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Archive: Dealing with Deception in Biology

325 views · Published 19 June 2014 · 53:56 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: UW Video · 2014 · Education

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To function effectively, social systems need to overcome various strategic issues surrounding the threat of deception: Why do agents share information even when their interests conflict? Why don't cheaters exploit and undermine communication by sending deceptive signals? How do communicating parties avoid eavesdropping and signal tampering? Such problems arise among the individuals within complex animal societies such as baboon troops, cooperatively nesting birds, and social insects, and also among the cells within any single multicellular organism. 

Carl Bergstrom discusses the problem of deception in biological systems, describe how these problems can be formalized using game theory, and outline some of the strategies that organisms use to overcome these problems.

Produced 1/12/2012
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