A way to lower the cost of punishing involves reputation, an incredibly reliable means of influencing behavior. In tests of game theory, cooperation is boosted if people know your history of play (i.e., open-book play that produces a shadow of the future); be known as a free rider, and others will start off not trusting you or refusing to play with you. This occurs among hunter-gatherers, who spend a huge amount of time gossiping about, among other things, who has cheated by, say, not sharing meat; get a reputation for that and you’re ostracized, which can be life-threatening. In contrast, the
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