The Stag Hunt and Social Cooperation
Although most authors focus on the prisoner's dilemma as the game that best represents the problem of social cooperation, some authors believe that the stag hunt represents an equally (or more) interesting context in which to study cooperation and its problems (for an overview see Skyrms 2004).
There is a substantial relationship between the stag hunt and the prisoner's dilemma. In biology many circumstances that have been described as prisoner's dilemma might also be interpreted as a stag hunt, depending on how fitness is calculated.
| Cooperate | Defect | |
| Cooperate | 2, 2 | 0, 3 |
| Defect | 3, 0 | 1, 1 |
| Fig. 3: Prisoner's dilemma example | ||
It is also the case that some human interactions that seem like prisoner's dilemmas may in fact be stag hunts. For example, suppose we have a prisoner's dilemma as pictured in Figure 3. The payoff matrix would need adjusting if players who defect against cooperators might be punished for their defection. For instance, if the expected punishment is -2, then the imposition of this punishment turns the above prisoner's dilemma into the stag hunt given at the introduction.
Read more about this topic: Stag Hunt
Famous quotes containing the words stag, hunt, social and/or cooperation:
“What was dancing to you then?
We went from the high gate away
To a black hill the other side of men
Where one wild stag stared
At the going day.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.”
—James Connolly (1870–1916)
“The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)