Humans are SuperCooperators.

A few months ago the book "SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed" came out. I just finished reading it. The book is written by Martin Nowak - the director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University. He combines evolutionary biology and mathematics and is an extraordinary researcher. I was looking forward reading the book having read all of Nowak's work on cooperation. I am a big fan of his work. To give an idea: he is the only author that has a separate folder on my computer (called "nowak”) in which his publications are listed. His work has been groundbreaking, and for me eye-opening and motivating in a number of cases.

In brief, the book singles out five mechanisms to understand why we cooperate (which in this case means how we can get people to cooperate in Prisoner's Dillema-type of situations):

1. Direct Reciprocity: I scratch your back and you scratch mine the next time (repeated play);
2. Indirect Reciprocity: I scratch your back, others see it, and they scratch my back (so reputation);
3. Spatial Games: We do not meet each other randomly. Populations are structured which promotes cooperation;
4. Kin selection (nepotism): Haldane's famous "I jump in the water to save 2 brothers or eight cousins"; and
5. Group (or multilevel) selection: I cooperate because it is beneficial for my group.

After discussing these five mechanisms the book continues and discusses important and interesting topics such as cancer, language, and networks.

So, am I enthousiastic about the book? Unfortunately not that much. I agree with Nowak's main argument, which is that cooperation should be placed together with selection and mutation as one the fundamental parts of evolution to create complex entities. It is cooperation that made us humans (aka SuperCooperators) so successful. Moreover, I also think this book gives a good summary of the work he has done on the topic of cooperation. However the way he gets this message across I do not like. Firstly, there is not a clear red thread in the book. For example, after listing the five mechanisms my Kindle indicated we were at 40% of the book. The book then continued with topics (cancer, networks, language, etc.) that seemed to be only weakly related to the rest of the book. The reason for this is that the book is more like an autobiography of Nowak - discussing his research over the last decades. Nowak definitely deserves an autobiography, but I did not expect this and thus did not enjoy a lot of paragraphs with not-useful information like the following two:

“We discussed the Dilemma as we drove back the next day in the same VW that my father still uses today to putter around Austria.”

“The next day, once the cross-Channel ferry had set us down, I caught my first glimpse of Britain. It was not William Blake’s green and pleasant land. The soil was cracked and dry. The grass and foliage were brown and the country was in the grip of drought.”

Secondly, the way it was written I did not like. This could be a cultural thing, though. In the Netherlands we have a saying that translates to something like this: “Do normal and you already do crazy enough”. So, even if you are amazing and do great work, there is no need to keep on pointing this out. Let's just say that this book could have been written more humble. Nowak, for example, moves without hesitation from Michelangelo and Mahler to himself and his own work.

Overall, the book is about a very important topic. Moreover, it is a summary of impressive work Nowak has done on the topic cooperation, which he has covered from a lot of different angles and that definitely deserves a book. Also, it is written in an easier and more accessible way then his academic articles. So, if don't mind reading paragraphs like the two above and the one below (to give an indication), this book might be something. However, if you already know Nowak's research this book adds little and the reference I give below (one of his 4-page articles in Science) sums up the most important part this book quite well - then from there keep on reading his other academic papers.

“I was fascinated and wanted to formulate a language game around this idea, one that could shed light on the origins of language. I had the same visceral feeling I’d had when Karl mentioned indirect reciprocity in the Wienerwald. I felt something new and great would come out of this idea. In fact I felt it was inevitable. But before I could make a start, my career path in academia would undergo an extraordinary change.”

Reference

• Nowak, Martin A. "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation". Science, 2006, Vol. 314, 1560-1563.