Friends or Foes?
As Cowden very rightfully puts it, “If natural selection is survival of the fittest, why isn’t everything a competition?” (Cowden). We’ve been taught in our history and science classes that since the beginning of humankind, when it came down to survival, it was all about who was the most fit — “Eat or be eaten,” who was the strongest, who could withstand the outdoors. The phrase “survival of the fittest” has even found is way to describe our behaviors when it comes to our hunts for jobs in the more-competitive-than-ever job market, applications to colleges and universities, and the way we train and compete in sports. It looks like a large portion of the way we approach matters is fostered by a possibly innate competitive nature between the world and ourselves. We as humans do our best to survive, as do other living creatures and animals. And when we think of animals and survival (of the fittest), what often comes to mind is the concept of predator and prey, which can be represented by the concept of Evolutionary Game Theory.
Let’s say we can divide survival tactics/interactions into two categories: Passive (P) and Aggressive (A). For a more specific example, we can draw up a payoff matrix as we did in lecture between a passive player and an aggressive player, or a simulation of the hawk (H) vs. dove (D) game.
| Passive (1-x) | Aggressive (x) | |
| Passive | 1, 1 | 0, 2 |
| Aggressive | 2, 0 | 0.5, 0.5 |
If we look at this example from lecture, we find that in this case, the Aggressive strategy is the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), while the Passive strategy is not; in other words, the Aggressive strategy constitutes the strategy or behavior for which player A’s payoff is greater than or equal to player B’s payoff when (1-x) fraction of the population plays strategy A and a small x fraction plays strategy B. This particular example demonstrates a situation in which “survival of the fittest” and aggression prevails.
However, we must go back to our initial question: If natural selection is survival of the fittest, why isn’t everything a competition? Let’s go way back to when we first learned about Game Theory and Nash Equilibrium and take a look at the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In that situation, both prisoners actually benefit the most when neither of them confess or throw the under the bus. In other words, they achieve the greatest payoff/benefit when they cooperate with each other rather than betray each other.
Now we have looked at two different situations of Passiveness vs. Aggressiveness or how I am going to put it, Friend vs. Foe that demonstrate two different conclusions of what kind of behavior provides the greater benefit for a player. Therefore, as the attached article properly explains, cooperation/passiveness has its place in promoting survival and greater benefits just as much as competition/aggression does. When it comes to sports aggression is probably the way to go if you want to win, but when it comes to doing a project, maybe having a partner or doing a group project would give you the higher grade. Because of this discrepancy in which is the “superior strategy,” it is definitely safe to say that the superior strategy is dependent on the situation that you are in, the benefits that you reap from playing whichever strategies available, and the cost of playing that strategy.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/game-theory-evolutionary-stable-strategies-and-the-25953132