Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T20:22:19.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cheap Talk, Reinforcement Learning, and the Emergence of Cooperation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

J. McKenzie Alexander
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cheap talk has often been thought incapable of supporting the emergence of cooperation because costless signals, easily faked, are unlikely to be reliable. I show how, in a social network model of cheap talk with reinforcement learning, cheap talk does enable the emergence of cooperation, provided that individuals also temporally discount the past. This establishes one mechanism that suffices for moving a population of initially uncooperative individuals to a state of mutually beneficial cooperation even in the absence of formal institutions.

Type
Game Theory and Formal Models
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 969 - 982
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, J. McKenzie. 2007. The Structural Evolution of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, J. McKenzie 2014. “Learning to Signal in a Dynamic World.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65:797–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, J. McKenzie, Skyrms, Brian, and Zabell, Sandy. 2012. “Inventing New Signals.” Dynamic Games and Applications 2 (1): 129–45.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jason, and Skyrms, Brian. 1999. “Bargaining with Neighbors: Is Justice Contagious?” Journal of Philosophy 96 (11): 588–98.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Robert. 1986. “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms.” American Political Science Review 80 (4): 1095–1111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beggs, A. 2005. “On the Convergence of Reinforcement Learning.” Journal of Economic Theory 122:1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergstrom, Carl T., and Lachmann, Michael. 1997. “Signalling among Relatives.” Pt. 1, “Is Costly Signalling Too Costly?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 352:609–17.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, Carl T., and Lachmann, Michael 1998. “Signaling among Relatives.” Pt. 3, “Talk Is Cheap.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (9): 5100–5105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2005. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert. 2004. “The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity: Cooperation in Heterogeneous Populations.” Theoretical Population Biology 65 (1): 17–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyd, Robert, and Richerson, Peter J.. 1992. “Punishment Allows the Evolution of Cooperation (or Anything Else) in Sizable Groups.” Ethology and Sociobiology 13:171–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bush, R. R., and Mosteller, F.. 1951. “A Mathematical Model for Simple Learning.” Psychological Review 58:313–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bush, R. R., and Mosteller, F. 1955. Stochastic Models for Learning. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, G. 1993. “Learning, Local Interaction and Coordination.” Econometrica 61:1047–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gintis, Herbert. 2000. “Classical versus Evolutionary Game Theory.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (1–2): 300–304.Google Scholar
Huttegger, Simon M., and Zollman, Kevin J. S.. 2010. “Dynamic Stability and Basins of Attraction in the Sir Philip Sidney Game.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 277 (1689): 1915–22.Google ScholarPubMed
Lachmann, Michael, and Bergstrom, Carl T.. 1998. “Signalling among Relatives.” Pt. 2, “Beyond the Tower of Babel.” Theoretical Population Biology 54:146–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, John. 1991. “Honest Signalling: The Philip Sidney Game.” Animal Behavior 42:1034–35.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., and May, Robert M.. 1993. “The Spatial Dilemmas of Evolution.” International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 3 (1): 35–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robson, Arthur J. 1990. “Efficiency in Evolutionary Games: Darwin, Nash and the Secret Handshake.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 144:379–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roth, Alvin E., and Erev, Ido. 1995. “Learning in Extensive Form Games: Experimental Data and Simple Dynamic Models in the Intermediate Term.” Games and Economic Behavior 8:164–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, Brian. 1990. The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian 2001. “The Stag Hunt.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 75 (2): 31–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, Brian 2003. The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, Brian 2010. Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliot, and Wilson, David S.. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, Robert L. 1971. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” Quarterly Review of Biology 46:35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wei, L. J., and Durham, S.. 1978. “The Randomized Play-the-Winner Rule in Medical Trials.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 73 (364): 840–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahavi, A. 1975. “Mate Selection: Selection for a Handicap.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 53:205–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zahavi, A., and Zahavi, A.. 1997. The Handicap Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar