner and Fortunato sternly warn aspiring authors that publishers won't even touch a popular book on technical topics written any other way because it won't sell. Their advice to people who have a message to get out to the world but are impatient with the human interest stuff is that they had better just resign themselves to putting their material on their personal website. As for me, I agree with Nowak's Amazon critics that the human interest stuff gets in the way of the good stuff--but I can easily forgive and empathize with Nowak and Highfield.2) This second point is the mirror image of the previous one. I have read the reviews of critics who complain that _SuperCooperators_ makes claims without proper mathematical support. Their error lies in forgetting that popular science books ought to be treated by a more lenient standard than technical ones. If you want all of Nowak's technical material, you should read his book  Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life  or his journal article in _Nature_ along with Corina Tarnita and E. O. Wilson. In his popular science book  A Brief History of Time , Professor Steven Hawking confided that his publisher advised him that every mathematical equation would cut the sales of his book in half. He proceeded to give us just one equation, E = mc2, and he begged his readers' indulgence. I'm sure Nowak and Highfield were told the same by their publisher, and their publisher would not have it any other way.3) And now some fatherly advice to a wider range of Nowak's critics, his scientific critics all over cyberspace. On the one hand, I admit that scientists and scholars need to have a thick skin because their peers will rightly challenge their work to death. Scientists scrutinize one another's work to death, and this purging process prunes away the rubbish while preserving the good stuff. Science could not advance any other way without this pruning process. However, scientists can disagree without being as disagreeable as so many of them are. Scientists like Gould, Lewontin, Coyne, and Myers have often been harsher than they have to be to make their point--and Nowak's scientific critics have been no less uncharitable. I don't expect Nowak's critics to pull their punches on technical issues: by all means, punch away! Even so, let us temper justice with mercy and criticism with professionalism!Dr. Martin A. Nowak, I have no idea whether your ideas are sense or nonsense. Only time will tell. But at least I try to be fair, and I hope your critics will do the same.

I enjoy reading this book, and learnt about game theory and cooperation, and how cooperation strategies evolve. Really recommend it to people working on complex systems dynamics.

Ein interessantes Buch, welches die Überlieferung der Menschheit bestätigt, in einer aktuellen und "modernen" weise. Ob mathematische Modelle die Wirklichkeit tatsächlich und in welchem Maße abbilden mag dahingestellt bleiben. Fakt ist, dass in der heutigen Welt, welche diese Modelle als objektiv und sachlich begreift, die Aussage des Buches bzw. der Forschungsergebnisse, die diesem Werk zugrunde liegen, dazu führen müssten und sollten, dass die Evolution nicht alleine durch reinen Egoismus (der Gene), wie insbesondere durch Philosophanten der britischen Inseln behauptet, sondern im Gegenteil durch Kooperation geschieht und zwar über:1. Wiederholung (direkte Gegenseitigkeit)2. Reputation (indirekte Wiederholung)3. räumliche Auswahl (spatial selection)4. mehrstufige Auswahl (multilevel selection)5. verwandtschaftlich bedingte Auswahl (kin selection)Was die Menschheit angeht, wird dies durch die klassische Philosophie und die religiösen Überlieferungen seit der Antike behauptet bzw. gefordert. Neu für mich war, dass dies auch für Urformen des Lebens gilt und insoweit keine Frage des (höheren...) Bewusstseins ist.

Nowak shows that with examples of any scale of life. Fascinating reading it, never boring.While one never should think that anything will be stable (also not cooperative behavior), one becomes convinced that cooperation was and will be THE only chance for life and especially mankind to evolve further.Great reading, a man who shows things how they are, not leaving one alone with views, ideology, moralistic oppinions or anything which could not be falsified.

Very gut subject, inspiring for a Better world, clear writing, makes thinking in a Oder way, which is contraries to our present sociaety!