For there will always be cheats, and stable solutions to the game-theoretic conundrums of reciprocal altruism always involve anelement of punishment of cheats. Mathematical theory allows twobroad classes of stable solution to 'games' of this kind. 'Always benasty' is stable in that, if everybody else is doing it, a single niceindividual cannot do better. But there is another strategy which isalso stable. ('Stable' means that, once it exceeds a critical frequencyin the population, no alternative does better.)

The God Delusion On page 212 Monday, November 5, 2012 @ 1:54pm