It is actually amazing that multicellular organisms overcome the prisoners' dilemma type situations
I just don't see those "prisoners' dilemma type situations". Can you illustrate? What will cells of my body win by defecting and how can they defect?
Cancer is not successful competition, it's breakage.
amazing that pathogens don't kill more of us than they already do.
That's anthropics for you :-)
What will cells of my body win by defecting and how can they defect?
Consider something like Aubrey de Grey's "survival of the slowest" theory of mitochondrial mutation. The "point" of mitochondria is to do work involving ATP that slowly degrades them, they eventually die, and are replaced by new mitochondria. But it's possible for several different mutations to make a mitochondrion much slower at doing its job--which is bad news for the cell, since it has access to less energy, but good news for that individual mitochondrion, because...
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