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

by M.A. Nowak, Roger Highfield

EVOLUTION IS OFTEN PRESENTED AS A STRICTLY COMPETITIVE ENDEAVOR. This point of view has had serious implications for the way we see the mechanics of both science and culture. But scientists have long wondered how societies could have evolved without some measure of cooperation. And if there was cooperation involved, how could it have arisen from nature “red in tooth and claw”?

Martin Nowak, one of the world’s experts on evolution and game theory, working here with bestselling science writer Roger Highfield, turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. He offers a new explanation for the origin of life and a new theory for the origins of language, biology’s second greatest information revolution after the emergence of genes. SuperCooperators also brings to light his game-changing work on disease. Cancer is fundamentally a failure of the body’s cells to cooperate, Nowak has discovered, but organs are cleverly designed to foster cooperation, and he explains how this new understanding can be used in novel cancer treatments.

Nowak and Highfield examine the phenomena of reciprocity, reputation, and reward, explaining how selfless behavior arises naturally from competition; how forgiveness, generosity, and kindness have a mathematical rationale; how companies can be better designed to promote cooperation; and how there is remarkable overlap between the recipe for cooperation that arises from quantitative analysis and the codes of conduct seen in major religions, such as the Golden Rule.

In his first book written for a wide audience, this hugely influential scientist explains his cutting-edge research into the mysteries of cooperation, from the rise of multicellular life to Good Samaritans. With wit and clarity, Nowak and Highfield make the case that cooperation, not competition, is the defining human trait. SuperCooperators will expand our understanding of evolution and provoke debate for years to come.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Evolution, Biology, Psychology, Mathematics, Economics

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 17, 2011

About the author

Martin A. Nowak is Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University.

(His writings are indexed under the name M.A. Nowak.)

Reviews

[Shai Sachs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super Cooperators is a book about a mathematician who develops a mathematical model to describe how cooperation might evolve out of the conditions of classical Darwinian natural selection. It's a fascinating topic described in a somewhat cloying manner. The results are fascinating: I was particularly surprised to learn about the evolutionary model of cooperative and anti-cooperative generational "waves" described in his genetic programming experiment in the first chapter, and intrigued by some of the results in graph theory as well.

Aside from that - this book is about a mathematician, not the math, which I found a little annoying and perhaps even condescending; there are a solid several paragraphs lamenting the tautological nature of "the Price equation", but not a single formula to indicate what that equation actually is!

There is no doubt that Nowak's scholarship on this topic is impressive, but I was surprised to see how little attention he gave to actual modern-day social regimes, especially in the form of corporate or governmental power. Indeed, he describes such "cooperative" endeavors as buying a cup of coffee as though they were the result of dozens of different people with various roles (coffee farmer, distributor, barista, customer, etc.) each playing the Prisoner's Dilemma and evolving into a natural state of a global coffee network. That is laughably simplistic: a whole series of complex power structures in government and commerce are also responsible, and there is no small amount of coercion in this "cooperative" network. It's only natural to have less to say about topics (like public and private power structures) which your scholarship doesn't cover, of course, but then - Nowak has written a popular book aimed at a mass audience, and a bit of curiosity about the wider world wouldn't hurt all that much. This study of cooperation is fascinating and illuminating in many ways - but it's not the whole story. Indeed you can see this shortcoming in the chapter on global warming, in which Nowak's insights on reputation - while genuinely useful - are put to such foolish ends as suggesting that global warming can be solved by shaming polluters and yet-more-greenwashing! Setting aside the research on how effective these kinds of practices actually are - somewhat, but not overwhelmingly so - it's clear that such weak forces will not be enough to actually save us from global warming, and that some degree of global market-making will be required. Anyone who lives in Boston today, as Nowak does, should know that the Tragedy of the Commons actually was averted here; our Commons is in fine shape despite heavy usage. The reason is that we have a government which regulates and maintains it actively. More broadly, it is indeed possible to have a complex cooperative endeavor spanning millions of people - it's called government; it may not be all that easy to develop an evolutionary model of such a thing.

In a similar vein, I was surprised to see just how badly he wanted to explain everything with evolution. There is no doubt that providing a plausible mathematical explanation for the evolution of cooperation is an important and impressive feat - but that doesn't mean that such an explanation is the only possible one to describe cooperation. That is a wider critique that I think biologists in general don't take to heart often enough, and it leads to such flatly silly episodes as Nowak's exposition on a gene that causes someone to jump in a river to rescue a drowning stranger. There is no "rescue a drowning stranger" gene, and to constrain one's thinking about such complex behavior is foolish. There are myriad cultural forces at work in such a scenario and, while Nowak has demonstrated how cultural forces can be examined from within an evolutionary framework, that is clearly not the only way to analyze cultural forces. As entire armies of graduate students in the humanities could testify, I'm sure.

Despite my misgivings, I do think that this field of study is genuinely useful and fascinating. The fact that cooperation is the product of natural forces is a sort of theoretical blow to social Darwinism, free-market zealotry and libertarianism - but of course who are we kidding, it's like the 10,000th in a long line of theoretical and empirical blows to those failed zombie ideologies. What is I think much more interesting is the dynamic model of cooperation, and Nowak's description of the genetic algorithms in chapter 1, as well as his insights into the power of reputation. Those strike me as insights which have predictive powers in the world of public policy, and I think that seeing those insights applied could be quite satisfying.

[Behzad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tops among my readings in 2016, not only it gives an overview of a very successful research career but also provides insights into ideas which connect many of our intuitions.

The text is very well written with internal consistency and pointers to research papers which actually helped me implement some of the simulations author discusses in detail.

Finally, Nowak broadens the scope of his research by connecting it to significant questions of our time, namely climate change and significant dependence of people on each other in the world where everyone is connected. The main point of the conclusion, as the main content of the book, is that we should be optimistic, forgiving and creative in order to tackle the challenges ahead.

[Lukáš Zorád · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a new book (2011), but fascinating reading that provides lots of insights into the world of world´s leading scientists (mathematicians, biologists, physicists and many more) whose cooperation moves the horizons of human understanding.

I was afraid that I will skip the first hundred pages as they were all dedicated to the famous “prisoners dilemma” that I had thought I am well acquainted with, but Nowak´s experiments (and that of his collaborators) have taken me away and kept me not only entertained but also in anticipation of what will happen next. The five best strategies that bear fruits in the prisoner´s dilemma offer solutions to everyday life and the book only starts there.

In addition, you might want to listen to Mahler´s third symphony while reading this book. The author describes it as one of the best works that demonstrates the power of human cooperation. Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwFu...

Oh yes, the good news is, that under most circumstances (in computer simulations, mathematical equations and (evolutionary) in the real world too), cooperation is the best known strategy to humankind. It brings the best results.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

You are much, much better off just reading his papers. Even if you're not so mathematically minded, skim the equations and just read them. I found all the memoir and fluff boring and pointless. Nowak's ideas are brilliant, but he is at his core a scientific writer.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's easy to understand evolution as competition, so why does cooperation exist? Nowak wants to explain why, and his experiments take him from Vienna to Princeton to Harvard and from game theory to viruses to group selection.

The best part, imho, was Nowak's explanation of what happened when he punched strategies for solving the prisoner's dilemma into computer models. At first, tit for tat (if you cooperate, I will too, but if you defect, I will too) is successful. But as the programs become more complex, the results become more interesting. As a general rule, selfish defectors get off to a hot start but are nearly always overcome by cooperative strategies. There are circumstances, however, in which cooperators become complacent and defectors manage to tear everything down. These models are metaphors for human interaction, so I reminded myself that Nowak was a theoretical modeller. Still, I found I couldn't look away from each game and who won.

The book also explores group selection and adjacent theories. E.O. Wilson's eusociality appears. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis appears. Trivers' ideas appear. Hardin's tragedy of the commons appears. Nowak even briefly considers Steven Pinker's thoughts on language. Richard Dawkins does appear in the book, but readers looking for a critique of these ideas could also start by punching his name and Nowak into a search engine.

We spend a lot of time discussing the relationship between authors and their novels or actors and their TV shows today, but not so much time thinking about scholars and their theories. Super Cooperators was written in 2011 and there is a lengthy section about how Nowak's career took off when he was able to found an institute with the backing of a wealthy patron, Jeffrey Epstein. Nowak outlines how Epstein wined and dined him and later took him to a remote tropical island to ask him mind bending questions like what problem life solves. Nowak writes that "a female member of Jeffrey's household rang to make arrangements. There would be a ticket to fly me to San Juan, Puerto Rico. From there, I would be picked up by helicopter. She casually added that she would be the pilot. Now I felt like I was in a James Bond movie." A "female member" of the staff would pilot him into a James Bond island? Cringeworthy does not begin to describe these passages. What's to be done with these theories and experiments? Altruism is important, as are the conditions under which people are most likely to cooperate rather than turning on one another. (Hardin's tragedy of the commons, btw, is an important theory when thinking about how to address climate change. The Southern Poverty Law Centre identifies him as a white nationalist.) Should I be taking all of my thoughts about artists and their work and applying them here, or do these studies differ from art?

Everyone who collaborated with Nowak seemed to benefit but now I wonder how much their work is tarnished by his association with Epstein. All of these scholars work at Harvard, so they must be doing OK. But I now wonder how many are individually brilliant--maybe we should think there are many brilliant minds just waiting to be given a bunch of money and some computer processing power to play with. If they get it, they'll experience similar serendipity and realizations. I hoped Super Cooperators would tell me a lot about cooperation and community, but having read it to the end, it's left me less reassured than I'd hoped.

[Francis Kayiwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read. This was a fun book to read. The premise of the book is a subject that theologians have dealt with for a lot longer than any other field of study. The title says it all. One of the toughest problems faced by many an atheist is the ability to articulate altruism. I can't say that I did a literature review of what has been written out there on the matter. What I can say is this is a good primer for anyone keen to explain altruism using mathematical modeling.

I was expecting the book to be filled with mathematical proofs. I was expecting the book to be taxing. I was pleasantly surprised in the lack of both. The bottom line is that it is very readable. In a world that is celebrity mad it was very refreshing to read about brilliant people's lives. All the `life stories` are in context, but for me it personalized science. One of the biggest problems for Science is the lack of good PR. It has been wrongly marketed for a long time that we oft forget it is done by people as passionate about their work as they would be in any field, except there are no corners to cut because your work will be found out sooner or later... Where was I? Oh the book! :-)

The premise of the book is that the tension (paradox?) between evolutions survival of the fittest and altruism/cooperation can be explained through 5 different mechanisms. Reciprocity, Reputation, Spatial Selection, Multilevel Selection and Kin Selection. Nowak takes one through the simplest of games the Prisoner's Dilemna (yes that same one) to show how the aforementioned mechanisms can explain how cooperation has evolved and continues to develop in the human species. It is here that I am delighted the book didn't have too much math in it because all of this would have been lost. I confess to taking my time to actually follow his arguments to check out if they are verifiable. It ended up becoming more work than was worth it. It also was a good reminder that my math muscles need to be re-sharpened. To me this was the success of the book. It could have been a `serious` math book and would have reached a smaller audience who would wrestle on the minutiae of the proofs. (that's what the additional reading in the back of the book is for). In all I am hanging on to this book if perhaps to give it a second go and this time actually make it an exercise.

I would recommend this to any student of maths or biology.

[uosɯɐS · Rating 5 out of 5]

My fourth book on evolution - I really had planned to stop at three and then move on to other topics but evolution is much more interesting than I expected. The author is a mathematician and a biologist. Having been a physics major myself, I appreciated the more exacting point-of-view of a mathematician, on a subject that could have easily fallen into the "whirled peas" category. It was interesting to read this book at the same time that I have been reading Time Reborn by physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin thinks it is a mistake to regard all things mathematical as belonging to a realm of "timeless truth," and that physics could benefit greatly from thinking more like evolutionists, instead of seeking to create unchanging, absolute laws. Nowak, probably a mathematician at heart but with an odd taste for evolutionary biology, is trying to do the opposite (provide more absolute and mathematical laws for evolution). It seems that evolution still suffers from "physics envy." Although cross-pollination between disciplines in undoubtedly fruitful, I tend to think (perhaps more like Smolin?), that those with physics envy should just study a bit more physics and they'll get over it.

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5/4/2024
I seem to remember it also mentioned that Eastern European culture "different", rougher. The "forgiving" strategy didn't work as well there, so it tends not to persist. I wonder if anything can be done for them?

[Martin Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book gives a good overview of the application of mathematical biology to the study of cooperative behavior in nature. Before reading the book, I thought that the selfish gene theory was what was still believed. The book shows that selfish gene theory in the form of kinship selection does play a small role in evolution and that much of what was thought to be kinship selection can be ascribed to selection at the group level. There are in all five mechanisms that are currently known that allow for the evolution of cooperation. The conditions for each one can be described by an associated inequality. It was interesting to see how the simulations showed that direct reciprocal cooperation is unstable and that it goes through a cyclic pattern. I don't know if any evidence of this has been found in nature. It was also unclear if any of the other four cooperative mechanisms have similar cyclic pattern.

There was much discussion about the personalities involved in the research. Some may find this distracting, but I enjoyed it. I do wish that more mathematical detail could have been given. Most of the research is so recent that there are no books that contain it and it can only be found in journal articles.

[Taka · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last chapter/epilogue was, as with most epilogues, a little disappointing and sort of worthless. From the chapter and a bit I read of Nowak’s other book (Evolutionary Dynamics), his gift is in explaining mathematics with numbers and formulas, and probably not in conveying it to the lay audience only with words. SuperCooperators is a math-phobic book, banishing almost all numbers and formulas—the fascinating parts!—and replacing them with banal, vague, and ultimately unsatisfying glosses of those concepts. There are not even graphs to talk about graph theory or the myriad Prisoners’ dilemmas. The prose is simple and direct, exuding the friendly, enthusiastic, and genuine personality (punctuated with his co-author’s more fluent passages), but he’s no wordsmith (and you shouldn’t expect him to be—he’s after all a theoretical biologist!). To the extent that he failed to use his gift of mathematical explication to his full advantage, he basically crippled himself and made the book just another book on the mysterious knowledge of mathematics that the lay audience is barred from. In other words, a mediocre book. It could have been great.

[Blair Conrad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty disappointing. Really, it seemed to be almost content-free, after the initial discussion of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the contests organized around the same.
Like many "popular science" books, this one paired a researcher and a writer, so the researcher's ideas could be palatable to normal people. Unlike other such books, this pairing was a failure. It seemed like the book was constructed in a way to not include too much math for normal people, but not include too much soft content for the scientists. The result was a book that didn't offend, but didn't have anything to offer anyone. And way too many stories about how Nowak met this person who (in addition to being a brilliant researcher) liked to play guitar or squash or whatever...

[Vegard Pettersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book.

Throughout the book, Nowak keeps the style light and the reader entertained, by drawing on his life-long experience in the field of game theory, in which he has worked together with academics and mathematicians to distill the foundations of what it is that makes us cooperate - and what makes us defect.

A highly entertaining and enjoyable read, and a must-read for anyone interested in the science of cooperation!

[rohola zandie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"SuperCooperators" explores the topic of evolutionary game theory, addressing the central question: If evolution predominantly revolves around individual competition, why do we observe extensive cooperation in nature, from ants and cellular interactions to entire societies and altruism? Evolutionary game theory provides explanations for this phenomenon. The book opens with the classic prisoner's dilemma scenario, illustrating that cooperation often yields better outcomes than defection. Martin Nowak, a leading scientist in this field, examines various strategies of collective behavior through the lens of game theory. Some notable strategies include:

Direct reciprocity: This involves mutual benefit through simple cooperation. The optimal strategy is 'generous tit for tat,' where one starts with cooperation and continues to cooperate despite occasional defections, only ceasing after a specific threshold. Other less effective strategies include constant defection and the standard 'tit for tat' (retaliating immediately after being defected upon).
Indirect reciprocity: This strategy depends on reputation and memory, where individuals cooperate with those known for previous cooperation or good reputation, while avoiding known defectors. This mechanism facilitates the spread of information about reliable participants.
Multilevel selection: This perspective focuses on groups rather than individuals, making it clearer how cooperative groups can achieve significant accomplishments.
Unlike the static solutions of Nash equilibrium, population dynamics in evolutionary game theory are fluid, with strategies evolving continuously. Typically, cooperators increase in number and trust, until a minority of defectors exploit the situation, leading to a cyclical dominance of strategies.

Further sections of the book extend these concepts to genetics, demonstrating how cooperation among life's molecules fosters multicellularity and complex life forms. The concluding chapters delve into evolutionary graph theory and set theory, applying these ideas to structured populations, like social networks or groups.

However, the book's length could be significantly reduced without sacrificing content. Nowak occasionally digresses into personal anecdotes and attempts to link his theories to climate change, which, while aiming to demonstrate relevance, unfortunately add bulk without enhancing the core message.

[José Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro longo, em que a trajetória científica e como pesquisador do primeiro autor é contada, como pano de fundo para falar de evolução. Mas, não apenas da evolução que acontece nos genes por mutação, mas também outras faces da evolução (como por exemplo a social, a das redes dinâmicas,etc ). O foco do livro é explorar mais um requisito da evolução que é a cooperação, que depende da mutação e da seleção para se manifestar. Particularmente interessante e muito bem explorado pelos autores é a Teoria dos Jogos, em particular o Dilema do Prisioneiro e seu papel como modelo matemático para entender a cooperação na evolução. Apenas uma crítica, o livro é muito longo, com metade das páginas ficaria de bom tamanho. Mas nós leitores deixaríamos de conhecer a rica e fascinante carreira do primeiro autor, Martin Nowak.

[Martin Henson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really didn't want to be too critical or disappointed with this book. Martin Nowak is something of an hero of mine and without doubt a very very important intellectual. I have enough background to read - with reasonable comprehension - his academic papers, and in that sense, this book is not really for me. However, there wasn't really too much to like - perhaps *especially* for those with no prior knowledge or background. I had hoped the book would set out the conceptual landscape - in a reasonably detailed and challenging way for the interested reader - as, of course, individual academic papers are, in contrast, focused solely on one small but important part.

Part of the problem is, probably, due to the ghost writing - which has led to a weirdly unbalanced style in which we get a great deal of personal biography (references to his favourite music and literature) while avoiding - almost at all costs - anything that would have the reader do some actual work. The result is prose that is sometimes so lacking in detail that it is unclear that anyone could make anything of it. What, for example, is the point of mentioning Wittgenstein on rule following (and even more perplexing, the subtle and complex differences with Kripke's (in my view bizarre) reading), without any detail of either beyond their names. Maybe there is something interesting here - but all we really get is a little biographical story about one of his collaborators. Unfortunately there are loads of other similar examples. And, as at least one other review has noted, it ends up being a book that's more about the author than the work.

On the other hand, the first five chapters do give a flavour of evolutionary explorations of the prisoners' dilemma (also well summarised at the very end of the book). Other chapters - though less well, because the material on which it is based is more complex - cover evolutionary games on networks, static and dynamic.

Though the book is not great, the work on which it is based is spectacular! Frustrated! I would have liked him to take us a little more seriously!

[Katja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Martin Nowak is a professor at Harvard who has published about 40 articles in Nature (!), and this book is about all kinds of problems he has worked on, the main theme is cooperation: how it evolves and propagates in a network of agents. The book is easy to read, requires zero background in math or sciences and tells all kinds of stories about semi-famous people. The fact that the book is so non-technical can be seen as a drawback, too, because understanding Nowak's papers like those published in Nature is not easy, and it seems that the high-level presentation simplifies things quite a bit. For example, talking about language acquisition or the Inclusive fitness theory he would say: "we built a model and found a constraint on the Universal grammar", or "we built a model which explains the data better than Hamilton's rule". But is it really so? There is a huge debate whether one needs to postulate the existence of the Universal grammar at all, so if there is no such thing, what is it that his model shows? With regard to the inclusive fitness theory, Richard Dawkins' comment was that Nowak and co-authors never really understood it. Again, what is it then that their model demonstrated? Overall, it is inspiring to see how Nowak and his team tackle very different problems -- from cancer to language acquisition to modeling cooperation among ants -- but one should take his cheerful conclusions with a grain of salt.

[Robert Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought back and forth between doing 4 or 5 stars. Ultimately, I sided on 5 because the current scoring of the book is lower than it should be.

The reason I thought about giving it 4 is because this book has the burden of authors who are too familiar with the subject yet writing for a popular audience, and so they don't go into enough detail or spend enough time working out exactly how game theory works and why it is significant. So the book ends up being too advanced for popular groups and too simple for experts.

But, for that large swath of the population who are amateur game theorists (and there are a lot of us out there), this book is superb. It lays out the advances in game theory and nuances a lot of the bad pop game theory that is thrown about (e.g. tit-for-tat is always the best play, ergo retributive justice is the right way to order society). I'd highly recommend the book for anyone who already knows what the Prisoner's Dilemma is.

[Michiel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess that after 'Evolutionary Dynamics' this one could only disappoint. This is a bad example of presenting your complicated field off research to the broad public.

Removing all the equations out of ED was probably fair as most people have no message to this. Though it was not an added value to add a truckload of anecdotes and little histories of all the people involved. Yes, professor Nowak has met everybody in science who is worth knowing, from Dawkins to Hawkins and has written more Science and Nature papers than anyone cares to count. But I would think thing this biological equivalent of the theory of everything is interesting in its own? And why are there no pictures? ED was a very visual book and I frankly don't know if people who haven't read this one will be able to follow everything that was presented...

Overall, I do not think this was a very bad book, it only could be SO much more.

[Eivind · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual content is good. However the book is a annoying mixture of presenting mathemathical work on the mechanics of cooperation and defection (which is good) and a near endless series of personal anecdotes that seem designed primarily to give the idea that the Author is a splendid kind of person.

Yes I get it, FAMOUS scientists went to the same university he did. He has met many nobel-prize winners. He once got a desk from some famous scientist. He likes to walk in the forest and listen to classical music etc etc etc ad nauseum.

This material is all well and good for a autobiography, but when you're reading the book to learn about cooperation, it is a distraction and annoying.

If you can manage not to toss the book at the wall in frustration though, then you will actually learn something worthwhile, and for this reason I give it 4 stars.

Make it half as long by removing all the irrelevant chaff, and it's worth 5 stars.

[Thomas Edmund · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some of the most insightful stuff about (human) nature I've read in some time. Although I will say it was hard biological and mathmatical slog through the central part of this book.

Luckily thats what chapters are for - if you're looking for the layman's summaries and most useful pages - just miss out the "Feats of Cooperation" section which largely focusses on biology and while being totally informative, is not the easiest read.

Overall though - Supercooperators is a must read for those interested in making the world a better place - the chapter "Punish and Perish" was my favourite, required reading for behaviourists and managers alike.

[Jysoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on mathematical models, the authors describes five mechanisms for achieving cooperation - repetition, reputation, spatial selection, multilevel selection, and kin selection. A simpler way to describe the book is "variations of the prisoner's dilemma". I am truly impressed with the breadth and depth of variations pursued by the authors and their collaborators, which gives insights (or words) for many real world situations. However, I am not too happy with the style of writing. Actually, it was often boring. It is a bit long with personal episode, which is not interesting (to me). For me, his writing for master class of the Edge is just perfect.

[Anne-marie Branch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prisoner's Dilemma experiments are not a topic I would expect to ENJOY reading about! Nowak's writing is entirely 'consumable',and, thoroughly entertaining, which causes me to rate this book Supercooperatorshighly.....I am engaged in fundraising for a large international development not-for-profit, found the rationale for caring about others across the globe to be compelling. I will reread this book many times, I do hope Nowak's conclusions about the underlying basis for human altruism enter the realm of 'common knowledge' .

[Sannu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started off very slowly, but once the essentials are ready, this book whims with profound ideas. Very rarely one would see a scientist like Martin, he is able to see and perceive​ wide range of topics from evolution, kin-selection, reciprocal alturism, cancer, society dynamics, global warming, virus propagation, and even language formation through the lens of game theory. There is unified direction in which the book hurls through, and it is about understanding the importance of cooperation in evolution. The core ideas in this book are immensely close to my heart, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Martin's research and this book is genius. Highly recommended!

[Charlie Close · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book so far on evolution and altruism. A great treatment of the Prisoners Dilemma.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Similar feel to Sapiens in a way. Ch 1-5 is easy enough maths, 6-8 is biology (skipped 6 &7), 9-14 is interesting sociology.

[Bogdan Balostin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's interesting that the concepts presented in this book mirror the real life of the author and scientists involved in part of the research the book is based on.

It has brilliant concepts, and it's maybe riddled with too many self-references and biographical notes that are not really the topic of this book but the worst thing and the reason this book receives one-star from me is the portrayal of Jeffrey Epstein as the goodhearted billionaire interested in the advancement of science, as well as the on-going collaboration between him and the author even after he pleaded guilty of being a sex offender. The reason I make this review about him and not, as many say that I should separate science from the individual, is because a lot of science has been done with unwilling human sacrifices and that needs to stop if we don't want to lose complete trust in science. So many breakthroughs relied on war prisoners, victims of war, muddled ethics, and now the laundered money coming from sex trafficking. This needs to stop because the scientific method is a wonderful tool to understand nature and even ourselves, but if we let it sink into the depths of corruption, we may never get it back untainted.

But how and why this relates to the research. The book is all about collaboration and how everything we have, the modern technology, our mastery over nature, etc is due to collaboration evolutionary mechanisms, based on mathematical proofs. It turns out collaboration is more powerful than punishment. And professor Nowak practices what he speaks, hence the mention of so many wonderful people in his book, including Jeffrey Epstein. He was willing to turn a blind eye to his doing in exchange for his money and power of influence in order to advance the knowledge corpus of science. (It's hard to argue that he didn't notice anything suspicious about Epstein, especially after first being investigated by the police.) Cooperation should prove more fruitful than not accepting corrupt money.

Yet there is a problem, if such people are allowed to go on unpunished, they will not change because they encounter generosity and eventually will feel the need to give. True Epstein laundered money through scientific enterprises but why is nobody caring about his victims?

The chapter on Climate Change should prove more relevant to the problem I have with this incomplete view of cooperation. It turns out that groups of cooperative people (who limited the punishment) went ahead compared to those who employed more punitive measures. Yet if some big agents who have great power are just stealing the fund reserved for combating climate, they will not be convinced without any punitive measure to change their mind, especially if they have the ability to steal the whole fund. That makes a generous collaboration worse than a collaboration based on punitive sanctions for abnormal members of the network.

The model works if we assume all nodes in a network are more or less the same in terms of capabilities. Yet with a more structured and hierarchical, maybe more complex network and sets of networks, big players have an advantage, especially if they turn to defectors. Indeed, it may be possible that their supremacy was built on cooperation, but what happens when there's no incentive to further collaborate?

As you see, if you skip the biographical notes, the research is intriguing and it doesn't offer all the answers, of course, but further possible research. Unfortunately, we should aim to do ethical research, even when it seems that an ethical code is there just to put more obstacles in the way of solving problems. In this case, the gamble didn't pay off for professor Nowak, but who knows how many people manage to get away with serious unethical research that only stains the reputation of the scientific method?

[Alb85 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Spero che nel corso della lettura di questo libro diventi chiaro che, per quanto la cosa possa sembrare paradossale, il comportamento altruistico può emergere come diretta conseguenza dei motivi egoistici di un giocatore razionale.” Martin Nowak

Molto interessante la prima parte sulla reciprocità diretta che descrive in dettaglio il dilemma del prigioniero, “Il dilemma sorge dal fatto che, se entrambi seguite la migliore strategia dominante, quella più razionale, entrambi vi troverete peggio che se aveste taciuto.”
Non poteva non parlare di “tit for tat” (espressione inglese traducibile genericamente con occhio per occhio per l’aspetto egoistico o con se tu fai una cosa per me, io faccio una cosa per te per l’aspetto collaborativo).

L’efficacia della reciprocità diretta è che due persone devono avere ripetuti contatti, così che possa esserci un’opportunità di ripagare gli atti di cortesia.

L’autore fa però notare che anche errori infrequenti possono avere conseguenze devastanti. Quando la strategia tit for tat è opposta a un avversario che adotta la stessa strategia, può innescare infiniti cicli di rappresaglia. Poiché tutto ciò che si sa fare è ribattere colpo su colpo, un segnale confuso o un errore possono portare chi sceglie la strategia tit for tat a una spirale di violenze. In un contesto come questo dove per erroe l’avversario defeziona gli si da una esconda opportunità. Il tit for tat generoso funziona in questo modo: non dimenticare mai una risposta buona, ma di tanto in tanto dimenticarne una cattiva.

In generale comunque non c’è una strategia stabile. “Nel complesso i cicli si susseguono sempre in modo prevedibile, passando da tutti defezionisti a tit for tat a tit for tat generosi, e poi a tutti cooperatori. Infine, con un grande disastro, la composizione della comunità subisce un drastico mutamento tornando a essere dominata da vili defezionisti. La buona notizia è che il torneo è dominato da una strategia ragionevolmente onesta: se si calcola la media della durata delle singole strategie sull’intera durata di un gioco, la strategia più comune risulta essere quella del tit for tat generoso.”

Da menzionare la strategia “la strategia win stay, lose shift”. Se nell’ultimo turno abbiamo cooperato entrambi, io coopererò ancora una volta. Se abbiamo tradito entrambi, io coopererò (con una certa probabilità). Se tu hai cooperato e io tradito, io tradirò ancora. Se tu hai tradito e io ho cooperato, io tradirò.

Secondo l’autore è stata la domanda di cooperazione sociale attraverso la reciprocità indiretta a promuovere l’evoluzione del linguaggio umano. La reciprocità indiretta è basata sulla forza della reputazione.

Interessante il capitolo sulle formiche: >“Mentre noi mandiamo in guerra i giovani, le formiche mandano le loro vecchie signore.”

E ancora: “la nostra civiltà quanto quella delle formiche tagliafoglie devono la loro esistenza all’agricoltura. La cosa notevole è che, mentre il nostro rapporto con le piante ha catapultato la nostra specie fuori dallo stile di vita delle società dei cacciatori- raccoglitori circa 10 000 anni fa, alcuni insetti sociali avevano compiuto questa transizione 60 milioni di anni prima.“

“La funzione matematica che spiega questo decadimento dice che un verbo usato 100 volte meno spesso si regolarizzerà 10 volte più rapidamente. Per esprimerci in un altro modo, i verbi si evolvono a un ritmo inversamente proporzionale alla radice quadrata della loro dominanza nella lingua inglese. Un verbo irregolare che ricorre meno spesso sarà dimenticato più rapidamente. Così i verbi irregolari si comportano esattamente come gli atomi radioattivi e hanno anche loro un periodo di dimezzamento. E noi possiamo calcolare il periodo di dimezzamento dei verbi irregolari sulla base della loro frequenza.”

Il dilemma del prigioniero è un gioco per due persone. Variando la scala si finisce col trovarsi impegnati in un gioco dei beni comuni.

La pubblicizzazione ha un’importanza critica: quando sono in gioco risorse comuni, gli altri devono sapere che stiamo facendo la nostra parte per salvare il mondo. Soltanto allora la considerazione che un individuo ha per la propria reputazione potrà essere sfruttata a fondo.
“La remunerazione conduce a forme di cooperazione più creative di quelle a cui può condurre la punizione. La remunerazione non si limita a farci lavorare insieme in modo più efficace, ma stimola anche la creatività. La vera madre dell’invenzione è la remunerazione, non la necessità.”

Nel libro prova a mettere in una forma coerente le sue principali ricerche sulla cooperazione. A mio avviso questa operazione non gli riesce benissimo. La prima parte è quella più interessante, mentre il resto del libro comprende ricerche più di nicchia.
Non mi è piaciuto il format del libro, poco incentrato sulle rircerche dell'autore e molto sulle sue vicende personali, di dove si trovava quando ha avuto un’intuizione oppure sulle personalità dei suoi colleghi.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evolution's "natural selection" is often portrayed as an "every man / organism for himself" battle. Reconciling the selective logic to favor one's own genes over other genes with cooperation (or putting oneself at risk to help others) has been an issue since Darwin. Observations show even in pre-human species cooperation is used, but doesn't necessarily tell us why. The central theme of this book is the use of mathematical modeling and simulations in order to show what kinds of selfish or cooperative strategies actually can prevail.

In the mathemeatical discipline of game theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma game has shown that acting selfishly may be a reasonable strategy when you won't have to interact with the same person in the future, but if you'll have to repeatedly interact with the same person it is a poor strategy. Initially, in computer simulations, the best strategy seemed to be to act against the other person once for every time the other person acted against you. However, it was later recognized that this isn't the best strategy for humans - because humans are imperfect. Humans sometimes mis-remember who treated them well or poorly the last time, humans may make mistakes, humans may act out of character when having a bad day. Therefore, the best strategy is to always treat someone good after they treat you good, and treat them poorly more often than not after they treat you poorly.

In computer simulations in which "individuals" using various strategies interact, they find the dominant strategy changes over time. At first, it's the selfish strategy that does best, but then increasingly cooperative strategies dominate. Eventually, an always-cooperate strategy dominates for a while. But in that situation, the selfish strategy is able to gain ground again - and the cycle repeats. [The book doesn't discuss how an organized society working to influence this might achieve. A society which was aware of these possible cycles could maintain penalties for types of selfish behavior so there wouldn't be a true "always cooperate" strategy phase.]

The next section is on indirect reciprocity and reputation. Indirect reciprocity adds an additional dimension to members of a society getting help when they need it. IF Person A helps Person B, there are fewer possibilities for Person A to get help in the future if it depends solely on Person B being able to help Person A in the way that in needed. However, Person B may have a family member or friend who is willing to return the favor to Person A. Reputation can expand this further. If people know that Person A helps others when they need it, they are more likely to help Person A when he needs it. They know Person A is the kind of person who will help them or people they care about. Helping those known to be Good Samaritans tends to maintain a society with a number of Good Samaritans, average people who have received help (and therefore are more likely to be helpful) and a sense of friendly community - all of which increase the probability that someone or other will help you when you need it. Meanwhile, if you have a reputation of not helping others, people will be less likely to help you. That reduces the survival prospects of those who never help others and might encourage those who prefer not to help others to be occassionally helpful in order to be able to get help when they need it.

[I've wondered why people are so helpful to the blind. A blind person may be less able to reciprocate, as much as he wants to. So, why don't people prefer helping non-disabled persons? Just empathy may not do it. Perhaps, when Person A helps Person B, Person A feels good about himself - he feels capable and successful. The psychology of intelligent beings makes us want to associate good outcomes with wise choices. If we can do what others can't, we think well of ourselves. Each person has strengths and weaknesses, so each person can help someone else with something. If this is a factor, it need not be blind people we're helping. There may be ways to encourage cooperation this way without over-inflating egos.]

The indirect recipocity section discusses what strategies would take into account the good and bad reputations of others and the actions we take toward them that would affect our repuations. They find this leads to a growing matrix of peossible strategies. One consideration is that Person A may have good reason not to help Person B, but if that reason isn't clear to others, Person A may get a bad reputation if he doesn't help Person B.

In the third section, the author explains that the previous strategies had been based on individuals interacting in random combinations. He explains that when simulations of cooperative and selfish strategies take place in a more structured setting or where a chessboard pattern makes some people neighbors then cooperative strategies do better.

Group selection. His model indicates that groups with cooperation do better when there are many small groups, but not so well when there are a few large groups. Migration of selfish exploiters from one cooperative group to another undermines the sucess of cooperation.

Kin selection. He says that while there seems to be some logic in cooperative help to kin and therefore helping one's own genes survive, there are issues in the mathematical modeling of this. The evidence isn't as clear, but may still be a factor.

The remainder of the book presents work the author did in areas such as how selfish / cooperative interactions within organisms can improve their evolutionary advantage, how "cooperation" or "non-cooperation" among pre-life molecules could play are role in the development of life, and the evolution of language. These topics will be of interest to some readers, but may not seem relevant to some readers who wish to focus on the role of cooperation among members of an intelligent species.

The discussion on the "evolution" of pre-life molecules may be of interest to those interested in the probability of life on other worlds, and those who have wondered why those Earth life-forms we tend to be familiar with seem to all have the same primordial ancestor - rather than there having been multiple independent "first organisms".

He discusses individual life-style choices related to climate change in terms of selfish / cooperative action. However, there's little about business choices, government regulation or the like.

The author follows his career in mathematical disciplines related to evolution, cooperation and social interactions. This includes his team building the areas of evolutionary graph theory and evolutionary set theory. It continues to add more facets to the previous understanding. Among other things, we learn that cooperation is more successful in smaller groups where individuals can expect repeated interactions with the same people and in situations where people have various potential types of connections to others which allows them to find groups where cooperation is active, and where individuals can find others with multiple commonalities on which to bond.

If I had to choose between relying on observations of the real world or mathematical simulations to determine what theory was correct, I'd choose the observations. However, having both suggest to us the usefulness of cooperation makes the case stronger.

[Patrick Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were editing this book, I would suggest that the last word in the subtitle should be “survive” and not “succeed.” We really do need each other to survive, and although Mr. Nowak does spend some time arguing that point, I would have wanted him to give it more emphasis. In his defense, the effects of climate change and other existential threats were less dire in 2011 when this book was published.

It would be interesting to read a new edition if Mr. Nowak were to take the science of Suzanne Simard (Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest) and the wisdom of Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, others) into account. They offer insights into reciprocity and cooperation in natural realms where they were heretofore hidden.

We may know intuitively that cooperation is better for humankind that competition, but this book provides evidence to support that conclusion that nerds, and especially competitive nerds, will understand and appreciate. A worthwhile read for math aficionados and math-challenged folks alike.

[David Risstrom]

Super co-operators is much more about maths and the people that fiddle with it to do good, rather than the myriad of tales about ants, bees and chimpanzees I had expected. I really enjoyed it.

I would call this book close to essential reading for those among us seriously interested in helping to improve the world. Somewhat discursive, taking us through his academic wanderings amongst people using their minds to understand how we interact, the story is full of lessons about how we co-operate.

I was a devotee of the ‘tit for tat’ approach Peter Singer had advanced some time ago, but realise that the situation is much more nuanced than I then understood. The book concludes with five ‘mechanics of cooperation’ that Martin has gleaned from his endeavours. I’ll let you read the book to understand them, as simply listing them is unlikely to help you. Concluding with The Next Steps For [Hu]Mankind, Martin invites us to think, act and co-operate on things that in my mind, challenge how and who among us will survive to a future we want. Good on you Martin.

While a reasonably solid book to read, I highly recommend it as something you can choose to learn from.

[Robert Bogue]

It’s time to draw the line between the dots. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed is the final missing piece that connects the dots between Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, The Evolution of Cooperation, Does Altruism Exist?, and Adam Grant’s Give and Take. It’s the bit that explains how givers – cooperators – can end up on both the top and the bottom. It’s the part that explains how defectors can get the best of cooperators – or be rooted out by the cooperators depending upon the conditions.

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