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Just as important as getting cooperation started were the conditions that allowed it to be sustainable. The strategies that could sustain mutual cooperation were the ones which were provocable.

— Robert Axelrod The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

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More quotes by Robert Axelrod

What makes it possible for cooperation to emerge is the fact that the players might meet again.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

Proposition 5. ALL D is always collectively stable.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

The two-person iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma is the E. coli of the social sciences, allowing a very large variety of studies to be undertaken in a common framework.

The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Proposition 3. Any strategy which may be the first to cooperate can be collectively stable only when w is sufficiently large.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

Proposition 4. For a nice strategy to be collectively stable, it must be provoked by the very first defection of the other player.

The Evolution of Cooperation (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Axelrod (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.