The Evolution of Incentives and Social Structure under Imperfect Information

尽管人们普遍认为大自然是“牙齿和爪子都是红色的”，但几乎所有的生物，从土壤细菌到灵长类动物——包括人类——都必须与其他生物合作才能生存和繁殖。尽管存在利益冲突，但这种合作是如何在进化中持续下去的，这是生物学的一个核心问题。当个人面对影响其收益的因素的不确定性时，问题就会加剧，因为这会产生欺骗的动机，从而破坏合作。该项目将研究当个体面临不确定性并拥有私人信息时，合作动机和相关社会结构如何演变。PI和他的同事将使用一套最初在经济学中开发的数学工具，称为机制设计理论。机制设计研究如何建立适当的激励结构，以防止自利个体相互欺骗，破坏期望的结果。然而，机制设计理论的经典应用，如拍卖和交易方案的设计，通常预设一个代理（如政府）具有制定“游戏规则”的权力。相比之下，自然选择作用于个体，个体只能以有限的方式改变游戏。因此，进化的“游戏规则”代表了自然选择以分散的方式通过个体发挥作用的结果。该项目的目的是了解自然选择如何组织个体之间的相互作用，从而实现互利的结果。该项目的跨学科方法不仅将进一步加深我们对基本进化过程的理解，而且还有助于理解我们在人类社会中如何在不依赖中央权威的情况下合作解决全球气候变化等问题。它还将在社会进化理论方面产生新的成果，这些成果肯定会引起公众的注意，从而有助于促进科学教育和公众对科学的理解。

Despite the common conception of nature as "red in tooth and claw," almost all organisms, from soil bacteria to primates -including humans-, must cooperate with others to survive and reproduce. How such cooperation persists evolutionarily despite conflicts of interests is a central question in biology. The problem is exacerbated when individuals face uncertainty about factors affecting their payoffs, because this creates incentives for deception that would undermine cooperation. This project will study how incentives for cooperation and the related social structure evolve when individuals face uncertainty and have private information. The PI and his colleagues will use a suite of mathematical tools originally developed in economics, called mechanism design theory. Mechanism design studies how appropriate incentive structures can be set up to prevent self-interested individuals from deceiving each other and undermining the desired outcome. However, classic applications of mechanism design theory, such as the design of auctions and trading schemes, usually presuppose an agent (such as a government) with the power of setting the "rules of the game". In contrast, natural selection acts on individuals that can alter the game only in limited ways by themselves. Hence, the evolved "rules of the game" represent the outcome of natural selection working in a decentralized way through individuals. The aim of this project is to understand how natural selection thus organizes interactions between individuals to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. The project's interdisciplinary approach will not only further our understanding of fundamental evolutionary processes, but also help in understanding how we in human societies can cooperate without relying on a central authority to tackle problems such as global climate change. It will also produce new results in social evolution theory that are sure to capture the public's attention, and will therefore aid in furthering science education and public understanding of science.