Thursday, April 9, 2009

Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation

On another note, there is a symposium on saturday afternoon entitled "EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF COOPERATION" that is being organized by David Carballo. While the symposium includes my good friend and colleague Jelmer Eerkens, I have a hard time believing that the papers are really going to represent "evolutionary dynamics" in the sense that the rest of evolutionary biology means the term. I might be pleasantly surprised, but when one sees titles like "Cooperation, Ritual and the Emergence of Classic Maya Rulers" one can typically expect anthropological mumbo-jumbo that has no relationship to evolution (as a theory) and certainly not evolutionary dynamics in any meaningful (i.e., explanatory) sense (ala Nowak and other).

I'll certainly check it out, but my expectations are sadly pretty low.

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