This post is written with the previous post, on crime and punishment, in mind. There were many interesting comments which ranged from "and eye for an eye" through to education of the criminals, and then the need to understand bad behaviour with a view to preventing it in the first place.This got me thinking. As a preamble, let me pose a question; one that exercises me from time to time. It is this: "Why do the wicked prosper?"
OK, maybe that's put a bit baldly, but in more general terms, why, when most of us are good and cooperative, do some people take advantage, hoodwink, steal, assault? Why do we find that a consistent fraction of the population are psychopathic; the real "undead" who walk among us?
[Psychopaths should not be confused with psychotics. The latter are insane, while the former lack any conscience and have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people for their own ends, and are the ones who can torture and kill without qualm. They constitute 1% or 2% of the population, and good at masking what they are.]
And to answer my own question, could it be that (just as virtue does) wickedness brings its own rewards?
Let's fast forward to Hawks and Doves, a simulation first devised by the biologist John Maynard-Smith in 1973, and which is based on Game Theory. Simple though the rules are, I think it has something to tell us about social conflict.Though the simulation is called Hawks and Doves, you can't tell from looking at the participants what they are - just as in real life a thief or a psychopath looks like you or me. The name derives from their aggressive or non-aggressive behaviour.
How does it work. Well imagine a population of Doves. Maybe a bit like the 12 disciples, but multiplied up a bit. Every now and then two of these Doves will compete over a resource, but since they won't fight the chances of either winning is 50:50, and they never have to bear the cost of injury.
Now add to this mix a mutation. We have our first Hawk, someone who is quite prepared to fight over a resource. What happens? Well, sad but true, it's a bit of a no-brainer; the bugger wins all the time, since no Dove will actually fight. Plus he never bears the cost of injury. So he is very successful.
Now what, in biological terms, does this mean? It means that he reproduces like crazy and pretty soon we see a lot more Hawks in the population. That doesn't mean they take over the world though.
As the proportion of Hawks increases so the probability of a Hawk meeting a Hawk becomes greater and greater. Now there will be a fight. Sure, each Hawk in a Hawk-Hawk conflict will win half the time on average, just as a Dove does in a Dove-Dove conflict. However the Hawk now has a cost that no Dove has: injury.
So there you have it, all the elements for a simulation (there is one other element, posturing, which carries a cost too, but it doesn't add much to this discussion).
- the reward value of the resource
- the cost of injury
- the proportion of Hawks and Doves and how this evolves
The mathematics behind the simulation is not complicated and for given costs and rewards, which you can manipulate, the population will stabilise at a given proportion of Hawks and Doves.
What I find thought provoking about the simulation is that wickedness does not need an explanation. Or rather, the explanation is that bad behaviour exists, not because baddies are ignorant or poorly educated, but because being bad is actually quite a successful strategy. In fact, the thing that holds the proportion of baddies down is simply the cost of injury (which you could treat symbolically as a fine or time in the stocks or behind bars).
But you always find baddies. Every time the simulation is run, the outcome is the same. Turning the other cheek, is, alas, not a philosophical gesture to a baddie, it is just an injury-free reward.
Are the rules too simple to apply to real life? Perhaps. Which is not to say that there are no lessons to be learnt. And complex behaviour can spring from very simple rules as John Horton Conway showed with his now famous Game of Life.
The following may or may not be true, but they follow from the above:
- badness is not an aberration; it exists because it is a viable strategy
- like the poor, it will always be with us
- but you can lessen its incidence by increasing the cost of injury or its symbolic equivalence
23 comments:
Yes this is very interesting and is why I like to keep my dovelets IN the dovecot at the moment as it were. Where I live this costs money. When does one have to teach the doves some hawk strategies or some hawk avoiodance strategies this is the question.
And a good question it is too jollygood. It is easy to frighten dovelets and make them unduly paranoid. On the other hand, they do need to know that there are some bad people around. I don't call psychopaths "the undead" for nothing. They really are frightening people.
So tell them the truth. Bad people around, but maybe only 1 to 5 in 100, and to look out for them, but to enjoy the other 95.
Great stuff Ernest. I also wonder if its possible for doves to become more hawklike and hawks to learn doveness - in human terms that is. If you leave out the psychopath percentage. As a playwright interested in redemption i need to believe that people can change.
it reminds me of a bumper sticker i saw: 'change of plan: the meek shall inherit the moon.'
tam - change is possible. Indeed most young men have some psychopathic tendencies which they lose as they develop better empathy.
And I *love* your bumper sticker, which is new to me.
There are many survival strategies but just to make us feel a little more optimistic here's EO Wilson talking about his research into the fact that altruism seems to be a very successful strategy for many species including humans:
“Groups with men of quality — brave, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic — would tend to prevail, as Darwin said, over those groups that do not have those qualities so well developed,”
this is from a NY Times article about him - cue clumsy link
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=science
lulu, erudite as ever. I agree that reciprocal altruism is a successful strategy (as witness our horses helfully grooming each other where one alone cannot reach).
My interest here was the inevitability of badness, something I don't think social scientists take into account.
Another point that your comment raises is the relative success of two groups, one more altruistic than the other. But what happens when they collide?
I sometimes think that the rather hideous colonial success of Europeans (perhaps most spectacularly the conquistadors in South America) has to do with our abundant supply of hawkish aggression.
i think you are being too black and white here Ernest. Many successful leaders have been psychopaths (bad people) using extreme aggression along with clever manipulation to acheive the desired outcome. I think most of us less extreme versions of these strategies to acheive what we want. In 'normal' society badness can be very subjective.
lulu - not sure we disagree ... badness is subjective and is probably defined statistically in the end.
I think that the simulation generalises to many things. For example, in a monogomous society, the first philanderer probably does quite well, but they won't take over because the 'stay at home' fathers have good breeding success too.
If I've understood your point about leaders, I agree. Psychopaths can be very successful (so they don't die out) but, as with Hawks, too many are not tenable because they require dupes to be successful - and not other psychopaths.
What the simulation doesn't address, but what I suspect is true, is that we all have a hawk/dove ratio within us, so that we are dovelike most of the time, but hawkish some of the time ...
Interesting.
I think most 'good' people have the potential to act badly under extreme pressure. I'm thinking war/famine. Would I steal your bread to feed my children, even though you were starving? Is that less 'bad' than stealing it to feed myself? I don't know.
At the other extreme we all know hawks who would trample their granny to get what they want. The conundrum for the dove is how much to let the let the hawk get away with, without losing his own humanity.
Cor, you do ask 'em Ernest:-)
very very interesting. Brought up in a dove dove situation, the world was a total shock. with my own dovelette I endeavoured to teach observation of hawks for a priming mechanism, and depersonalisation of their actions towards us as a barrier. She does far better out there than I ever did and, whilst doesn't perform in retaliation as a hawk, is far more resilient to hawk behaviour and stands firm with more corners covered. The advice was to seek out those who could reciprocate the same mix of D&H.
You hit it on the head when you said "that we all have a hawk/dove ratio within us". What I'm interested in next is "what makes the base ratio and can it be altered?" - I fear not.
How strong does the 'injury' or threat of injury have to be to alter the behaviour of the hawk?
Lane - in fact, if you look at it from the point of view of competing for resources, then stealing the bread could be a successful strategy. We know this happens in nature, e.g. birds stealing nesting material from one another. I'm not the best to ask about ethics, but perhaps it is less "bad" to steal selflessly (Robin Hood?). How much to let the hawk get away with? Very interesting. If we toughen up a bit, I suppose that means the hawk has to factor in a higher cost of 'injury', so maybe it would decrease hawkish behaviour, but as you ask, would it change us? I guess it would. It's not simple, is it?
helen suzanne - it is one of the worst things to witness one's child's first hawkish encounter. I remember the shock and upset (both of us) vividly. The base ratio may be fixed, but I think that I've been successfully socialised. Perhaps the hawk in us has to be shown that such behaviour carries a personal cost ... I'm no sociologist, but it seems to me that children operate without many sanctions these days, so not too surprising that the hawkish ones find it a good strategy.
mud - you can crank it way up, and reduce the fraction of hawks, but the one thing that does not change is the evolution of hawks. If you managed to eliminate the last one, any hawk introduced into the population (migration or mutation) in effects finds itself in an injury-free zone; all doves. So the cycle starts again. Bummer.
THese posts are excellent at getting the brain cells going, for a bit anyway. Anyway, I don't think you can be described as wicked for comepeting for limited resources. As good and bad are relative terms,the one necessitates the other. And I suspect that the rules of evolution dictate that if the more aggressive compete more effectively, they will take over completely. That's why in civilised society (cynical guffaw) we have rules to protect the weak.
So I think in conclusion, I'm in complete agreement with your conclusions.
One final, irrelevant thought is, as Hitler committed suicide, should he be seen as the greatest man ever for killing the world's most evil dictator. Would the answer be different if he did that in 1938, rather htan 1945.
The sad fact is that the bad people usually get away with it. For example, think of the Nazis. Most of the leaders escaped punishment; some were executed at Nuremburg, of course, but many fled and were never found. And some were found when they were in their 80s or 90s. So, in effect, they won as well.
It is right that civilised society should pursue murderers, perpetrators of genocide etc but they've achieved what they set out to do while the victims are dead and, too often, forgotten.
And so it goes.
nota bene - thanks, and I have to say they get my grey cells going too, because I am aware that some pretty smart cookies are likely to read them! Interesting point about Hitler; it would make a great icebreaker at the start of a brainstorm session.
dumdad - you're right. Bad people do very often get away with it. And retribution can't restore - but is important too. I would like to see more progress made with restorative justice though. For example, why don't vandals, or their families, get landed with the bill for putting right their damage. As far as I know, they don't.
Excellent post again, Ernest! I've come to it late and much of what I would have said has been said already. However, I think a distinction needs to be drawn betwen hawks and hawkish behaviour (which can be learnt) and true psychopathy, which, if memory serves, results in a person unable to empathise and therefore with no moral parameters at all. Very scary in the usual run of things, but much sought after by governments and military in war time.
strange you should say that, about war, jeannie. I can't remember where I read this, but apparently only about 2% of conscripts actually shoot to kill, even when at war (just about the percentage you would expect of psychopaths).
That's fascinating - I hadn't read that. I can believe it though. I was thinking more of the commanders when I commented. I'm sure I remember reading (all the way back as a Psych student) that psychopaths were prized as strategists and commanders as they had no trouble ordering offensives which would lead to the deaths of thousands of young men, the archetypal "cannon fodder". I've always wondered about the much decorated General Kitchener (as one example) and whether he was purely an example of his upper class caste (ie not brought up to regard the life of the lower classes as anything worth preserving) or whether he was in fact a psychopath. His cold- hearted use of concentration camps in the Boer War would suggest to me that he may have been, albeit high functioning.
Hi Ernest,
As always your posts are interesting. Just read the latest two. Thank-you.
Something you said in a comment about most young men having psychopathic tendencies, which they lose as they develop put me in mind of this article by a columnist I read regularly in the Irish Independent. http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/there-is-a-carnal-beast-inside-so-many-men-only-the-rarest-of-women--manage-to-equal-1570479.html
Interesting sjw - I read the article and concluded that it couldn't be published in England. Far too close to the knuckle. I agree with the comments about how dangerous young feral men are. It is pointless and misguided to treat them as though they were the same as the rest of us. They are not.
Thought-provoking, as usual.
As you say the wicked will always be with us, but increasing the cost of injury would at least put paid to some of the prospering.
karen - and difficult to define what injury is ...
For example, I, and I suspect some other people, do not consider a police caution (or even an ASBO) to constitute "injury" and therefore unlikely to change behaviour.
bloody hell. you could be HERE! in tanzania....!? extraordinary and completely inspirational... xxx j
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