So, which advice should I follow? Should I innovate and focus on my own fields of interest, or should I imitate and follow the trends? Conveniently, the field best equipped to answer this question, i.e. “social learning strategies and decision making”, was sixth of the top ten research fronts for “Economics, Psychology, and Other Social Sciences”^[2].

For the individual, there are two sides to social learning. On the one hand, social learning is tempting because it allows agents to avoids the effort and risk of innovation. On the other hand, social learning can be error-prone and lead individuals to acquire inappropriate and outdated information if the the environment is constantly changing. For the group, social learning is great for preserving and spreading effective behavior. However, if a group has only social learners then in a changing environment it will not be able to innovate new behavior and average fitness will decrease as the fixed set of available behaviors in the population becomes outdated. Since I always want to hit every nail with the evolutionary game theory hammer, this seems like a public goods game. The public good is effective behaviors, defection is frequent imitation, and cooperation is frequent innovation.

Although we can trace the study of evolution of cooperation to Peter Kropotkin, the modern treatment — especially via agent-based modeling — was driven by the innovative thoughts of Robert Axelrod. Axelrod & Hamilton (1981) ran a computer tournament where other researchers submitted strategies for playing the iterated prisoners’ dilemma. The clarity of their presentation, and the surprising effectiveness of an extremely simple tit-for-tat strategy motivated much of the current work on cooperation. True to their subject matter, Rendell et al. (2010) imitated Axelrod and ran their own computer tournament of social learning strategies, offering 10,000 euros for the best submission. By cosmic coincidence, the prize went to students of cooperation: Daniel Cownden and Tim Lillicrap, two graduate students at Queen’s University, the former a student of mathematician and notable inclusive-fitness theorist Peter Taylor.

A restless multi-armed bandit served as the learning environment. The agent could select which of 100 arms to pull in order to receive a payoff drawn independently (for each arm) from an exponential distribution. It was made “restless” by changing the payoff after each pull with probability . A dynamic environment was chosen because copying outdated information is believed to be a central weakness of social learning, and because Papadimitriou & Tsitsiklis (1999) showed that solving this bandit (finding an optimal policy) is PSPACE-complete^[3], or in laymen terms: very intractable.

Participants submitted specifications for learning strategies that could perform one of three actions at each time step:

• Innovate — the basic form of asocial learning, the move returns accurate information about the payoff of a randomly selected behavior that is not already known by the agent.
• Observe — the basic form of social learning, the observe move returns noisy information about the behavior and payoff being demonstrated by a randomly selected individual. This could return nothing if no other agent played an exploit move this round, or if the behavior was identical to one the focal agent already knows. If some agent is selected for observation then unlike the perfect information of innovate, noise is added: with probability a randomly chosen behavior is reported instead of the one performed by the selected agent, and the payoff received is reported with Gaussian noise with variance .
• Exploit — the only way to acquire payoffs by using one of the behaviors that the agent has previously added to its repertoire with innovate and observe moves. Since no payoff is given during innovate and observe, they carry an inherent opportunity cost of not exploiting existing behavior.

The payoffs were used to drive replicator dynamics via a death-birth process. The fitness of an agent was given by their total accumulated payoff divided by the number of rounds they have been alive for. At each round, every agent in the population had a 1/50 probability of expiring. The resulting empty spots were filled by offspring of the remaining agents, with probability of being selected for reproduction proportional to agent fitness. Offspring inherited their parents’ learning strategy, unless a mutation occurred, in which case the offspring would have the strategy of a randomly selected learning strategy from those considered in the simulation.

A total of 104 learning strategies were received for the tournament. Most were from academics, but three were from high school students (with one placing in the top 10). A pairwise tournament was held to test the probability of a strategy invading any other strategy (i.e, if a single individual with a new strategy is introduced into a homogeneous population of another strategy).This round-robin tournament was used to select the 10 best strategies for advancement to the melee stage. During the round-robin , , were kept fixed, only during the melee stage with all of the top-10 strategies present did the experimenters vary these parameters.

Mean score depending the proportion of learning actions (both INNOVATE and OBSERVE) in the left figure, and the proportion of OBSERVE actions in the right figure. These are figures 2C and 2A from Rendell et al. (2010).

Average individual fitness of the top 10 strategies when in a homogenous environment. The best strategy from the multi-strategy competitions is on the left and the tenth best is on the right. Note that the best strategies for when all 10 strategies are present are the worst for when they are alone. This is figure 1D from Rendell et al. (2010).

I would be interested in pursuing this heuristic connection between learning and social dilemmas further. The interactions of learners with each other and the environment can be seen as an evolutionary game: can we calculate the explicit payoff matrix of this game in terms of environmental and strategy parameters? Does this game belong to the Prisoners’ dilemma or Hawk-Dove (or other) region of cooperate-defect games? The heuristic view of innovation as a public good and the lack of stable co-existence of imitators and innovators suggests that the dynamics are PD. However, Rendell, Fogarty, & Laland (2010) show social learning can sometimes spread better on a grid structure, this is contrary to the effects of PD on grids, but consistent with observations for HD (Hauert & Doebeli, 2004). Since the two studies use very different social learning strategies, it could be the case that depending on parameters, we can achieve either PD or HD dynamics.

Regardless of which social dilemma is in play, we know that slight spatial structure enhances cooperation. This means that I expect that if — instead of inviscid interactions — I repeated Rendell et al. (2010) on a regular random graph then we would see more innovation. Similarly, if we introduced selection on the level of groups then groups with more innovators would fare better and spread the innovative strategy throughout the population.

So what does this mean for how I should take my father’s implicit advice? First: stop learning and start doing; I need to spend more time writing up results into papers instead of learning new things. Unfortunately for you, my dear reader, this could mean fewer blog posts on fun papers and more on my boring work! In terms of following research trends, or innovating new themes, I think a more thorough analysis is needed. It would be interesting to extend my preliminary ramblings on citation network dynamics to incorporate this work on social learning. For now, I am happy to know that at least some of things I’m interested are — in Twitter speak — trending.

Notes and References

1. Way too broad for my taste, one category was “Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering”; talk about a tease-and-trick. After reading the first two items I was excited to see a whole section dedicated to results like theoretical computer science, only to have my dreams dashed by ‘Engineering’. Turns out that Thomson Reuters and I have very different ideas on what ‘Mathematics’ means and how it should be grouped.
2. Note that my interest weren’t absent from the list, with “financial crisis, liquidity, and corporate governance” appearing tenth for “Economics, Psychology, and Other Social Sciences” and even selected for a special more in-depth highlight. Evolutionary thinking also appeared in tenth place for the poorly titled “Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering” area as “Differential evolution algorithm and memetic computation”. It is nice to know that these topics are popular, although I am usually not a fan of the engineering approach to computational models of evolution since their goal is to solve problems using evolution, not answer questions about evolution.
3. High-impact general science publications like Nature, Science, and their more recent offshoots (like the open-access Scientific Reports) are awful at presenting theoretical computer science. It is no different in this case, Papadimitriou and Tsitsiklis (1999) is a worst-case result that requires more freedom in the problem instances to encode the necessary structure for a reduction to known hard problems. Although their theorem is about restless bandits, the reduction needs a more general formulation in terms of arbitrary deterministic finite-dimensional Markov chains instead of the specific distributions used by Rendell et al. (2010). I am pretty sure that the optimal policy for the obvious generalization (i.e. arms instead of 100, but generated in the same way) of the stochastic environment can be learned efficiently; there is just not enough structure there to encode a hard problem. Since I want to understand multi-armed bandits better, anyways, I might find the optimal algorithm and write about it in a future post.
4. This sort of “I just want to beat you” behavior, reminds me of the irrational defection towards the out-group that I observed in the harmony game for tag-based models (Kaznatcheev, 2010).

Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211(4489), 1390-1396.

Hauert, C., & Doebeli, M. (2004). Spatial structure often inhibits the evolution of cooperation in the snowdrift game. Nature, 428(6983), 643-646.

Kaznatcheev, A. (2010). Robustness of ethnocentrism to changes in inter-personal interactions. Complex Adaptive Systems – AAAI Fall Symposium. (pdf)

Papadimitriou, C. H., & Tsitsiklis, J. N. (1999). The complexity of optimal queuing network control. Mathematics of Operations Research, 24(2): 293-305.

Rendell L, Boyd R, Cownden D, Enquist M, Eriksson K, Feldman MW, Fogarty L, Ghirlanda S, Lillicrap T, & Laland KN (2010). Why copy others? Insights from the social learning strategies tournament. Science, 328 (5975), 208-213 PMID: 20378813

Rendell, L., Fogarty, L., & Laland, K. N. (2010). Rogers’ paradox recast and and resolved: population structure and the evolution of social learning strategies” Evolution 64(2): 534-548.

“Godhet är en lönsam strategi

Vänlighet lönar sig, däremot inte att vända andra sidan till. Det är en av slutsatserma hos statsvetaren Robert Axelrod, som bygger sin forskning på insikter från spelteori. Nu tilldelas han Skytteanska priset för 2013.” Läs hela artikel här

In this post, and hopefully in many more to come, I will summarize my presumptuous attempt to investigate the effect of social behavior strategies on the chances of survival of individuals and their distribution in a competitive environment. The model is very simplified (see this post for more details) – in each round, predetermined strategies are playing (randomly) against each other in the iterated version of the prisoner’s dilemma, and die/ get to spawn according to their performance in that round. I was inspired to work on this from Richard Dawkins‘s “The Selfish Gene”.

The game plan is simple. We are running a computer simulation, in which each strategy starts with 100 prisoners, all placed in the same prison. Now we start to play rounds: in each round, we randomly select pairs of prisoners, so that all prisoners are paired. We also select a random number of games (let’s call it n) for each round (between 10 and 100). Now, each pair plays n games of prisoner dilemma, where in each turn each prisoner throws in its action: Betray or Cooperate. The points are accumulated in each game, according to the actions, and at the end of each round we choose 3 prisoners to kill, and 3 prisoners that get to spawn – the more points a prisoner gets in a round, the more chances for it to spawn, and the less chances for it to get killed (Natural Selection). The simulation is over after 600 rounds – which is a number I really like and since changes in the population were negligible for more than 600 rounds.

As mentioned, in each game a prisoner can Betray or Cooperate, and the points it receives are dependent on its action, and on the action of the opponent, according to this table:

So let’s dive right in. The winning strategy in our simulation is Nice Tit for Tat, which cooperates on the first game, and then repeats what the opponent did  in the previous game. In Robert Axelrod’s simulation in 1984, which used a different model than ours, the same strategy won. All strategies are standard strategies and are taken from here.

Total number of prisoners of each strategy Vs. Round number

Average number of points per prisoner, for each strategy Vs. Round number

According to Axelrod’s analysis, a winning strategy must be Nice, Retaliating, Forgiving and Non-envious. (Nice) Tit for tat has all of these, and is therefore always considered to be the best strategy. The suspicious version of Tit for tat (which does the same except for betraying on the first round) always comes second.

But in my model things are a bit different. Due to the all-with-all nature of competition (as is in nature), any prisoner can meet any prisoner, including a prisoner with the same strategy. And the only parameter a strategy cares about is not the amount of points it can gain, but how much can it defeat other strategies. So what about a strategy that can cooperate with itself, but is non-nice, non-forgiving and very much envious of other strategies? This is the Pattern recognition strategy i came up with. Once such a prisoner recognizes another such prisoner, it immediately cooperates until the end of the round (and so does its opponent), promising the maximum amount of points for these two in this round. When they encounter a different strategy, the Pattern recognizers just want to destroy the opponent – they will betray to the end of the round, promising the minimum amount of points to the opponent.

The recognition mechanism is very simple. The Pattern recognizer starts each round with the following 4 decisions: Cooperate, Betray, Betray, Cooperate. Before each game 5 in each round it checks if the opponent started the same- if it did, our prisoner decides it is also a Pattern recognizer, and will Cooperate until the end. Otherwise – it will Betray until the end.

This strategy proved to be quite good, but not as good as Tit for tat. When the new strategy is added it conquers the second place:

Pattern recognition now in second place

When the winner – Nice Tit for tat – and the Pattern recognition strategy are matched up alone – this it the result-

Pattern recognition Vs Nice Tit for tat

This is also the case when simulating Pattern recognition against all other strategies. This leads me to believe that this direction can be further investigated, and may finally be able to beat Tit for tat in a multi-strategy simulation.

My conclusion of the relative success of the Pattern recognizer is that niceness and being non-envious is not always the best solution. In nature, for example, we may imagine a case in which a mutation causes both a conspicuous external attribute (i.e. hair color, smell), so that individuals possessing the mutation can recognize each other, and the use of our Pattern recognizer strategy. In some scenarios, and as we will examine in our next post, this mutation may be of an advantage to individuals possessing it.

I was also asked by reviewers why not just let the strategies play each other, and see who gets the most points. Well, from these results we can see clearly – the composition of the prisoners affects the results directly, and the change of it is at least as interesting as seeing who wins games.

Another interesting aspect to look at is how the change in the population composition affects the overall wellness of the average individual. Since strategies that tend to cooperate (such as Tit for tat) grow in numbers as rounds go by, and the opposite happens for strategies that tend to betray (such as Always betray), we see an increase in the average points per prisoner in each round. However, when throwing in a successful, however far less cooperative strategy, such as Pattern recognition, we see a decrease in the wellness of the average prisoner. We may attribute that to the decrease in the numbers of Nice Tit for tat caused by the presence of the new strategy.

Average wellness with Tit for tat distribution

Well, that’s about it for the first post. Many of the things we discovered here are not very surprising, however I think there are some nice directions to go to from here.

If you, the readers, want to participate, you can do that in various ways. For one, you can suggest additional strategies that you think may affect the results. If you are a programmer, you can even write a strategy (read more about it here). If you are more related to the field of biology, you can help me find and fix holes in my model, or you can suggest improvements and additional directions for investigation.

The next step I will be working on is to allow random mutation, to see the affect of that on, for example, the stability of Tit for tat.

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget the post for programmers and the post about the model.

And here is another version of prisoner’s Dilemma.

Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

Analogous to the irresistible pull of critical theory on modern liberal-arts students, the young Kropotkin was seduced by the leftist thought of his day: French encyclopédistes, the rise of Russian liberal-revolutionary literature, and his personal disenfranchisement with and doubt of the Tsar’s “liberal” reputation. Instead of choosing a comfortable position in European Russia, the recent graduate requested to be sent to the newly annexed Siberian provinces and in 1862 was off to Chita. This city has a personal significance to me, it is where my grandfather was stationed over 100 years later and most of my mother’s childhood was spent there. Chita has become a minor place of pilgrimage for modern anarchists, but it (and the other Siberian administrative centre at Irkutsk) did not hold Kropotkin’s attention for long.

Unable to enact substantial change as an administrator, he followed his passion as a naturalist. In 1864, he took command of a geographic survey expedition into Manchuria. Having read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species when it was published 5 years earlier, Kropotkin embarked on a distinctly Siberian variant of the HMS Beagle — sleigh dogs instead of wind to power his way. His hope was to observe the same ‘tooth and claw’ competition as Darwin, but instead he saw primarily cooperation. In the harsh environment of Siberia, it wasn’t a struggle of beast versus beast, but animal against environment.

From 1890 to 1896, Kropotkin published his Siberian observations as a series of essays in the British monthly literary magazine, Nineteenth Century. Motivated as a response to Huxley’s “The Struggle for Existence”, the essays highlighted cooperation among nonhuman animals, in primitive societies and medieval cities, and in contemporary times. He concluded that not competition, but cooperation, were the most important factors in survival and the evolution of species. Kropotkin assembled the essays into book form, and in 1902 published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. A magnum opus on cooperation, much like E.O. Wilson Sociobiology of nearly 75 years later, Kropotkin started from the social insects and traced a common thread to the human society around him; he was the first student of cooperation.

Unfortunately, his mechanism for cooperation did not extend beyond group selection. Kropotkin left it to modern researchers to find more basic engines of altruism. Only now are we starting to build mathematical, computational, and living models. To study cooperation in the laboratory, especially when looking at the effect of environmental austerity, Strassmann & Queller (2011) have proposed the social microbe Dictyostelium discoideum or slime mold as the perfect model. These single-cell soil-dwelling amoeba are capable of working together under austere conditions, and even display rudimentary swarm intelligence. A long time expert on slime molds, John Bonner of Princeton University, made a video of them during his undergraduate years at Harvard:

Under plentiful conditions, D. discoideum are solitary predators of bacteria, which they consume by engulfment. If the environment deteriorates and the amoebae begin to starve, then they enter a social stage. Using their quorum-sensing mechanism they check if enough other amoebae are present in the area and then aggregate into a mound. They coat themselves with a slime (that gives them their name) and move together as a unit, until they find a good location to fruit. The slime mold then extends a stalk up from the soil with most cells forming a spore at the top. At a certain height, the spore is released, allowing the amoebae at the top to disperse to greener pastures; the cells in the stalk die. Since all the cells are free-living independent organisms during the non-social stage, this shows the clearest form of altruism: fellow D. discoideum sacrificing their own lives in order to give their brethren a chance at a future.

Sadly, most evolutionary game theory models assume constant population size and no resource variability. In these models, it is difficult to introduce a parameter analogous to environmental austerity. To allow for resource limitations, we need to introduce variable population sizes and thus create an ecological game. I explored this modification for a Hammond & Axelrod-like model back in the summer of 2009 and thought I would share some results here.

The agents inhabit a toroidal lattice, and each round the agents interacts with their 4 adjacent neighbours via the Prisoner’s dilemma. The payoffs are added to their default birth rate, reproduction is asexual and into adjacent empty sites. At each time step, each agent has a fixed (0.25) probability of expiring and vacating its site. The worlds start empty and are gradually filled with agents.

This figure has three graphs; in each figure the line thickness represents standard error from averaging 30 independent runs. The leftmost graph is the proportion of cooperation versus cycle, with two conditions for default birth rate: 0.24 (high austerity; top line) and 0.28 (low austerity; bottom line). The two figures on the right show the total number of cooperators (blue) and defectors (red). The rightmost graph has time flowing from right to left. The left panel is high austerity (def ptr = 0.24) and the right panel is low austerity (def ptr = 0.28).

Above are the results for a Prisoner’s dilemma interaction with — a rather competitive environment. Matching Shultz, Hartshorn, & Kaznatcheev (2009) and consistent with Milbiner, Cremer, & Frey (2010), we can see an early spike in the number of cooperators as the world reaches its carrying capacity. After this transient period, the dynamics shift and defection becomes more competitive. The dynamics settle to a stable distribution of cooperators and defectors. The proportion of cooperation depends heavily on the environmental austerity. In a harsh environment with a low default birth rate of 0.24, the agents band together and cooperate and in a plentiful environment with high default birth rate of 0.28, defection dominates. As Kropotkin observed: cooperation is essential to surviving environmental austerity.

Analogous to the results from the Hauert, Homles, & Doebeli (2006) ecological public-goods game the proportion of cooperation tends to bifurcate around default birth rate equal to to the death rate (0.25), although I don’t present the visuals here. The increase in default birth rate results in a slight increase in the world population at saturation, but even by raw number there are more cooperators in the high austerity than the low austerity setting. Thus, it is not simply defectors benefiting more from the decrease in austerity (since defectors go from a regime where clusters are not-self sustaining (def ptr = 0.24) to one where it is (def ptr = 0.28)), but also an effect of defectors out-competing and disproportionately exploiting and crowding out the cooperators.

Each graph is evolutionary cycles versus proportion of cooperation, line thickness is standard error from averaging 30 independent runs. Environmental austerity decreases from the left graph (where default birth rate is equal to death rate) to the right (where their ratio is 1.1). The blue line is the model where agents can discriminate based on arbitrary non-strategy related tag (the green-beard effect/ethnocentrism are possible) and the green line is simulations where no conditional strategy is possible.

If agents are allowed to condition their behavior on an arbitrary tag then the ethnocentric population is better able to maintain higher levels of cooperation as environmental austerity decreases. In the tag-based model, it would be interesting to know if there is a parameter range where varying environmental austerity can take us from a regime of humanitarian (unconditional cooperator) dominance, to ethnocentric dominance (cooperate with in-group, defect from out-group), to a selfish (unconditional defection) world. I am also curious to know how the irrational hostility I observed in the tag-based harmony game (Kaznatcheev, 2010) would fare as the environment turns hostile. Will groups overcome their biases against each other, or will they compete even more for the more limited resource? Nearly 150 years after Peter Kropotkin’s Siberian expedition, the curtain is still up and basic questions on mutual aid in austere environments remain!

References

Hauert, C., Holmes, M., & Doebeli, M. (2006). Evolutionary games and population dynamics: maintenance of cooperation in public goods games. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273(1600): 2565-2571

Kaznatcheev, A. (2010). Robustness of ethnocentrism to changes in inter-personal interactions. Complex Adaptive Systems – AAAI Fall Symposium. [pdf]

Melbinger, A., Cremer, J., & Frey, E. (2010). Evolutionary game theory in growing populations. Physical Review Letters, 105(17): 178101. [arXiv pdf]

Shultz, T. R., Hartshorn, M., & Kaznatcheev, A. (2009). Why is ethnocentrism more common than humanitarianism? In N. A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2100-2105). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]

Strassmann, J., & Queller, D. (2011). Evolution of cooperation and control of cheating in a social microbe Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (2), 10855-10862 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1102451108

As the title indicates this book explores the topic of cooperation, particularly how it can emerge in a decentralized population that seeks individual maximization of self-interest. The book is split into two main sections. The first discusses cooperation through game-theory analysis of  computer tournaments played. This includes the various strategies used, and the ones that enjoyed the most success. The second discusses the implications of the findings from the first section, and real-world applications in the fields of biology, politics, sociology etc. While the first section is somewhat dry and abstract, the second section anchors the concepts and is very applicable and practical.

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “The analysis of the data from these tournaments reveals four properties which tend to make a decision rule successful: avoidance of unnecessary conflict by cooperating as long as the other player does, provocability, in the face of an uncalled for defection by the other, forgiveness after responding to a provocation, and clarity of behavior so that the other player can adapt to your pattern of action.”

2- “What accounts for TIT FOR TAT’s robust success is its combination of being nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear. Its niceness prevents it from getting into unnecessary trouble. Its retaliation discourages the other side from persisting whenever defection is tried. Its forgiveness helps restore mutual cooperation. And its clarity makes it intelligible to the other player, thereby eliciting long-term cooperation.”

3- “Thus cooperation can emerge even in a world of unconditional defection. The development cannot take place if it is tried only by scattered individuals who have no change to interact with each other. But cooperation can emerge from small clusters of discriminating individuals, as long as these individuals have even a small proportion of their interactions with each other.”

4- “The live-and-let-live system that emerged in the bitter trench warfare of World War I demonstrates that friendship is hardly necessary for cooperation based upon reciprocity to get started. Under suitable circumstances, cooperation can develop even between antagonists.”

5- How to Choose Effectively: “The advice takes the form of four simple suggestions for how to do well in a durable iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma: 1) Don’t be envious. 2) Don’t be the first to defect. 3) Reciprocate both cooperation and defection. 4) Don’t be too clever.”

6-”…not being nice may look promising at first, by in the long run it can destroy the very environment it needs for its own success.”

7- “Keeping one’s intentions hidden is useful in a zero-sum game (e.g Chess) where any inefficiency in the other players behavior wil be to your benefit. But in a non-zero-sum setting it does not always pay to be so clever.”

8- “So to promote cooperation through modification of the payoffs…it is only necessary to make the long-term incentive for mutual cooperation greater than the short-term incentive for defection.”

9- “The ability to recognize the other player from past interactions, is necessary to sustain cooperation. Without these abilities, a player could not use any form of reciprocity and hence could not encourage the other to cooperate.”

10- “The ability to recognize defection when it occurs is not the only requirement for successful cooperation to emerge, but it is certainly an important one.”

11- “This kind of stereotyping has two unfortunate consequences…the obvious consequence is that everyone is doing worse than necessary because  mutual cooperation between the groups could have raised everyone’s core…while both groups suffer from lack of mutual cooperation, the members of the minority group suffer more.”

12- “The trick is to set the stringency of the standard high enough to get most of the social benefits of regulation, and not so high as to prevent the evolution of a stable pattern of voluntary compliance from almost all of the companies.”

13- “In an organizational or business setting, the best way to secure this accountability would be to keep track not only of the person’s success in that position, but also the state in which the position was left to the next occupant.”

14- “The core of the problem on how to achieve rewards from cooperation is that trial and error in learning is slow and painful. The conditions may all be favorable for long-run developments, but we may not have the time to wait for blind processes to move us slowly toward mutually rewarding strategies based upon reciprocity. Perhaps if we understand the process better, we can use our foresight to speed up the evolution of cooperation.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Evolution of Cooperation

For other pro-Obama “celebrities,” go to FOTM’s “Leftwing Pathology” page and look for the post links colored brown!

Entertainers who pimp for Obama:

1. Singer Bruce Springsteen ($200 million net worth), who vowed earlier this year not to actively campaign for Obama, reversed course and performed for Captain Hope and Change in Ohio. See DCG’s post, HERE.

2. Actor Jack Black ($40 million net worth) is calling Mitt Romney a “master flip-flopper”while ignoring Obama’s litany of flips and flops. This is the same Jack Black who, at the MTV 2009 Video Music Awards, prayed to the “Dear Dark Lord Satan” to “grant tonight’s nominees with continued success in the music industry” (see pic below).

3. Rapper Jay-Z ($475 million net worth), who admitted he backs Obama because he’s black, cut a campaign video saying Obama inspired people to take a stand in politics (whatever that means).

4. Actresses Eva Longoria ($35 million net worth), Scarlett Johansson ($35 million net worth) and Kerry Washington ($3 million net worth) spoke at the Democratic National Convention and are on a video roasting the Romney/Ryan ticket for its alleged anti-women stances (translation: anti women’s “right” to kill the unborn).

5. Teen slut Miley Cyrus ($120 million net worth), who gave her actor boyfriend Liam Hemsworth a penis birthday cake (see pic below), formally endorsed Obama yesterday.

6. Actress-singer Barbra Streisand ($340 million net worth), who has performed at fundraisers for Obama, emailed Democrats asking for cash, calling a potential GOP takeover “a disaster for America.” When Romney is elected President, I hope she’ll actually carry out her promise of moving to France this time.

Professors who pimp for Obama:

1. Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University who is billed as a “widely known expert on national politics,” contributed $250 to Obama on two separate occasions in 2008. This month, Abramowitz told Bloomberg News that the recent drop in the nation’s unemployment rate is “good news for Obama” and blunts Romney’s political momentum. Many news organizations have published Abramowitz’s analyses, including the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Journal and The Hill.

2. Garrison Nelson, a professor at the University of Vermont, donated $250 to Obama earlier this year. Nelson was quoted in June 2011 about Obama’s emphasis on his support for the auto industry bailout: “This is to hit Romney where he lives.” Four years ago, he commented on Obama’s favorable poll numbers in Vermont against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.): “It’s the Obama phenomenon. Obama has really taken hold here. We’re caught in the wave of support he’s getting.”

3. Peter Ricchiuti, professor of finance at Tulane University donated $3,000 to Obama in 2012 and $1,000 in 2008. He has also given to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the Democratic National Committee and Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). In 2011, he told ABC News that Obama’s job creation initiatives were “all good ideas.” Ricchiuti told the Mississippi Daily Journal in January 2009 that fears that the incoming Obama administration would usher in a new socialist state were unfounded. “I think he’s a free-market guy,” Ricchiuti said at the time.

4. Timothy Jost, a professor at Washington and Lee University, has given thousands of dollars to Obama and Democratic campaign committees. Identified in news articles as “an expert on healthcare” and a supporter of Obamacare, Jost is critical of Romney’s plan to repeal Obamacare, telling the Boston Globe last year that it is “unconstitutional.”

5. Robert Axelrod, political science professor at the University of Michigan, donated to Obama in 2008 and 2011. In a 2010 Washington Post article titled, “Obama Steps Up Confrontation,” Axelrod says confrontation with the opposing party is initially necessary in order to ultimately strike a bipartisan deal. The article reported that he is not related to David Axelrod, who is a senior adviser to Obama.

6. David Yellen, dean and professor of law at Loyola University in Chicago, donated to Obama in 2008 and 2011. In 2004, he gave to both Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Yellen told The Washington Times in 2010 that the scandal involving former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) was not a significant problem (“not a big deal”) for the White House. Yellen said his donation does not affect his objectivity.

Sources: Breitbart.com and The Hill. I added some links, e.g. net worths, and all the pictures.

~Eowyn

This is huge and people have already started to discuss the implications. But what puzzles me is the following: The search for an optimal way to play the repeated PD has been going on at least since the 1980s. The best strategies have been sought analytically, and through simulation (see Robert Axelrod’s iterated PD tournaments). And yet nobody discovered or stumbled upon ‘zero determinant’ strategies for more than 30 years of dedicated research. So can we expect a rational but not omnipotent actor to use these strategies?

I think the formal answer needs to be ‘yes’ – a rational actor plays the game in the most advantageous way for his/her interests and if zero determinant strategies provide en edge, then he/she needs to (and is expected and predicted to) play these. The alternative would be to impose some limitations to the computational capacities of rational actors, but these would always be arbitrary. Where do we draw the line? Is tit-for-tat too complicated or not? At the same time, assuming that actors can always find the optimal strategy, while consistent with the fundamental assumptions of game theory, is unsatisfying for practical reasons. If it takes a generation of social scientists 30 years to discover an optimal strategy, how is a single actor supposed to know about it and use it in real-life situations?

This new class of strategies provides undoubtedly a normatively better way to play the game, but does it have any explanatory or predictive content?

An alternative route that can lead to actors using optimal strategies that are too complicated to be analytically discovered by rational but not omnipotent beings is evolution. Actors can experiment with all kinds of strategies, some will stumble upon the optimal one, and over time natural selection will favor these lucky ones, and by implication their ‘optimal’ strategies. The problem with this reasoning is that what is ‘optimal’ for individuals playing the game is not necessarily optimal for a group of individuals all playing the ‘optimal’ strategy. And if selection acts on groups in addition to individuals these ‘optimal’ strategies might not even survive. In any case, this new paper will certainly make people reconsider not only the origins and mechanisms of cooperation, but the utility and role of game theory in social-scientific explanation as such.

But zero-sum thinking and the winner-takes-all philosophy do not serve us any more. As there are more losers than winners in our games losers multiply as winning behaviours are replicated in the smaller winners’ circles and losing behaviours are replicated in the bigger losers’ circles.

The biggest problem is that as losers are excluded from the game, they are not allowed to learn. The divide between winners and losers grows constantly. This is why, in the end, the winners have to pay the price of winning in one way or another. The bigger the divide is, the bigger the price that has to be paid. The winners end up having to take care of the losers, or two totally different cultures start to form, as is happening today in many developed countries and cities.

Psychologically, competitive games create shadow games of losers competing at losing.

The games we play have been played under the assumption that the unit of survival is the individual, a team of people or a company. However, the reality is that the unit of survival is the players in the game being played. Following Darwinian rhetoric, the unit of survival is the species in its environment. Who wins and who loses is of minor importance compared to the decay of the (game) environment as a result of the competition.

We need a new concept of games in the creative economy. The players and their contributions in the real world are, and should be, too qualitatively different to be compared quantitatively. Unless all the players are comparable and want the very same thing, there cannot be a genuine contest.

Zero-sum games were the offspring of scarcity. In the era of creativity and abundance, new approaches are desperately needed.

As there simply cannot be pre-existing rules for every conceivable situation that might arise, we have to move beyond seeing the players and the rule-makers as separate parties. Real-life games are too complex to be governed totally from outside. We need participation based on values- and strong ethics  as a prerequisite for taking part.

The players have the responsibility not only for adhering to the existing rules, but also for developing the rules further – specifically when the game (environment) decays as a result of the actions of the players.

In creative games the winners would be all those whose participation, comments and contributions were incorporated into the development of the game.

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Hi everyone,

Gobble-con was painfully bitter-sweet this year. I had fun, but the turnout was awful. So much so that Gobble-con is now in dire financial trouble. It looks doubtful there will be a third convention… unless something awesome happens soon.

So we have set up a cafepress, full of awesome Gobble-con swag: http://www.cafepress.com/gobblecon
At least have a look, and see how you can get in on being a part of saving this convention. I figure almost all of my readers have at least attended a con, and that’s all well and awesome, but it is entirely different feeling knowing that you have actively taken part in your fandom by proactively supporting a local convention.Local cons, like Gobble-con, are the answer to the increasingly corporate nature of bigger cons, and if you’re like me and gag at the mere site of MTV at conventions, then you owe it to yourself to take part in this.

I really WANT this con to come back, and want it to be bigger and better than before. There is an almost tangible “familial” aura to it that is simply not possible with bigger anime cons. It’s nice knowing the staff by name, and knowing they are doing it for the right reasons. They all have worked tirelessly to make fellow fans feel welcome, but their defeated expressions on Sunday evening were truly heart-wrenching. The issues caused by the poor turnout has drastically affected the staff both financially and personally.

If you’ve enjoyed Gobblecon either last year or this year, then please give back. Or if you simply like attending cons run purely (emphasis on PURELY, not a Gamestop/MTV/HBO/etc logo in sight) by fans for fans, then please help out.

Oh and btw….

If it does come back, please please please NOT in f’n Stamford. My GPS had a really difficult time locating the hotel, and Sunday I almost rage-quitted on going as I got hopelessly lost, struggling to manuver around roadblock after roadblock because of some silly parade and the construction being done in the area.

Again, link is here: http://www.cafepress.com/gobblecon

Let’s keep this great con alive.

- Furry Senpai Mikekun

Recently I lamented about my experience at NY Comic Con. Again, to briefly reiterate, it wasn’t that it was a bad con, far from it. It was the epitome of what a “mega-con” should look like, which is all well and good, but for claustrophobic shy people like yours truly, it simply isn’t for them.

Instead I prefer smaller cons with staff that actually give a shit. For their second year, the Gobble-con staff has pulled it together to provide people with a con that has that “communal” spirit that’s so woefully lacking with the big boys. I just got back from day two, and really enjoyed myself thus far. Everything I wanted to do/see, I was able to do, and staff frequently circulated to help out us vendors/press/artists. I am especially grateful for the opportunity I had today to interview Tiffany Grant, the voice of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion. This was indeed a dream, if I were to go back in time and tell my teenage self that I’d someday sit and chat, in person, with Asuka’s English voiceactor, I wouldn’t have believed it. She was a spectacular interview, and we discussed a number of Eva related things, while touching on some other areas of her lengthy professional resume, from other voice acting roles, script writing, and recent independent film projects. Be sure to look for it in our Spring Issue.

      Now I really wish that I could say that everything is going well for the staff of Gobble-con… oh how I wish I could honestly say that. I remember the heartfelt ending ceremony of last year, and how thrilled the Gobblecon staff was at the sterling turnout for their first year. This year, anticipating an even higher turnout, they moved from Milford to Stamford, into a location more suitable for their estimated attendance.

Sadly, the attendance this year has not been nearly as great as last year. Matters have been made worse by the douche-baggery of the hotel in charging the Gobble-con staff with extraordinary fees that were not made contractually explicit This means… that this could be Gobble-con’s final year. Everyone here at Senpai hopes that this isn’t so. We began our revolution at Gobble-con last year, as it was our very first con as a company. They gave us a shot when no other con would, and we’ve been extremely grateful to this day.

Senpai Magazine's very first con, at Gobble-con 2010.

So how can you help? Simple. Hopefully you see this sometime Sunday morning, and are up for some fun at a relatively local con. You can register at the hotel and have an awesome Sunday, Granted, registering at a con can be a pain due to lines, but I can assure you that there will NOT be a line at all… sadly.

The address: 2701 Summer St. Stramford CT. Go there, play some games (MK, Call of Duty, UMvC3, and more) for prizes, play pachinko, check out a panel or two from Tiffany Grant or Rob Axelrod (voice of THE Lord Zedd of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), and troll us ^^

If nothing else, check out their site: http://www.gobble-con.org, and contact them directly with what you’d like to see in your ideal con. They read all of their email and are extremely attentive to the fanbase. Or, if you were at the first gobble-con, post in your facebook/twitter your favorite gobble-con memory.

Gobble-con is a very rare type of con. It is limited in its size and resources, but has plenty of heart. Unfortunately, it may be dying before it ever really got going. As fans, we simply cannot allow this to happen. I apologize for the rambling nature of this post, it’s 1:30 am, im really really tired, but needed to rant some before bed.

Goodnight everyfur,

- Furry Senpai Mikekun

Polisin size sunduğu anlaşma şu şekilde; eğer suç ortağını ele verirsen ve o sessiz kalırsa sen özgürsün, hatta üstüne bir de ödül alacaksın, o ise 10 sene hapis yatacak! Tabii eğer sen susup, o suçu sana atarsa senin de 10 sene hapis yatacağını söylememe gerek yok heralde. Başka bir ihtimal ise ikinizin de suçu birbirinize atmanız ki bu durumda ikiniz de 5′er sene hapis yatacaksınız. Ya da hepsinden temizi ikiniz de sessiz kalarak özgürlüğünüze kavuşabilirsiniz ama bu sefer de ödül alamayacaksınız. Tabii kararını vermeden önce suç ortağınla konuşma hakkın olmadığını da belirtmek isterim.

Eee koca kafa, ne dersin bu duruma; zor bir karar değil mi? Aslında ilk bakışta sessiz kalmak, başka bir deyişle işbirliği yapmak, en makulu gibi gözüküyor ama ya karşı taraf konuşursa! İşte bu noktada işin içine akılcılık ve bencillik giriyor… Bu durumda o seni ele verirse sen de ele vermelisin ki hapiste 10 yerine 5 sene yatarak, zararın neresinden dönersem kardır diyebil. Aslında o sessiz kalsa bile sen yine de onu ele vermelisin ki hem özgürlüğüne hem de ödüle kavuşabil. Offf kafan iyice karıştı değil mi? Eh hayat acımasız demiştim! Zaten tam da bu yüzden oyunun adı mahkumun ikilemi ve oyun teorisyenlerinin favori oyunlarından biri. Bir de tabii işbirliğinin evrimini inceleyen akademisyenlerin!

Peki ne yapmalı, ne etmeli, nasıl bir strateji izlemeli? Sevgili hayalperest koca kafa, üzülerek gözüne sokmak isterim ki bu tarz oyunlarda her zaman işbirliği yapan stratejiler başarılı olamayacaktır çünkü karşı tarafın yaptığı her döneklik yol, su, elektrik olarak geri dönecek ve bu stratejiyi güden kişinin genlerinin nüfus içinde çoğalmasını engelleyecektir. Tabii tabii sen de haklısın, bütün dünya buna inansa, hayat bayram olsa, herkes işbirliği yapsa falan filan…

O zaman ne yapmak gerek ki acaba sorusunun peşinde olan siyasal bilimci Robert Axelrod, çağımızın belası teknolojiyi kullanarak 14 farklı stratejiyi bilgisayar ortamında birbirlerine karşı 200 kez mahkumun ikilemi oynatıyor. Çeşit çeşit stratejilerin kimi son derece karmaşık, kimi sadece rastlantısal, kimi ise oldukça basit ama kazanan tek; misilleme stratejisi*! Misilleme stratejisinin kuralları oldukça açık ve net: oyuna işbirliği yaparak başla ve sonrasında gelen ellerde rakibinin bir önceki tercihini taklit et! Kısacası bu stratejinin eğilimi işbirliği yapmaktır ama rakip, taraf değiştirirse hop o da misilleme yapar ve karşı tarafın cezasını hemen keser ama rakip, yaptığına pişman olup yeniden işbirliği mi yaptı hemen affeder ve yeniden işbirliğine başlar. Kısacası, kazanan stratejimiz Winston’ın deyimi ile nazik, intikamcı ve bağışlayıcı! Unutmayın ilk taraf değiştiren hiç bir zaman o olmaz ama rakip taraf değiştirirse de ona acımaz intikamını alır ancak rakip yeniden işbirliği yaparsa da onu affederek bağrına basar.

Kazanan missilleme stratejisi nüfusa yayılmakta da son derece başarılı. İlk başta kötü niyetli stratejiler, iyi niyetlileri alt edip nüfusa güzelce yayıldılar ancak kolay lokmalar bitip de kalanlar birbirlerini yemeye başladıklarında misilleme stratejisinin başarısı yeniden ortaya çıktı… Nüfusa nasıl yayınıldığını anlatmama gerek var mı bilmiyorum, hani şu öncelikle kendine uygun bir eş adayı bulmak suretiyle başlayan süreç!

Kuzum, farkında mısın emin değilim ama bu oyunda yaşanan ikilem sadece mahkumlara has değil! Bizler günlük hayatlarımızda hiç durmaksızın bu tarz ikilemler yaşıyoruz. Yapmak için dayanılmaz bir istek duyduğunuz ancak herkes aynı anda yaparsa bunun büyük bir hata olacağını bildiğiniz herhangi bir durum mahkumun ikilemi durumu olabilir. Başka bir deyişle, her nerede çoğunluğun iyiliği ile kişisel çıkar arasında bir çatışma varsa orada mahkumun ikilemi geçerlidir. Vergi ödemekten tutun da kapınızın önünü süpürmeye kadar geniş bir skalamız var!

Ancak avlanma yasağı en güzel mahkumun ikilemi örneklerinden biri. Yasak sırasında herkes kurallara uyarsa sonrası için bu herkesin çıkarına olur ama kuralları delenler çılgınca başka balıkçıların hakkını avlayarak çıkar elde ediyor olabilir. Bu durumda zavallı uyumlu balıkçı payını başkasına kaptırmakla kalmaz, bir süre sonra balıkçıkların soyları da tehlike altında kalarak hepimizin bu güzellikten mahrum kalması da söz konusu olabilir. Kısacası, “Ama herkes yapıyor!” bu durumda geçerli bir savunma değildir ve hepimizin çok iyi bildiği gibi “Bizi herkes değil SEN ilgilendiriyorsun!”.**

Peki bu kağıt üzerinde oynaması keyifli oyun, bize bizimle ilgili ne söylüyor? Öncelikle, herkes kendi çıkarlarını gözetse bile işbirliği denen olayın gelişebileceğini söylüyor çünkü görüldüğü gibi işbirliğine başvurmadan kendi çıkarlarını aslında çok da iyi gözetemiyorsun cicim!

Ayrıca her derde deva olmasa bile misilleme stratejisinin karşılıklı fedakarlık ilkesinin toplumda sık sık kullanılmasının doğamızın bir parçası yani bir içgüdü olduğunu gösteriyor. İyiliğin karşılıksız kalmayacağını kimse bize öğretmese de biliyoruz, Ridley’e göre bu zaten içimizde taşıdığımız genel bir eğilim aslında… Sevgili doğal seçilim, karşılıklılığı, sosyal yaşamdan daha fazla faydalanabilmemiz için elleriyle seçmiştir!

Eğer doğamızla ilgili bu yazılıp çizilenlerden emin değilseniz son dönemde Van’da yaşanan deprem sonrasında nasıl da birbirimize kenetlendiğimize, işbirliği yaptığımıza bakmanız yeterli olacaktır aslında… Bu yazınınsa bu cümleden daha güzel bir özeti olabileceğini hiç zannetmiyorum; ”Bir gün sen düşersen, ben de seni kaldıracağım”…

Kimsenin düşmediği günler ümidiyle…

Referans:

Ridley, Matt (2011). Erdemin kökenleri. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.

Winston, Robert (2010). İnsan içgüdüsü: İlkel dürtülerimiz modern yaşamlarımızı nasıl biçimlendiriyor? İstanbul: Say Yayınları.

Notlar:

*Kısasa kısas stratejisi olarak da anılır.

**Ayrıca yeri gelmişken Greenpeace’i de destekliyoruz, yavru balıkları rahat bırakın!

***Tabii misilleme stratejisinin her koşulda derdimize çare olduğunu da düşünmemek gerekir! Örneğin, misilleme stratejisi çok tekrarlı oyunlarda başarılı. Sadece tek bir seferden oluşan oyunlarda kazanası maalesef mümkün değil, tek oyunun galibi daima taraf değiştir stratejisi olur. Ancak atalarımızın bir avuç insan oldukları göz önünde bulundurulduğunda aynı insanların çeşitli oyunlarda karşı karşıya gelmiş olma ihtimalleri son derece yüksektir. Bir taraftan da iki kişiden fazla kişinin oyuna dahil olduğu durumlarda da misilleme stratejisi zor durumda kalabilmektedir.

****İlgili diğer yazılar; Zaman zaman…, Parayla saadet olmaz!

Negli Usa c’è sempre stata una contraddizione fra questa libertà [sessuale],che caratterizza anche quel Paese, e il peso della vita privata nella attivita’politica. Invece in Italia dopo il caso Montesi c’e’ stata una tacita convenzione, anche prima del ’68, per una totale separazione fra la vita politica e la vita privata,tant’e’che due leader democristiani notoriamente omosessuali non sono mai stati attaccati su questo terreno. Invece questa convenzione nel nostro Paese e’ saltata da quando Berlusconi è stato attaccato proprio su questo terreno perchè la sua vita privata è stata considerata da Repubblica e da alcuni magistrati il punto debole sul quale attaccarlo piu’ efficacemente.

Al di là dell’implicito riconoscimento del come, in una democrazia liberale, i comportamenti privati di uomini pubblici sono rilevanti per la buona gestione della cosa pubblica, come non ricordare gli studi di Robert Axelrod sull’evoluzione della cooperazione tra individui egoisti? In una serie indefinita di giochi non cooperativi tra agenti egoisti, e in cui il futuro si assume abbia un qualche peso, la cooperazione può emergere, sfuggendo alla strategia strettamente dominante di mutua defezione intrinseca al “dilemma del prigioniero” in un gioco singolo. Il risultato non è determinato a priori: se nella matrice dei pay-off si assume il valore presente scontato dei guadagni futuri di una eventuale mutua cooperazione (anzichè il valore di una singola mutua cooperazione, come in un gioco singolo), la cooperazione non sarà comunque una strategia strettamente dominante: se l’avversario defeziona il giocatore si troverà in una situazione peggiore rispetto in quella in cui avesse defezionato egli stesso (mentre, cooperando, si troverebbe in posizione migliore rispetto alla defezione, in caso anche l’altro cooperasse). Axelrod assume un approccio evoluzionistico: se giocatori che cooperano sempre come prima mossa, e seguono il principio di utilizzare come mosse successive la mossa del turno precedente del giocatore avversario (la cosiddetta strategia “Tit-for-tat“, o “Pan per focaccia” in italiano), si incontrano tra loro sufficientemente spesso (Axelrod calcola che, con la sua scelta dei parametri rilevanti – matrice dei pay-off e sconto del futuro – è sufficiente appena un 5% delle interazioni totali), e se la dimensione relativa di ogni “generazione” futura di giocatori risulta proporzionale al successo della precedente (si riproducono di più le popolazioni che prosperano maggiormente nelle fasi precedenti del gioco), la strategia cooperativa “invaderà” le altre, diventando maggioritaria. Non è difficle immaginare di applicare tale modello a un paese che teorizza esplicitamente il “tutti colpevoli, nessun colpevole”, la ricattabilità come prerequisito all’accesso in politica, o, come ci ricoda Cicchitto nel suo intervento, la convenzione implicita riguardo al parlare degli scandalucci altrui. La strategia cooperativa, nella storia della Repubblica, è indubbiamente stata dominante, tanto da risultare cristallizzata nella “sovrastruttura” culturale della penisola: interessante vederne le prime crepe e, soprattutto, le reazioni conservative dell’establishment alle prime defezioni di troppo a una norma così ben stabilita.

A convention is almost impossible to describe, because you’re only ever going to see a tiny fraction of it. Trying to sum it up is like stuffing a magical being into a bottle – a complete waste of energy, and not nearly so much fun as letting it all out and watching what happens. AnimeIowa is a small convention by American standards, around 2,500 people: almost intimate after the seas of souls flooding through A-Kon or Anime North. But just like the big beasts of American congoing, the convention that matters isn’t the one in the reports and statistics. It’s the one that you experience.

Hearing Lord Zedd‘s huge voice rip out of Robert Axelrod’s slight body; talking about Satoshi Kon with Kyle Cardine and an audience that really cares about great film-making; loving every minute of a Manga Cross-Stitch panel (and admiring the work produced by the stitchers there, crafters and novices, male and female) – that was my convention. So was talking about Osamu Tezuka with a Peruvian girl dressed as Saphir in the front row. So was never having enough time to properly thank the amazing convention staff. So was missing so much: History of Samurai Weapons, Cats in Japan, Japanese In An Hour, The Digimon Panel, the art appraisals, more Black Butler fans than I could shake a feather duster at. What you miss defines your convention as much as what you see. It’s about choices.

And it’s about the little moments with friends old and new, sharing a chat, or a joke, or a disaster story, eating locally-crafted chocolates that are almost too beautiful to bite into, out-of-con time stroking ferrets. It’s about the rustle of a silken eighteenth-century French court gown, the slither of satin and the snuggle of fur. It’s about a dealers’ room packed with commerce and craft, artists making their own characters side by side with people selling mass market merchandise, and somehow finding treasure in the mayhem. Or at least, that’s what my AnimeIowa was about this year. And I loved every minute of it.

Research on competition and co-operation based on computer simulations  (read Axelrod’s The Evolution of Co-operation) suggests that ‘tit for tat’ is the most profitable strategy over the long run.  What does that mean?  In the long run and across different environments, it pays to co-operate whilst remaining vigilant to the possibility/danger of being cheated.  Put more simply, you start by being trusting and giving the other party the benefit of the doubt and thereafter you reciprocate: if the other party ‘co-operates’ then you ‘co-operate’ in turn; if the other party ‘defects’ (does not play nice) then you reciprocate by ‘defecting’ (thus punishing the other party).

The real world is more complex: the art of impression management

Real life is more complex.  I do not react to what you did; I react to what I think you did.  You know that and so that opens up a whole area of possibility called ‘impression management’.  If being a virtuous and trustworthy co-operator does not appeal to you or is simply too much work then you can simply focus on the art of persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy individual and/or organisation: you fake it.

In the personal arena this is called the art of personality: personality is like putting on a ‘suit of clothes’ that give off the right impression; it is about learning the right techniques – in fact it is technique driven.  Character on the other hand is who you really are: it is what you are really about; it is what you stand for;  it is how you behave behind closed doors; it is how you behave when you ‘down’ or on the ‘ropes’.  In the organisational arena there is a whole profession and industry dedicated to impression management: the marketing function, the marketing agencies, the PR agencies…

Why am I bring up this point?  Because I am wondering if you can fake a customer-centric orientation.  Actually that is not true – I do not believe that you can fake it over the long-term.  Yet, I continue to be surprised at how some organisation think they can give the impression of being customer centric without actually being ‘customer-centric’ orientation.  Allow me to share two examples with you.

The AA ring me to get my feedback but they did not really want my feedback

Yesterday afternoon a friendly chap from the AA rang me and told me that he ‘wanted to get my feedback on the AA as I had recently called the AA for help’.  Because I believe it is a great practice – for companies to elicit feedback and customers to give feedback – I agreed even though I was busy.  So he spelled out the game 1 for excellent and 5 for poor.  Then he proceeded to ask me three questions.  First, how do you rate the performance of the person who handled your call for help?  Second, how happy are you with how long it took for the mechanic to get to you?  Third, how happy are you with the service delivered by the mechanic?

Then this friendly chap asked if my problem had been fixed. “No” was my reply, “Because he was not able to get the faulty part”.  Then he asked me “Did the mechanic give you a price for the part?” I responded “Yes, he did. It was in the region of £250.”  The AA chap then started selling to me: he told me how the AA had a policy to cover parts.  What he did not do was to tell me about the conditions or the price.  When I told him that I did not need the service as I was driving a Honda and in the last seven years it had only broken down once (this time) and the only major repair was for some £300.  This did not stop this chap.  He carried on started selling me something else.  Some way through this selling I simply hung up on him.  How did the conversation occur to me?

I am left feeling that I was set-up.  I am left feeling that the purpose of the call was to sell to me and this was disguised as a request for feedback. And that is what I object to: one thing masquerading as another.  If the AA wanted to sell to me then that is what they should have made clear right at the start:  “Mr Iqbal you had a breakdown recently and we have one or two offers/products that we believe will be value to you.  Are you interested in learning more?”  I may have been interested in having that conversation or not. Yet, I would have walked away with a positive attitude towards the AA: they had identified a need, they had then taken the proactive step of alerting me to products that could be of value to me; and they had asked me if I was interested in the conversation.

A customer charter with no heart in it

I was asked for my help in evaluating-improving-constructing a customer charter.   When I asked the people why they were constructing a customer charter one person told me that it was for internal purposes – to inspire/guide the employees.  The other person on the room disagreed: she thought that it was something that the top management team wanted to publish because they believed that it would help to win more business.  Digging into the charter more I noticed that many of the words and sentences sounded great but did not actually commit the company to any specific behaviour that could be measured (by the company or by their customers).  It turned out this was intentional.

There had been no soul-searching.  There had been no collaborative process to involve the whole company in thinking through what promises that company would be glad to make to customers and the market place.  There had been no consideration of what kind of promises are bold – the kind that inspire us, the kind that inspire our customers, the kind that we are willing to ‘go the extra mile’ for. There had been no consideration of other companies that are inspirational in the way that they treat their customers.

The charter lacked heart because ultimately it was empty.  It’s real purpose was to simply act as a ‘marketing’ document that would convey the right impression on prospects and partners.  And the hope was that this would then lead to more revenues.  The funny thing is that the customer charter was not written for existing customers at all.  These customers were pretty much going to continue to get what they had been getting.  And no real changes were being made to inspire / effect changes in behaviour at the leadership level, the management level or the employee level – at least none that were communicated to me.

My take on this

You can’t fake it.  A wonderful concept that I learned from Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis)  is that of the ‘Elephant and the Rider’: the subconscious mind, the limbic brain, our innate take for granted always on (24/7) biological and emotional drives can be though of as the ‘Elephant’; and the The ‘rider’ is our rational brain – the neocortex.  What this analogy is communicating is that whilst you can talk to the ‘rider’ and get him to act what you find is that sooner the rider gets tired of controlling the elephant.  And when that happens the elephant goes exactly where it wants to go.  That is why dieting does not work.  It is also why New Years resolutions fizzle out. It is also why find sounding missions, values and charters do not work.  It is also why a lot of organisations are struggling with creating customer-centric cultures.

You can only create a ‘customer centric’ culture if your elephant buys into it whole-heartedly.  How do you know if that is the case?  Well when you think about / picture being customer-centric you are inspired, you are moved, you are touched.  That is to say that there is an emotional response: it is the kind of response when you find out you are going to be a father or mother or when you find out that one of your children is in danger.  If you do not get that emotional response then I guarantee that your rider is thinking ‘customer-centricity’ is a great technique to help me get what I want.  And as soon as a better technique comes along then you will jump on it.  Or, as soon as it becames hard to practice and apply this technique you will cut corners and ultimately dilute it so that the technique will not deliver its promise.  Or you will simply get bored of it and the elephant will do what it wants to do.

If you are crafting a ‘customer charter’ or a ‘customer experience’ or a ‘customer centric orientation’ then it might be useful to ask yourself the question: “Am I willing to stake everything on this?”  If not then you might want to think about playing a different game.

What do you think?