e-Lecture : Evolutionary Games and Ecosystems

Taksu Cheon

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Evolutionary Games and Ecosystems (1)

First Things First

What is Ecosystem?

It is a concept in modern biology. It refers to a systems comprising various types of autonomous agents, zebras and lions for example. Arguments on the ecosystems tended to be like loose ended chats in a bar. But developement in past two decades based has revealed the true colors of the ecosystem as the central concept in mathematical quantitative biology which is based on Lotka-Volterra equation and dynamical systems theory.

What is Evolutionary Game Theory?

As the name indicates, it is an amalgamation of the theory of evolution and the game theory. It can be regarded as an attempt to mathematically formalize the evolution theory with the help of the game theory. It can also be thought as a dynamical extension of game theory, which, in its original form, has been a static theory dealing with stable final outcomes. Here, the world dynamical refers to the fact that the theory is decribed by game strategies with temporal variation, which necessarily entails the concept of evolution. You might wonder how game play can evolve. In fact, we will observe that whon egoistic individuals are assembled to form a society, altruistic behavior somehow emerges to the benefit of all individual. As far as I am aware, all the big names in the field - Maynard-Smith, Axelrod, Nowak and Sigmund, Gueth, Challet and Zhang - are our contemporaries, which is an eloquent testimony to the youth of the field itself.

Evolutionary Game Theory in Physisists' Perspective

Human society is also a form of ecosystem. So social and economic phenomena can be the target of reserach of game theory. That include such pressing questions as why there are income disparity in all existing society, and why certain institution develope "effortlessly" and certain ones go down the drain with its talent unutilized even after much effort to reverse its fortune. To look into these problem with clearly stated assumptions and controllable approximation, namely in the manner of theoretical physics which binds inspiration to the rigor of mathematics, that is our objective of physical model building in evolutionary game theory. Up to now, the subject has been mainly treated by mathematicians. We want to shift the emphasis slightly away from the formal rigor to the actual utility and concrete predictions. The resuls includes some definite statements on "dominance and stability" and even on "necessity of bosses", it might interest prospective "leasers" in various segments of society.

Here comes a Rescue for the Leasers of Defunct Institutions?

Well, not quite. You are born probably 50 years too early. We can almost guarantee the absense of immediate practical utility of evolutionary game theory, since it is still in an infant stage of building basic structures. Good news is probably to young academics who want to build carrier on this newly emerging subject. Leaders facing dificulty would do well going to library and again browse the pages of sages ancient and modern, eastern as well as western. Strangely enough, many of the predictions of evolutionary games can be seen coroborating the words of sages.

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