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Additions: July 7, 2000
About Robert Axelrod's
"The Evolution of Cooperation":
I think Axelrod essentially
confirms that much of what
we normally think of as He makes the point that
"altruistic" behavior can cooperative behavior can
arise from purely "selfish" and does evolve in
behavior. adversarial situations,
even without any direct
The way I'd put communication to assist
it: What is the process (e.g. WWI
usually thought of Or: trench warfare, where
as "selfishness" Morality each side of a stand-off
is really is a way would gradually learn
"shortsightedness". of arriving to avoid any real attempt
quickly at at attacking each other.)
pragmatic
decisions
given
The moral may imperfect Much is made of
be grounded in knowledge. a computerized
the real. tournament, an
indefinite series
The idealistic, of prisoner's
derivable from dilemma games,
the pragmatic. where the winning
strategy was
A is A? nearly always
the exceedingly
And simple "Tit for Tat".
D is D.
Tit for Tat:
Always cooperate,
unless your
opposite number
defected on the
immediately
previous move.
Be helpful.
Retaliate immediately
when wronged.
Forgive quickly.
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This certainly
isn't my strategy:
I'm inclined to
A subject: the difficulty of the "slow to anger,
applying the idea of but never forget"
"Tit for Tat". style.
e.g. what's an appropriate
tat for a given tit? I think it's notable
that a close
Should you apply a competitor of
sliding scale of Tit-for-Tat
reprisals, where was Tit-for-Two-Tats,
you hit back harder But... attempts i.e. let the first
after a repeated at more complicated one slide, and
offense? strategies with retaliate on the
memory were failures second offence.
How do you manage to in the tournament.
be both "provocable" A variation of
and "forgiving" in a "turn the other
world where things cheek"... given
are not neatly that we only
divided into rounds have two cheeks.
of exchanges of a
limited kind of (or is it
interaction? four?)
And... isn't Tit for Tat
a strategy that can
reduce you to the level
of your opponent?
You can lose when trying to
convince a third party that
you're not as bad as your
opponent. Yelling "He
started it!" isn't going to The question is,
distinguish you very well is it possible that
when both sides are lying, the tournament
cheating and killing. results are not
strictly applicable
to reality, which is
not precisely a simple
extended series of
Prisoner's Dilemma
games.
Maybe Tit-for-two-tats
would win in a tournament
(March 7, 2003) with parameters closer
to reality?
Axlerod shows that some of what we
consider civilized behavior What happens if
("cooperation") falls out of the you have some
mathematics of strategy. freedom to choose
who you're going
The nature of the autonomous agents to play with
may not matter very much... if they next?
*are* autonomous, you can expect
that they'll tend to converge on a As I remember it
certain kind of behavior over time. Axelrod's tournament
involved only
random pairing of
players.
Preserving
reputation
could be
worth the
loss of
a round.
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