TY - GEN
T1 - Stable cooperation in the N-player prisoner's dilemma
T2 - 7th European Symposium on Adaptive and Learning Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, ALAMAS 2007
AU - O'Riordan, Colm
AU - Sorensen, Humphrey
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - N-player prisoner dilemma games have been adopted and studied as a representation of many social dilemmas. They capture a larger class of social dilemmas than the traditional two-player prisoner's dilemma. In N-player games, defection is the individually rational strategy and normally emerges as the dominant strategy in evolutionary simulations of agents playing the game. In this paper, we discuss the effect of a specific type of spatial constraint on a population of learning agents by placing agents on a graph structure which exhibits a community structure. We show that, by organising agents on a graph with a community structure, cooperation can exist despite the presence of defectors. Furthermore, we show that, by allowing agents learn from agents in neighbouring communities, cooperation can actually spread and become the dominant robust strategy. Moreover, we show that the spread of cooperation is robust to the introduction of noise into the system.
AB - N-player prisoner dilemma games have been adopted and studied as a representation of many social dilemmas. They capture a larger class of social dilemmas than the traditional two-player prisoner's dilemma. In N-player games, defection is the individually rational strategy and normally emerges as the dominant strategy in evolutionary simulations of agents playing the game. In this paper, we discuss the effect of a specific type of spatial constraint on a population of learning agents by placing agents on a graph structure which exhibits a community structure. We show that, by organising agents on a graph with a community structure, cooperation can exist despite the presence of defectors. Furthermore, we show that, by allowing agents learn from agents in neighbouring communities, cooperation can actually spread and become the dominant robust strategy. Moreover, we show that the spread of cooperation is robust to the introduction of noise into the system.
KW - Community structure
KW - Cooperation
KW - N-player prisoner's dilemma
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/49949088932
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-540-77949-0_12
DO - 10.1007/978-3-540-77949-0_12
M3 - Conference Publication
AN - SCOPUS:49949088932
SN - 3540779477
SN - 9783540779476
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 157
EP - 168
BT - Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems III
Y2 - 2 April 2007 through 3 April 2007
ER -