5: The Cooperator's Gambit

April 9, 2026

·S. Thaddeus Connelly, DDS, MD, PhD, FACS

You've now spent several days understanding the architecture of networks topology, hubs, communities, and centrality and the dynamics that operate on them: contagion, cascades, and thresholds. You can see what spreads, how it spreads, and where the leverage lies. But a deeper question remains: Why do agents in a network cooperate at all? This is not a philosophical curiosity. It is a mathematical problem. And the answer depends critically on the structure of the network itself.

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The complete article — figures, references, and clinical commentary — is published in The Oral Health Bulletin on LinkedIn.

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