You Scratch My Back

This morning I received a bottle of champagne (coincidentally my favourite alcoholic drink) from a family of complete strangers, as thanks for my doing them a favour, one I enjoyed doing and for which I had refused payment. Biology geeks might see the connection between this “exchange” and the death of John Maynard Smith on Monday.

This entry was written by Damian, posted on 23Apr04 at 08:23, filed under Biology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

4 Comments

  1. CasualSavant
    Posted 23Apr04 at 08:45 | Permalink

    You jammy git, what kind? Bollinger?

  2. Leasey
    Posted 23Apr04 at 09:01 | Permalink

    Yet again, I seem to be missing the point - as a biology based person I demand to know the “connection” I am not seeing…..

  3. PooterGeek
    Posted 23Apr04 at 09:24 | Permalink

    Hello CS, good to have you back. The champagne is Mumm—more than fine by me.

    And JMS, as he was known, applied game theory to biological questions. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, that some have used to model the way members of a population can choose to co-operate with or cheat on their fellows, the most successful strategy on average is “Tit-for-Tat”. In other words you start out by assuming others will be good to you, and reciprocate others’ “goodness”. Of course, if they “defect”, then you do the same to them.

  4. CasualSavant
    Posted 26Apr04 at 06:49 | Permalink

    Or in the less elegant words of the fictional Don Vito Corleone: “You do me a favoh, I do you a favoh, paisane…”

Post a Comment

Your email is never shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*