Evolutionarily stable strategies explain behaviour with no planner — equilibria emerge from payoffs alone.
Explains why “everyone would be better off if…” arguments almost never work: the equilibrium is a property of the payoffs, not of what the participants would prefer.
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Typed edges. Anything below the line was authored on the other note and derived here.
supports →Never ask what someone thinks — ask what they are paid to think.The formal machinery under Munger’s aphorism. Incentives do not merely influence behaviour, they determine the stable configuration a population settles into regardless of anyone’s intentions.
supports →Play long-term games with long-term people — compounding of money, trust, and knowledge only works if you don't reset the board.Reciprocal altruism is only stable when the game repeats and defectors can be remembered. Naval reached the conclusion by intuition; this is the proof, and it names the conditions under which it fails.