The networkist perspective

This sequence is an introduction to what I call “networkism”.

You can read it as an integrated summary of how some basic ideas from different disciplines interact:

• The tragedy of the commons and prisoner’s dilemma from game theory.
• Externalities and network effects from economics.
• Cooperation mechanisms, especially Axelrod’s work in The Evolution of Cooperation and The Complexity of Cooperation.
• Cognitive biases, from behavioural science, especially the work presented by Daniel Kahneman.
• The adaptativity of some cognitive biases, frequently observed in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. This includes the fact that some emotions implement cooperation mechanisms (e.g. gratitude and anger intuitively implement tit for tat).

Together, with a few auxiliary constructions, they form a coherent description of some aspects of society. It’s very abstract, but losing the “noise” helps identify and address some structural problems.

The first five entries in this sequence will be the following:

• The networkist approach: On setting a direction and letting the social network “worry about the details”.
• How cooperation grows and fails: Why reciprocity, the market, social norms and hierarchies can’t adequately solve group cooperation on large scales.
• Emotions as cooperation heuristics: How the epidemics of depression, stress and anxiety stem from an evolutionary mismatch with our cooperation mechanisms.
• Network displacement and destructive creation: How our current cooperation mechanisms allow for value creation that bring about net losses for society.
• On scaling social norms: How to harness what we know to adequately solve group cooperation on large scales.

The sequence will probably have more entries, that’s the plan to start.