The Complexity of Cooperation

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The Complexity of Cooperation is the sequel to The Evolution of Cooperation. It is a compendium of seven articles on related topics. They include more complex forms of cooperation than the two-person iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) problem considered in The Evolution of Cooperation. The articles appeared in journals on a variety of subjects, and have been largely inaccessible to workers in other fields and to the general public.

Tit for tat (TFT) emerged as the most robust strategy in early IPD tournaments on computer, combining a willingness to cooperate with a determination to punish non-cooperation. It turns out that under various circumstances such as the possibility of error, strategies that are a little more cooperative or a little less punitive do even better than TIT FOR TAT. Generous TFT, or GTFT, cooperates a bit more often than TFT, while Contrite TFT or CTFT defects less frequently.

Axelrod applies various models related to IPD to a variety of situations, drawing conclusions from these simulations about the ways in which groups form, adhere, oppose or join other groups, and other topics in the fields of genetic evolution, business, political science, military alliances, wars, and more. He has added introductions to these articles explaining what real-world issues drove his research.