Simon Levin : Public goods and environmental challenges: Learning from evolution
DySoC / Exeter Webinar Series
Evolution and Social Systems
The Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity and Exeter is happy to announce a series of free webinars for Fall 2021 on Evolution and Social Systems. This series is a continuation of the past semester seminars: DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Cultural Evolution and DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Human Origins and Cultural Evolution.
https://www.dysoc.org/ess_webinars
Public goods and environmental challenges: Learning from evolution
Date: 11:45 a.m. EDT Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Speaker: Simon Levin (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University)
Abstract: Ecological and economic systems are alike in that individual agents compete for limited resources, evolve their behaviors in response to interactions with others, and form exploitative as well as cooperative interactions as a result. In these complex adaptive systems, macroscopic properties like the flow patterns of resources like nutrients and capital emerge from large numbers of microscopic interactions, and feed back to affect individual behaviors. In this talk, I will explore some common features of these systems, especially as they involve the evolution of cooperation in dealing with public goods, common pool resources and collective movement. I will describe examples from bacteria and slime molds to vertebrate groups to insurance arrangements in human societies and international agreements on environmental issues. These present mathematical challenges including scaling from the microscopic to the macroscopic, the emergence of pattern, critical transitions and conflicts between the interests of individuals and the good of collectives.
The seminar series is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the European Research Council.
(European Research Council (ERC) funding awarded to Thomas Currie under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (The Cultural Evolution & Ecology of Institutions, grant agreement no. 716212).)