Skimming the PNAS paper, it appears that the conclusion is that evolved group co-operation is not mathematically stable without evolved altruistic punishment. I.e. populations with only evolved co-operation drift towards populations without any group focused evolved traits, but altruistic punishment seems to exclude enough defectors that evolved co-operation maintained frequency in the population.
Which makes sense, but I’m nowhere close to qualified to judge the quality of the paper or its implications for evolutionary theory.
Skimming the PNAS paper, it appears that the conclusion is that evolved group co-operation is not mathematically stable without evolved altruistic punishment. I.e. populations with only evolved co-operation drift towards populations without any group focused evolved traits, but altruistic punishment seems to exclude enough defectors that evolved co-operation maintained frequency in the population.
Which makes sense, but I’m nowhere close to qualified to judge the quality of the paper or its implications for evolutionary theory.