The Yale course in genetics is worth watching. If you have some time to apply to this, it is much more rewarding in application than a TV marathon of Battlestar Galactica IMHO. The payoff matrix is higher for mindless entertainment, but the human internal payoff matrix does not correspond to the real world payoff of the organism in practice it seems. The theory is interesting but in practice the tragedy of the commons interacts with every other strategy that exists. In the case of the prisoner's dilemma it has an effect on the jailer and general population which acts incidentally to the principle. The interaction with personal inclination also leads to pockets of differing gain throughout and long term consequences. It is a dimension to analysis, but life is a mixture of many dimensions and applying a good simplistic principle doesn't assure a win in the long game. Of course it is all framed in the terms of genetic gain and as such it should be considered if there is actual gain in genetic gain. The biological mechanism centers around continuance only because it persists. It does not mean that continuance is the preferred principle except in the perception of it in context.
While considering some genetic algorithms for solving problems, it seems that what is generated is a mess of spaghetti code. It can solve problems using stochastic methods, but the solutions seem to have the same properties as biological organisms. A design generated by random mutation and selection leads to designs that often miss the most efficient solutions. Nature must move about the landscape in tiny steps and cannot leap above problems or correct its own mistakes by deletion pressure once they become used for more than one critical purpose.
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