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That's not a very good characterisation. There is competition, but there's also cooperation: the behaviour of an ecosystem is only really dominated by competiti
by wizzwizz4 4mo ago
That's not a very good characterisation. There is competition, but there's also cooperation: the behaviour of an ecosystem is only really dominated by competition in the wake of a catastrophe, as a new status quo is established. Competition is, after all, energetically wasteful: nobody wants to do it if they can honestly signal instead. (Even competing organisms tend to perform a degree of cooperation, if their ancestors co-evolved.)
- DoctorOetker 4mo agoand at no point did previous commenter say cooperation doesn't occur, there is more substance in the comment before yours than in yours
- wizzwizz4 4mo agoAnd at no point did I say that the description was technically incorrect: I said that it did not characterise the behaviour of the system very well. HN comments are another example of a system that is technically competitive, but is better characterised as collaborative: we argue, we vote, the ranking system surfaces the "best" comments at the expense of "lesser" ones… and yet we're all working together to produce something hopefully interesting for the lurkers to read.