Epistemic Status: Common knowledge, just not to me
The Evolution of Trust is a deceptively friendly little interactive game. Near the end, there’s a “sandbox” evolutionary game theory simulator. It’s pretty flexible. You can do quick experiments in it without writing code. I highly recommend playing around.
One of the things that surprised me was a strategy the game calls Simpleton, also known in the literature as Pavlov. In certain conditions, it works pretty well — even better than tit-for-tat or tit-for-tat with forgiveness.
Let’s set the framework first. You have a Prisoner’s dilemma type game.
This game is iterated — you’re...
(Cross-posted from Facebook.)
I am verbally intelligent enough to spin up true-but-socially-plausible accounts of my thoughts unless I am pressed. It is easy to have cached a charming-but-honest way to respond to various adversarial or socially normative questions; it is difficult to come up with them in real time. Usually when I fail at this it's because I was visibly thinking, from which the interlocutor discerned that I wanted to say something unflattering.
I do not think I am verbally intelligent enough to pick, practice, and retain a subtle meta-honesty policy. It would increase th...
Informative article, thanks!
Unfortunately, the definition of Pavlov strategy is contradictory;