I think cooperation is more complex than that, as far as who benefits. Superficially, yes it benefits lower status participants the most and therefore suggests they're the ones most likely to ask. In very simple systems, I think you see this often. But as the system or cultural superstructure gets more complex, the benefit rises toward higher status participants. Most societies put a lot of stock in being able to organize - a task which includes cooperation in its scope. That's a small part of the reason you get political email spam asking for donations, even if you live in an area where your political party is clearly dominant. Societies also tend to put an emphasis on active overall participation (the 'irons in the fire' mentality), where peer-cooperation is rewarded, and it's often unclear who has higher status in those situations without being able to tell who has the most 'irons in the fire' so to speak. I feel like this is where coauthoring falls. Although it probably depends on what subculture has developed around the subject being authored.

And then there's the people who create organizations entirely centered around cooperation. The idea being that there's power in being able to set the rules of how the lower status participants are allowed to cooperate, and how they are rewarded for their cooperation. For example, Youtube and Kickstarter. In these and similar systems, cooperation effectively starts at the highest possible status and rolls downhill.

I only read 3WC after the fact, so I can't comment on that one.

Yes you can. Simply look at the time stamps for each post and do simple math. By making the assumption that only "people who were there" can answer correctly, you're giving up solving your own problem before even trying.

Isn't that what simulations are for? By "lie" I mean lying about how reality works. It will make its decisions based on its best data, so we should make sure that data is initially harmless. Even if it figures out that that data is wrong, we'll still have the decisions it made from the start - those are by far the most important.

Or am I missing something?

Absolute strength for one, Absolute intelligence for another. If one AI has superior intelligence and compromises against one that asserts its will, it might be able to fool the assertive AI into believing it got what it wanted when it actually compromised. Alternatively, two equally intelligent AIs might present themselves to each other as though both are on equal strength, but one could easily be hiding a larger military force whose presence it doesn't want to affect the interaction (if it plans to compromise and is curious to know whether the other one will as well)

Both of those scenarios result in C out-competing D.

Although this may not have been true at the beginning, it arguably did grow to meet that standard. Cable TV is still fairly young in the grand scheme of things, though, so I would say there isn't enough information yet to conclude whether a TV paywall improved content overall.

Also, it's important to remember that TV relies on the data-weak and fairly inaccurate Nielsen ratings in order to understand its demographics and what they like (and it's even weaker and more inaccurate for pay cable). This leads to generally conservative decisions regarding programing. The internet, on the other hand, is filled with as much data as you wish to pull out regarding the people who use your site, on both a broad and granular level. This allows freedom to take more extreme changes of direction, because there's a feeling that the risk is lower. So the two groups really aren't on the same playing field, and their motivations for improving/shifting content potentially come from different directions.

This is a lot less motivation than for parents.

For a species driven entirely by instinct, yes. But given a species that is able to reason, wouldn't a "raiser" who is given a whole group to raise be more efficient than parents? The benefit of a small minority of tribe members passing down their culture would certainly outweigh those few members also having children.

I disagree. If you value the contributions of comments above your or your aggressor's ego - which ideally you should - then it would be a good decision to make others aware that this behavior is going on, even at the expense of providing positive reinforcement. After all, the purpose of the karma system is to be a method for organizing lists of responses in each article by relevance and quality. Its secondary purpose as a collect-em-all hobby is far, far less important. If someone out there is undermining that primary purpose, even if it's done in order to attack a user's incorrect conflation of karma with personal status, it should be addressed.

In Italy, the reversal at the appellate level is considered only a step towards a final decision. It's not considered double-jeopardy because the legal system is set up differently. In the United States though, appeals court ("appellate" is synonymous with "appeals") decisions are weighed equally to trial court decisions in criminal cases. If an appellate court reverses a conviction, the defendant cannot be re-tried because prosecutors in the US cannot appeal criminal cases.

The United States follows US law when making decisions about extradition. This isn't a feature of any specific treaty with Italy: extradition treaties just signify that a country is allowed to extradite. All subsequent extradition requests from those countries are sent through the Department of State for review. Even if it passes review and the person arrested, a court hearing is held in the US to determine whether the fugitive is extraditable. So there are multiple opportunities to look at Italian court procedures and decide whether they count as double-jeopardy under US law. Those investigations would tend toward deciding it does.

Ergo, the US would tend not to extradite someone whose verdict was reversed in a foreign appellate court.

I agree with your final prediction but not with your reasoning. The United States will likely not allow Knox to be extradited, not due to a vague sense of reluctance or unquantifiable dislike of Italy, but because the US has explicit laws that not allow extraditions relating to double-jeopardy. Any country wanting to extradite someone due to a crime for which they have previously been found innocent will be ignored. So in fact, the US would actually have to find a procedural excuse to allow the extradition request.