Robert Axelrod: Base

“The theory of evolution is based on the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Yet cooperation is common between members of the same species and even between members of different species.”

Robert Axelrod The evolution of cooperation

Axelrod, Robert, and William Donald Hamilton. "The evolution of cooperation." Science 211.4489 (1981): 1390

Life

“Aggregation means the organization of elements of a system into patterns that tend to put highly compatible elements together and less compatible elements apart. Landscape theory predicts how aggregation will lead to alignments among actors (such as nations), whose leaders are myopic in their assessments and incremental in their actions. The predicted configurations are based upon the attempts of actors to minimize their frustration based upon their pairwise propensities to align with some actors and oppose others. These attempts lead to a local minimum in the energy landscape of the entire system. The theory is supported by the results of the alignment of seventeen European nations in the Second World War. The theory has potential for application to coalitions of business firms, political parties in parliaments, social networks, social cleavages in democracies, and organizational structures.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Chap. 4 : Choosing Sides
Adapted from Robert Axelrod and D. Scott Bennett “A Landscape Theory of Aggregation,” British Journal of Political Science 23 (Apr. 1993): 211–33.
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Democracy , Business , War , Support

“In complex environments, individuals are not fully able to analyze the situation and calculate their optimal strategy. Instead they can be expected to adapt their strategy over time based upon what has been effective and what has not.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Chap. 1 : Evolving New Strategies

Adapted from Robert Axelrod, “The Evolution of Strategies in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma,” in Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing, ed. Lawrence Davis (London: Pitman; Los Altos, Calif.: Morgan Kaufman, 1987)
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Optimism , Time

“Throughout the social sciences today, the dominant form of modeling is based upon the rational-choice paradigm. Game theory, in particular, is typically based upon the assumption of rational choice. In my view, the reason for the dominance of the rational-choice approach is not that scholars think it is realistic. Nor is game theory used solely because it offers good advice to a decision maker, because its unrealistic assumptions undermine much of its value as a basis for advice.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Introduction
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Science , Game , Thinking , Decision

“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.”

Robert Axelrod The evolution of cooperation

Chap. 4 : The Live-and-Let-Live System in World War I
The Evolution of Cooperation (1984; 2006)

World , War , Friendship