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What's in a name? MOTH to a Flame

Posted by Stephen Guerin-5 on Nov 01, 2020; 4:59pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-s-in-a-name-MOTH-to-a-Flame-tp7599300.html

Nick,

On a recent FRIAM you expressed mild regret on your naming of MOTH (My Way or the Highway)
  http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/9/2/4.html

Given a chance to rename it what were some of the options over the years?  Does the list have better suggestions?

Naming may seem trivial and arbitrary but it is important as this CS aphorism attests.
      "There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors."
 
For the list, MOTH is a winning strategy in an expanded Iterated Prisoners Dilemma game where agents can leave a relationship during a round in the tournament and be randomly assigned another unassociated agent. They always cooperate and then leave if defected against. MOTH agents unconditionally cooperate and conditionally associate.
 
An example of an expanded TIT-FOR-TAT strategy in this game might be to conditionally cooperate and unconditionally associate. ie cooperate until defected against then switch to always defect and  stay in the association. (think of a bad marriage without divorce). 

We continue to think MOTH remains an important simple heuristic for link formation/maintenance in trust networks / decentralized systems. And naming is important.

-Stephen


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