all --
I hope this post comes up better than the last.
I am wondering if the brief flurry of conversation about TIT FOR TAT means
that some
members are interested in evolutionary games problems.
After teaching Axelrod and Hamilton, etc. for years, I began to be
distressed by the foothold problem
because in evolution, gaining a foothold is a BIG problem. Moreover, the
notion that
players are paired for the life of the game seemed so unnatural --
non-human animals
just don't stay with partners who abuse them.
So I began to wonder if a WIN-STAY-LOOSE-SHIFT strategy would
solve the toehold problem, the idea being that such a strategy would sort
through the
other players until it found an altruist and then stick with it.
Regrettably, I called this strategy
"MOTH" for Myway Or The Highway. A rough draft of a verbal treatment of
this idea is at
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/.
A couple of my math-CS colleagues at Clark (John Kennison and David Joyce)
took an
interest in it , and now there are a flock of Applets at
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/Moth/exploring its possibilities.
We're not quite sure where to go next.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
Locked
