4 ms·

Does Conflict Drive Cooperation?

43 points by datelligence 10y ago

danharaj 10y ago
Peter Kropotkin thought so about intraspecies cooperation being driven by conflict with a harsh environment, much of his evidence coming from observing wildlife in Siberia which is quite a harsh place to live. Here is a note about his work by Stephen Jay Gould: https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.ht...
raz32dust 10y ago
This can be summarized in the old adage, (roughly) "There is nothing that binds people together like a common enemy". I don't see anything ground breaking here. External conflict can cause internal unification. Of course, to elicit cooperation, there needs to be a common benefit or good to all parties involved. But external conflict is not the only possible stimulus, though it might be the easiest to trigger.
MichaelMoser123 10y ago
There is a very interesting talk/interview with Peter Turchin here https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=q6fx3AN0tlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=q6fx3AN0tlo It is about the follow up to the book discussed in the link: 'Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth' https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Years-Humans-Greatest-Cooperators-ebook/dp/B0185P69LU https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Years-Humans-Greatest-Co... Turchin is the founder of Cliohistory - he is trying to formulate mathematical models that can describe history in the sense that it checks if social theory corresponds to the models - similar (but not identical) idea as the fictional psychohistory of Asimov's foundation series.
erikb 10y ago
I really like the article and what I've read from the free pages of the book on Amazon. The concept of metaethnicity struck a cord with me immediately. I spend quite some time outside the borders of my own country and took care of foreign students during my university time. Thereby I also developed that feeling that a country is not just one ethnic group, but many. And even a single individual doesn't just belong to one group, but to many. Also I personally never was able to associate myself with a single group alone, always felt e.g. hackers have some interesting concepts I agree with, nerds have some interesting concepts I agree with, scientists, Warhammer 40k players, punk rockers, at the same time communists AND capitalists and so forth. But no group alone - so I felt- could represent what I stand for. And that is a real problem when trying to find a purpose in this society I live in, where people believe you are an individualist because you decide which group you fully associate with. That sounds strange and it is. But something I don't understand. The book defines Asabiya (as quoted in the blog) as this: > Asabiya of a group is the ability of its members to stick together, to cooperate So it's a measure of cooperation. But then the essay goes on to talk about it's competitional aspects: > If asabiya is supposed to predict the winner of an inter-group contest, then one must be careful to measure it in some way other than by counting victories in inter-group contests. Why? Why should a cooperative value be measured in wins against others? I would say the following are good measures of cooperation, and are indirectly(!) able to predict competitive capability as well as comparison of this capability: - 1 divided by the number of tax frauds, equalized over the population could measure the cooperation of a country - The total revenue of a company (this is obviously discussable) - The mean grade of a class (cooperation between teacher and students) - The number of successfully graduating students of a university - The average time of a customer in an entertainment park like Legoland or Disneyland - The total daily amount of tips of a restaurant Sure, if you have two restaurants and one is able to generate only slightly more tips, then it's hard to say who would win in a competition for customers. But if the numbers are big enough it's quite clear, e.g. if one restaurant makes $10 and the other makes $765 then it's quite clear the second one must cooperate a lot better (of course considering all other factors equal, as is done in science). Thus I think if we look at "what are they cooperating on? Which values are depending more on the result of cooperation than on the individuals output?" then we can find a lot of ways to measure cooperation without including competition. And I find this very important since the final, visionary (=not achievable) goal should be to get rid of competition altogether. And you can't really do that if you put it in the formula which you then use to measure your success.

43 points by datelligence 10y ago

Peter Kropotkin thought so about intraspecies cooperation being driven by conflict with a harsh environment, much of his evidence coming from observing wildlife in Siberia which is quite a harsh place to live. Here is a note about his work by Stephen Jay Gould: https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.ht...

raz32dust 10y ago

This can be summarized in the old adage, (roughly) "There is nothing that binds people together like a common enemy". I don't see anything ground breaking here. External conflict can cause internal unification. Of course, to elicit cooperation, there needs to be a common benefit or good to all parties involved. But external conflict is not the only possible stimulus, though it might be the easiest to trigger.

MichaelMoser123 10y ago

There is a very interesting talk/interview with Peter Turchin here https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=q6fx3AN0tlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=q6fx3AN0tlo It is about the follow up to the book discussed in the link: 'Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth' https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Years-Humans-Greatest-Cooperators-ebook/dp/B0185P69LU https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Years-Humans-Greatest-Co... Turchin is the founder of Cliohistory - he is trying to formulate mathematical models that can describe history in the sense that it checks if social theory corresponds to the models - similar (but not identical) idea as the fictional psychohistory of Asimov's foundation series.

erikb 10y ago

I really like the article and what I've read from the free pages of the book on Amazon. The concept of metaethnicity struck a cord with me immediately. I spend quite some time outside the borders of my own country and took care of foreign students during my university time. Thereby I also developed that feeling that a country is not just one ethnic group, but many. And even a single individual doesn't just belong to one group, but to many. Also I personally never was able to associate myself with a single group alone, always felt e.g. hackers have some interesting concepts I agree with, nerds have some interesting concepts I agree with, scientists, Warhammer 40k players, punk rockers, at the same time communists AND capitalists and so forth. But no group alone - so I felt- could represent what I stand for. And that is a real problem when trying to find a purpose in this society I live in, where people believe you are an individualist because you decide which group you fully associate with. That sounds strange and it is. But something I don't understand. The book defines Asabiya (as quoted in the blog) as this: > Asabiya of a group is the ability of its members to stick together, to cooperate So it's a measure of cooperation. But then the essay goes on to talk about it's competitional aspects: > If asabiya is supposed to predict the winner of an inter-group contest, then one must be careful to measure it in some way other than by counting victories in inter-group contests. Why? Why should a cooperative value be measured in wins against others? I would say the following are good measures of cooperation, and are indirectly(!) able to predict competitive capability as well as comparison of this capability: - 1 divided by the number of tax frauds, equalized over the population could measure the cooperation of a country - The total revenue of a company (this is obviously discussable) - The mean grade of a class (cooperation between teacher and students) - The number of successfully graduating students of a university - The average time of a customer in an entertainment park like Legoland or Disneyland - The total daily amount of tips of a restaurant Sure, if you have two restaurants and one is able to generate only slightly more tips, then it's hard to say who would win in a competition for customers. But if the numbers are big enough it's quite clear, e.g. if one restaurant makes $10 and the other makes $765 then it's quite clear the second one must cooperate a lot better (of course considering all other factors equal, as is done in science). Thus I think if we look at "what are they cooperating on? Which values are depending more on the result of cooperation than on the individuals output?" then we can find a lot of ways to measure cooperation without including competition. And I find this very important since the final, visionary (=not achievable) goal should be to get rid of competition altogether. And you can't really do that if you put it in the formula which you then use to measure your success.