MetaFilter posts tagged with selfishness

The Price of Anarchy

parudox — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:23:01 -0800

Braess' paradox and the price of anarchy [PDF]: "We had three tunnels in the city and one needed to be shut down. Bizarrely, we found that car volumes dropped. ... We discovered it was a case of Braess' paradox, which says that by taking away space in an urban area you can actually increase the flow of traffic, and, by implication, by adding extra capacity to a road network you can reduce overall performance." The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks is the paper mentioned in the first link — see that for maps of Boston, London, and Manhattan that show which roads were beneficial to block (individually) in a simulation. If you are interested in selfish networks and are not afraid of math, check out Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy (review) as well as this paper for some bounds on the price of anarchy.

evolution of cooperation

Tryptophan-5ht — Mon, 08 May 2006 00:43:07 -0800

evolution of cooperation apparently the evolution of cooperative behavior has been something of a rough spot for evolution researchers. Some guys (Mikhail Burtsev & Peter Turchin) developed a computer simulation that helps to explain how the essential selfishness of survival is not mutually exclusive to altruism and cooperation as well as how these behaviors can arise naturally. (further reading from google: ###)

Objectivism: The philosophy of the future?

jdroth — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 18:28:33 -0800

The U.S should not help tsunami victims according to those ever-thoughtful fellows at the Ayn Rand Institute. Why not? Because, Objectively speaking, altruism is evil, especially collective altruism.