 Hello, everybody. Hello, hello. Hello, hello, everybody. Well, this is Mathia, and you're actually now watching International Virtual Studium, which is a very interesting project powered by the University of Siena, which aims to share a few stories, anecdotes, and knowledge about a wide range of topics which are all relevant to the actual coronavirus crisis that we are all facing right now as humankind. So, right now we are very pleased to have a bunch of guests who are all very versatile and which are pleased to take part in our small project. So, today there's this very special guest that we are expecting right now, and let me check, is she here? Oh, my God. Yes, she is. By the way, we're so pleased you're here. While we're waiting, hi. I wonder, Dottrato, for the biochemistry. You can now see her. No, you can't. Where is she? You're in suspense because you still don't know who she is, and there we are. Okay, nice to see you. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Can you? Yes, yes, yes. In the public. Can you, you audience? By the way, let's not forget to ask you guys, should you have any kind of questions, please do ask them. You can ask them in the small box which is below. Is the volume a bit low? Is it my volume a bit low? I'm sorry, I'm trying to speak here right now. So, but hello. I still haven't told our lovely audience who you are. You are a professor of mathematics, am I right? Yes, I teach two engineers and mathematician. I have a background in mathematics, but I usually work with engineers. I've been engineering department of the University of Siena, and so I'm somehow both engineer and mathematician. Oh, good. So you are as versatile as I said before. Then the title of your, let's call it lecture, but it's more of a warm conversation. But anyway, it's self-regulation and social influence for cooperation. So, cooperation maths, that's kind of weird for people like me who are not keen on mathematics or know nothing about it. So please, show us this whole new word of mathematics, cooperation, self-regulation. What's all about? Okay, cooperation is not a mathematical concept, as you can imagine. Cooperation is important for all of us when we behave in a society, when we behave in any place where other people are together as and are somehow asked to safeguard some common goods. So cooperation is acting as a driver for all our decisions that are aimed to somehow prevent that common goods are discarded. For example, social health is a good example requiring cooperation and also environment safeguard is also very important. Cooperation is very important in the safeguard of environment, for example. So the mathematics will come later. I will try to start by motivating my study. That has been recently published jointly with a colleague, which is Dario Madeo. And so there is a big debate in the mathematical fields about cooperation. And this is motivated by the fact that usually people are struggling between taking decisions, ensuring their own rewards, or acting for social interest. And I think that we are in this moment, we are living in a situation where this is very, very true, maximally true. And so the point is that the maximum of the common goods can be achieved when all people contribute cooperatively to it. So we must be socially cooperative. So cooperation is not a decision of individuals as separate people, but it's a problem of a society. And moreover, selfish behavior prevents collective goods to be obtained correctly. And so the point is that, for example, in this time where coronavirus is spreading over the world, we can follow the rules that governments are asking us to promote. For example, stay at home, social distancing, or, for example, buy a little amount of food when going to the supermarket instead of panic buying. So we are every day under the controversial decisions between being selfish or being able to promote common goods conservation and presentation. Yes, I think I'm in for everybody in here. But when does maths kicks in in this field, which it has to do with common sense? So is there a way mathematically demonstrated common good and common sense are actually a thing? Okay, there is a theory which is grounded on mathematics, which is game theory. And game theory was born not many years ago by means of John Nash, that maybe all of you know. And this theory has been developed to describe the decisions of people, how people take decisions. But under game theory, there is a strong assumption, and the strong assumption is that people are rational. So they are always aimed at maximizing their own payoff. So the mathematics I would say is in the word maximization. If I am able to use mathematical tools to maximize some functions that represent our payoffs, our utilities, our rewards. So the mathematics is the methodology under which we can solve the problems of taking the decisions for individuals. And game theory is very important because the decisions of people under the game theory are related to the decisions of other people. So it's a field where the interaction among people is very important and is at the basis. The problem is that according to game theory, it may happen that sometimes some dilemmas happen. For example, there is a very famous dilemma in game theory, which is called the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, where we, using our rationality, we will always converge to a decision which is the decision of defecting. Being defective while, on the contrary, being cooperative will produce a higher payoff. So the dilemma is that being cooperative is providing a higher payoff. But under the hypothesis of rationality, we, at the end, eventually will choose to be defective. So the mathematics enters in the way that people are taking the decisions. But unfortunately, these mathematics that have been also extensively used in the economics is not able to account for cooperation. So there is a limit under the assumption of rationality that prevents people to behave cooperatively in a social context. And so this problem is extensively studied in the literature. Even actually is one of the most important themes in the research, in the scientific research, in the mathematical field, and also in the social sciences, and also, I would say, in social psychology. Because the way that people take decisions is also studied by social psychology. Why people usually defect? What is the interpretation of this concept of game theory from a social psychological point of view? That seems to me a vibrant and engaging aspect of mathematics and sociology, isn't it? It's more relevant to everyday life. I would say just to make a parenthesis that I think my work is devoted to apply mathematical theory and mathematical tools to explain real facts and real phenomena. So I'm not that kind of mathematician or engineer which works in a separate room from real life. I prefer to be seen as an artisan that tries to explain what happens all around us. So I'm interested more in the interpretation of the results more than in the theory itself. So why people to be back? Why people defect? People defect essentially for two reasons that are well represented in the game theory and well interpreted in real life. One reason is the greed, is the compulsion. When we look for some goods, being not able at all to concern with the presence of other people. We are seeking for something just for benefiting ourselves. This is the one reason. And the other reason is the fear. Suppose that you are an individual that may wish to act in a socially responsible way. But you are afraid that all the other people will not. So this fear may push even well-concerned people to behave selfishly. So selfish behavior may induce selfish behavior in other people, in the other people. So these two facts that are well recognized in social psychology are also very well accounted in the game theory. So the point now is how can we solve this dilemma? Can we try to push into the mathematical models any methodology, any fact, any factor, any, I would say, variable that will be able to reverse this selfish behavior into cooperative one. So in my work I have done those facts that I will try to explain in a moment. The first step is to introduce time. So I'm not interested in games that are played once, one-shot games. I'm more interested in repeated games. Because when you are able to repeat games and you are able to play games with many people, you can learn from the results of the game. While if you are allowed to play only once, you will not learn anything. Or at least we will not be able to apply the results of the game. In a second round. So the second fact that we have introduced is the network of connections. So our individuals in the society are not separate people playing two-by-two games, but they are included in a network. Imagine, for example, a social network that we are now using, where people are connected explicitly through a friendship mechanism or even through a rental mechanism or other kind of neighboring mechanism. So in this way we know who are the other people to which we are playing against. So we are not individual, not identifiable in the society. We have a specific name and color and we are characterized essentially by our personality in a unique way. So the second thing we have done besides introducing times in the game's evolution of the dynamics, we have introduced the network. And then we have done a third change to game theory. And the third change is the introduction of a factor, of a new factor, which is a specific game, which is called a self-game, which consists with adding some kind of inertia to the basic mechanism of selfish behavior. We introduce a self-regulating parameter that we call exactly awareness parameter. So we try to introduce in our mathematical model the awareness, which is essentially an internal mechanism. And this awareness, when we are going to take a decision, comes from our knowledge, comes from being in touch, being in contact with the other people and being able to learn from the social context and also from ourselves. So when we introduce this term, we are able to show mathematically, as we say now, that cooperation is possible. But time is necessary because indeed we are balancing the selfish mechanism that is grounded in game theory that we have said before, together with this new factor which is able to limit the selfishness. And this factor is not due to any kind of punishment. It's not due to any kind of, I would say, reduction of payoffs in the game. It's not due to adding some cost. It's not a cost. Sometimes it costs, but the cost is not a monetary. It's not included into the games in the sense that it is reducing the game, it's reducing the reward. It's just a completely different nature mechanism, which is internal. So by joining the traditional game theory, together with these new factors, which is repeating games with the people and repeating games with connected people and being aware of the connections that we are embedded in, we are able to develop some mechanisms that are able to counteract with the selfishness and learn and learn to behave cooperatively in a spontaneous way. So can we apply all of that to the situation we're living in right now? The reason for which I'm very proud of our study is that actually the coronavirus situation that we are living now is very, very good examples of the results we get in our paper. I would say that we show mathematically that punishment-based cooperation is not the solution. Hard punishment as well as, I would say, centralized monitoring are not the right way to make people able to follow the beneficial guidelines. I would say that punishment-based cooperation will not produce learning in the population, will not produce the cooperation to be embedded in the cultural heritage of the country. On the other hand, we show that extensive testing, honest reporting and well-informed public is more easily cooperative. So when people are told the scientific facts, for example, the information we got from our scientists in the occasion of coronavirus, when people are told correctly about the scientific facts and when people trust public authorities and when people trust and are also able to understand the scientific facts that are told to them, then the citizens will do the right thing even without having a big brother under their shoulders. They will be able to cooperate under a self-motivated behavior. Just to sum up and to make things clear for everybody. So we're saying that a well-informed citizen rather than a well-fined citizen is more probable to act responsibly correctly or am I still stumbling in the dark? Yes, I'm very convinced about that. Moreover, I can add something to that. So I will think that according to our theory, I strongly think that, for example, the coronavirus experience will become part of the culture of the population at global level. So I think that we will be able, more able to deal with a new situation, a new, similar situation with more power for knowledge. So I think that empowering people is the great effort that governments must do. And I will say more that even the government may be under the same drivers. For example, if you think at a higher level, the connections among people may be also seen at the level of government. So the same model will apply to governments themselves. And so the cooperation between among all governments, I would say all governments in the world in this time, will be prerequisite for solving the problem and dealing with a similar situation. But I will say more. If I can add something even more, these ideas will apply to our lives also. So it's a multiple scale fact. We have to be aware, I think, that we are able to change things. So the behavior of any single person is important. We are very, very small compared to the ensemble of all people in the world. Anytime a contribution can make a world of a difference. Exactly. Because we act and we can influence our neighbors. And this influence may be propagated. And according to the complexity theory that I'm also studying, these will and the nonlinearity of the changes, a small and a tiny change in our behavior will be able to become a very big and change everything. So my message, a very important message is that even if we are made by two different parts of our personality, selfish and altruistic, we are able to balance these two parts and be cooperative when this cooperation is necessary for our safeguard, for our life. That's very important. Yeah. So thank you. You do have quite some time. So it all has to do with self-regulation, which is, I guess, a key skill in this kind of atmosphere, in this kind of situation. So people who are self-regulated are even more self-confident and more resourceful, I guess, when embarking on new tasks, like, you know, in this case, it's in at home, when, you know, the pandemic is spreading all over the world. Yes, I think that we must work. All of us, all of us must work and theirs or their selves in order to become more aware and more able to read the information and more open to new knowledge, even scientific. Because all people are, I think, able to understand scientific facts if they are explained in a well way, in a correct way, an easy and understandable way. So I think that we have made our efforts to be more self-regulated, but self-regulation is nothing to do with being afraid, is us to do with being informed. I see. Correctly, okay? And feel our power and being able to feel that we are very powerful in all sense. Yeah, but in this case, I think that there is even a huge effort that has to be made by, you know, scientists in order to, you know, provide more usable information, pieces of information, in order to get everybody to understand what's really at stake. So not just, you know, talking in this weird echo chamber where everybody has the same opinion and the same set of knowledge, but, you know, reaching out to people. Yes, we are, in our paper, I didn't have the time to talk about everything, but we also show that small groups are more cooperative. So the idea of what you are saying, echo chambers where all people having the same opinion are meeting and staying somehow close is not the good way to behave cooperatively, okay? We must promote the interaction among people that think differently and even small groups of discussions is more effective. I see. Yeah, to exit from... Well, right now we're sadly running out of time. So Rafa Bix, yes. Can you suggest some bibliography to find this very topic very interesting? So please, shall you? Oh, okay. About cooperation, I think there is a good way by Martin Novak, but it's a kind of technical book. So anyway, Martin Novak, our repeat is named, Martin Novak is one of the most important scientists working in cooperation. Secondly, people can read my paper. This is just a joke. No, absolutely. But anyway, it's just been published 20 days ago. But for more... Congratulations. Thank you. And for more, I will say, interesting lectures, I will suggest a recent book by Carlo Robelli. This is a book in Italian and the title is Ci sono luoghi al mondo dove più che le regole è importante la gentiletta. And I find this book very, very similar to my ideas, to the ideas that I'm trying to promote in my work. And then I will suggest a reading by Jan Stewart. Does God Play Dice? This is the new book about very, very simple book, not at all technical, but it's about the new mathematics of chaos. So Jan Stewart is trying to explain why God is playing dice, somehow contrary to what the famous scientists Einstein say that God doesn't play dice. So the theme here is about uncertainty. So we must deal with uncertainty in our lives. So we must be enough aware and self-regulated in order to be able to respond to uncertainty. So this is very important because uncertainty is the source of creativity and is the source of change. And I will also suggest a reading by Italo Calvino and the book that I suggest all books by Italo Calvino of course are all embed some science principles. But in particular I will say that Palomar is a nice book to be read because in it there is a good representation of what a person who is interested into the science can be able to make science and to pose very important questions that are very similar to what a scientist will also ask to themselves. And also it produces a criticism to the scientists that are convinced that science has the response to everything because the uncertainty I have mentioned before is also in science. Science is completely embedded into the uncertainty. And so this is an invitation to all of us scientists, politicians and citizens to be aware that uncertainty is something that we have to deal. Well, thank you. I love your approach. Yes, thank you. And so that's it for now. See you soon everybody. Thank you for watching our small episode and thank you professor and see you soon on Wednesdays or Thursdays sorry for international virtual sodium and every single given day for our Italian virtual sodium. So, goodbye. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much to all. Bye.