CONCLUSION

We can surmise the following points:

1. According to Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene theory, the primary evolu­tionary agents are genes that program behavior into their carriers and are perpetuated into the next generation if they aid the organism in accumu­lating more fitness value than competitors.

2. In evolutionary replicator dynamics modeling, actors must compete over an objective resource in accordance with the principles of noncooperative game theory to survive and propagate progeny in the next generation.

3. This demand on life forms extends throughout the universe in the same way that the laws of physics do.

4. Order, specifically regular patterns of interaction that conform to mutual-best-reply equilibrium, is the outcome of behavior that appears to be purposive in the same way that a missile moves toward its target or a thermostat maintains a constant temperature.

5. Norms, or regularized, repeating patterns of conduct, arise as individuals who are successful in obtaining objective value coexist in an equilibrium of mutual-best-reply; these are not necessarily optimal, but actors who ben­efit by participating in optimal equilibria will produce more offspring.

6. Humans have evolved with the logic of noncooperative game theory imprinted into their DNA and are likely to exhibit selfish behavior as a result.

7. The normalization inherent in neoliberal society consistent with strategic rationality is decidedly distinct from the modern normativity described by Michel Foucault in his analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panoptic technology for behavioral modification.^[646] In this system, which human scientists design to reform agents so that they will “internalize the gaze” of the authority and moderate their own behavior to become useful workers, norms are identified as the average conduct of membership popula­tions. Experts study individuals to scientifically specify current average performance and to develop disciplinary exercises that transform the performance of subjects, who then, over time, achieve a socially more satisfactory average. In game theory, norms are Nash equilibria to games in which actors’ preferences and strategies are encoded to result in regularized patterns of play. The only ways to modify outcomes are to apply incentives or to shock the system such that possibly another stable mutual-best-reply equilibrium could emerge.