Re: What's in a name? MOTH to a Flame

Posted by Stephen Guerin-5 on Nov 01, 2020; 6:17pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-s-in-a-name-MOTH-to-a-Flame-tp7599300p7599303.html

> I think the proper name is Conditional Association Strategy

Yes, I think of Conditional Association Strategy as its "genus". There's an unspecified bit in the "genome" on the conditional behavior in that name that needs to be more specific to make it a species which could be either cooperate or defect. In the table from the paper, For example, there's three strategies of the "conditional association strategies" genus. Arguably the name MOTH is a name for the genus not the particular species. Note how NasMoth (NastyMoth) has that bit specified in the negative direction. We'd like the "dual" in the positive direction.

A more particular name for the MOTH strategy might be something like a "HippieMoth" ethic where it seeks reciprocity in ooperative relationships and leaves when reciprocity is absent. Another name might be "Hippy-Dippy" which gives the sense of flightiness too. But I'm wondering if there's a better character analogue. It is a kind of golden rule for dynamic networks.

As we're writing some software and related whitepapers I want input/blessing as we consider tightening up the naming. Note how google's naming of PageRank was helpful to communicate their approach.

On Sun, Nov 1, 2020 at 10:14 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

I think the proper name is Conditional Association Strategy (as opposed to a Condition Altruism Strategy. 

 

My original impulse was not .. um … prosocial.  I was pissed by the extent to which the entire literature had gone down the Axelrod rat hole with its totally unnatural assumptions and annoyed at my colleagues for giving things cute names.  So, I thought, I can play this stupid game, too.  And,  indeed, I could.  And SURPRISE! it’s still a stupid game, even though I can play it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Sunday, November 1, 2020 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] What's in a name? MOTH to a Flame

 

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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