Intellectual Property and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Game Theory Justification of Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets

In this article, I will offer an argument for the protection of intellectual property based on individual self-interest and prudence. In large part, this argument will parallel considerations that arise in a prisoner’s dilemma game. In brief, allowing content to be unprotected in terms of free access leads to a sub-optimal outcome where creation and innovation are suppressed. Adopting the institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret is one way to avoid these sub-optimal results

Analyzing Social Network Structures in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with Choice and Refusal

The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with Choice and Refusal (IPD/CR) is an extension of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with evolution that allows players to choose and to refuse their game partners. From individual behaviors, behavioral population structures emerge. In this report, we examine one particular IPD/CR environment and document the social network methods used to identify population behaviors found within this complex adaptive system. In contrast to the standard homogeneous population of nice cooperators, we have also found metastable populations of mixed strategies within this environment. In particular, the social networks of interesting populations and their evolution are examined.Comment: 37 pages, uuencoded gzip'd Postscript (1.1Mb when gunzip'd) also available via WWW at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~smucker/ipd-cr/ipd-cr.htm

Simulating Evolutionary Games: A Python-Based Introduction

This paper is an introduction to agent-based simulation using the Python programming language. The core objective of the paper is to enable students, teachers, and researchers immediately to begin social-science simulation projects in a general purpose programming language. This objective is facilitated by design features of the Python programming language, which we very briefly discuss. The paper has a 'tutorial' component, in that it is enablement-focused and therefore strongly application-oriented. As our illustrative application, we choose a classic agent-based simulation model: the evolutionary iterated prisoner's dilemma. We show how to simulate the iterated prisoner's dilemma with code that is simple and readable yet flexible and easily extensible. Despite the simplicity of the code, it constitutes a useful and easily extended simulation toolkit. We offer three examples of this extensibility: we explore the classic result that topology matters for evolutionary outcomes, we show how player type evolution is affected by payoff cardinality, and we show that strategy evaluation procedures can affect strategy persistence. Social science students and instructors should find that this paper provides adequate background to immediately begin their own simulation projects. Social science researchers will additionally be able to compare the simplicity, readability, and extensibility of the Python code with comparable simulations in other languages.Agent-Based Simulation, Python, Prisoner's Dilemma

On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems

Motivated by the control theoretic distinction between controllable and uncontrollable events, we distinguish between two types of agents within a multi-agent system: controllable agents, which are directly controlled by the system's designer, and uncontrollable agents, which are not under the designer's direct control. We refer to such systems as partially controlled multi-agent systems, and we investigate how one might influence the behavior of the uncontrolled agents through appropriate design of the controlled agents. In particular, we wish to understand which problems are naturally described in these terms, what methods can be applied to influence the uncontrollable agents, the effectiveness of such methods, and whether similar methods work across different domains. Using a game-theoretic framework, this paper studies the design of partially controlled multi-agent systems in two contexts: in one context, the uncontrollable agents are expected utility maximizers, while in the other they are reinforcement learners. We suggest different techniques for controlling agents' behavior in each domain, assess their success, and examine their relationship.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Research on CRO's Dilemma In Sapiens Chain: A Game Theory Method

In recent years, blockchain-based techniques have been widely used in cybersecurity, owing to the decentralization, anonymity, credibility and not be tampered properties of the blockchain. As one of the decentralized framework, Sapiens Chain was proposed to protect cybersecurity by scheduling the computational resources dynamically, which were owned by Computational Resources Owners (CROs). However, when CROs in the same pool attack each other, all CROs will earn less. In this paper, we tackle the problem of prisoner's dilemma from the perspective of CROs. We first define a game that a CRO infiltrates another pool and perform an attack. In such game, the honest CRO can control the payoffs and increase its revenue. By simulating this game, we propose to apply Zero Determinant (ZD) strategy on strategy decision, which can be categorized into cooperation and defecting. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy decision method

Numbers, not value, motivate cooperation in humans and orangutans

Cooperation among competitors-whether sharing the burden of wind resistance in the Tour de France, forming price-fixing cartels in economic markets, or adhering to arms-control agreements in international treaties-seldom spreads in proportion to the potential benefits. To gain insight into the minds of uncooperative agents, economists and social psychologists have used the prisoner's dilemma task to examine factors leading to cooperation among competitors. Two types of factors have emerged in these studies: the relative rewards of defecting versus cooperating and breakdowns in trust, forgiveness and communication. The generalizability of economic and social psychological factors, however, relies on the assumption that agents' comparisons of gains and losses (whether for themselves, others, or both) preserves ratio information over arbitrary units, such as dollars and cents, and real rewards, such as food. This assumption is inconsistent with psychophysical studies on how the brain represents quantitative information, which suggests that mental magnitudes increase logarithmically with actual value. Thus, discrimination of two numerical magnitudes improves as the numerical distance between them increases and decreases as the magnitudes increase. Here we show an important consequence of this representational system for economic decision making: in the prisoner's dilemma game, purely nominal increases in the numerical magnitude of payoffs (such as, converting dollar values to cents or whole grapes into grape-parts) has a large effect on cooperative behaviour. Moreover, a logarithmic scaling of the ratio of rewards for cooperation versus defection predicted 97% of variability in observed cooperation, whereas the objective ratio predicted 0% of variability. By linking the brain's system of representing the magnitude of rewards to motivations for cooperative behaviour, these findings suggest that the nature of numerical representations may also account for the subjective value function described by Bernoulli, in which the apparent value of monetary incentives increases logarithmically with actual value

Transitions to Democratic Constitutions in Ethnic Conflicts

Excerpt This article discusses the preconditions for settling ethnic conflict through a constitutional compromise: democracy. The focus is on the conditions for transition to democracy amidst intense ethnic strife. What factors facilitate transition to democracy and what factors are obstacles? It is assumed that the attitude of social groups to democracy is determined by their leaders\u27 rational calculations of the prospects of social, economical and political benefits. In other words, social groups have the capacity to formulate collective interests and act strategically to further them, and their leaders choose the alternative path of action with the highest expected benefits among those available. To extend the argument, I will first draw on some recent analysis in the rational choice literature on institutions. Second, I will analyse two very different contexts in which transitions to democracy were attempted, the events in Angola 1974-75 and in Zimbabwe in 1979-80. Rational choice theorists try to discover the meaning of rationality in different contexts, and the study of strategic choices and interaction of the six political elite groups in Angola and Zimbabwe, each with a core ethnic constituency, makes empirical probing and refining of the propositions of rational choice theory possible

THE EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK ON COOPERATION IN THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA GAME SIMULATING A CLOSED MARKET SCENARIO

This study explores the effects of feedback on cooperation in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG). Four sources of feedback were identified: peer, buyer, market and cultural feedback. Peer and buyer feedback were intrinsic to the PDG, for they were analyzed, but not manipulated. Market and cultural feedback comprised independent variables and their effects were measured on players’ and group cooperation (dependent variables). Twenty-seven participants played a PDG, divided in 9 groups of 3 players each. Cooperation was measured as rates of individual players’ cooperative X choices, and as aggregate products within groups. At the molecular (moment-to-moment) level, there was a significant within-subjects main effect of the market feedback F(1, 28) = 6.50, p = .02, ?p2 = .19. At the molar level, there was no significant effect of the market feedback, nor of the cultural feedback. It was not possible to establish a metacontingency between recurrent group cooperation and positive contingent group consequences. Players displayed sub-optimal choice behavior, seeking to maximize relative earnings within their group (defecting) over absolute earnings (cooperating). These results are discussed in light of how the source of feedback may sustain cooperation or defection in the PDG, and their implications in organizational settings. Reinforcing cooperative behaviors can be key to the maintenance and development of any organization, for informative performance feedback may not suffice. This study contributes to the understanding of economic decisional behavior in groups from a cultural selectionist perspective.Keywords: choice, cooperation, feedback, metacontingency, prisoner’s dilemma gameThis study explores the effects of feedback on cooperation in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG). Four sources of feedback were identified: peer, buyer, market and cultural feedback. Peer and buyer feedback were intrinsic to the PDG, for they were analyzed, but not manipulated. Market and cultural feedback comprised independent variables and their effects were measured on players’ and group cooperation (dependent variables). Twenty-seven participants played a PDG, divided in 9 groups of 3 players each. Cooperation was measured as rates of individual players’ cooperative X choices, and as aggregate products within groups. At the molecular (moment-to-moment) level, there was a significant within-subjects main effect of the market feedback F(1, 28) = 6.50, p = .02, ?p2 = .19. At the molar level, there was no significant effect of the market feedback, nor of the cultural feedback. It was not possible to establish a metacontingency between recurrent group cooperation and positive contingent group consequences. Players displayed sub-optimal choice behavior, seeking to maximize relative earnings within their group (defecting) over absolute earnings (cooperating). These results are discussed in light of how the source of feedback may sustain cooperation or defection in the PDG, and their implications in organizational settings. Reinforcing cooperative behaviors can be key to the maintenance and development of any organization, for informative performance feedback may not suffice. This study contributes to the understanding of economic decisional behavior in groups from a cultural selectionist perspective.Keywords: choice, cooperation, feedback, metacontingency, prisoner’s dilemma gam