Axelrod's "Cooperative Strategies": An Oxymoron

---- By J. L. S.

From wiki, "evolution of cooperation"

"As cooperation became general the non-provocable strategies were exploited and eventually eliminated, whereupon the exploitive (non-cooperating) strategies were out-performed by the cooperative strategies."

While Dawkins comes from a selfish civil servant of a father (the wiki entry says, "ethnicity: English" -- but surely there's a drop of Scots blood in the "Dow-kins"? -- cfr. Defoe, "The Englishman", in Complete Works), Axelrod comes from the similarly unphilosophical game-theory (Mind, some philosophers, including Griceans like me _love_ it!).

I myself used 'strategy' like the plague. Till a Russian lady told me, of all people: "You are too gladiatorial". Indeed, 'strategos' was the Greek general. So the idea here is: War!

Zero-Sum games, not war-games, etc.

So, 'cooperative strategy' as used, pretty formally, by Axelrod, seems oxymoronic in that respect.

I'm learning a lot from Kramer: he says: If a word itches you, change it! ("Let not the marriage of true minds..." etc). So I propose: cooperative 'procedures' and leave WAR out of the 'nice', and 'clear' 'rules' of the game.