WWI trench cooperation emerged from random signals interpreted over time
Evidence
Take, for instance, the cooperation of ālive and let liveā which flourished between enemy soldiers in the First World War (Axelrod 1984). This might be accounted for in various ways. It may have arisen as the result of a soldier shooting ā out of distraction, boredom, or nervousness -ā at some clearly non-human target in the opposite trench. Or it may be that soldiers on both sides stopped shooting at regular intervals because they happened to have their meals at the same hours of the day. Such random signals may eventually have been āinterpretedā by one side as an inclination on the other towards an implicit truce, and they may have responded with other signals; first just to test for possible misunderstandings, then with increasing conviction, until the exchange slowly assumed the features of a stable cooperative abstention from mutual injury. ā Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperativeā¦, 2789
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SHARE: The accidental-meal-timing origin of ālive and let liveā is exactly the sort of oddly specific historical detail a military-history friend would enjoy.
Related
- Random signals can crystallize into stable cooperation through learned signaling conventions (similarity 0.93)
- Live-and-let-live truces emerged from random signals, not prior trust (similarity 0.91)
Broader Connections
- Cooperation can operate independently of trust
#complicates(0.78) ā Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperativeā¦, 2830