Courses/CS 461/Winter 2006/Justin Padilla/Week 4

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[edit] Altruism

The model of Altruism is fairly interesting because it examines life-forms that have a "selfish" lifestyle versus those with an "altruistic" lifestyle. A number of things can happen when you change the sliders in this model.

• In the starting case, the altruists soon lose the battle to the selfish lifeforms. This can be accelerated by either increasing the cost of altruism, or reducing the benefit.
• The altruists can win fairly easily if the cost is reduced and benefit increased.
• If the cost and benefit are left at their starting values, somewhat of a balance can be achieved by setting the disease to about 75 and harshness to about 60. A constant fluctuation occurs between the altruistic population and the selfish one.
• If the disease and harshness get any larger, the altruism again becomes the dominant one, and the selfish population dies.