RE: The first hero of the war

From: Keith Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Apr 15 2003 - 08:29:54 MDT

  • Next message: Amara Graps: "RE: US Reputation (RE: Arab World Stunned by Baghdad's Fall)"

    Lee Corbin: 

    ---
"An off-list correspondent has brought to my attention that I began
using the term "ESS" (Evolutionarily Stable Strategy) as if it were
/wrong/ Evolutionarily Successful Strategy /wrong/.
"ESS is a term perhaps first used by John Maynard Smith in
his book "Evolution and the Theory of Games".  My familiarity with the
term comes from Axelrod's work in the late eighties ---probably many of
you are familiar with the "Tit-for-tat" results, and the issues
concerning whether or not a society can be invaded by strangers who have
different strategies for cooperation or defection.
"Some time in the last five years I have began loosely using
the term to refer to what is merely a "successful strategy"
for a subgroup or subspecies, or a memeplex, which waxes dominant within
its larger group.  Sorry for the confusion. The term ESS should be used
only in the narrower sense."
---
You're right. But imagine an early tribe where every individual's
failure in the hunt was made public to the tribe. Every hunter stands to
gain by making as big a deal as possible about the others' failures.
However, the top 20% of hunters gain the most as they fail the least.
The middle 60% gain when they are successful as well. But, they also
gain when their more frequent failures are kept under wraps. The bottom
20% has very little to gain by being open and honest about failures. If
80% of hunters fail enough to gain from keeping failures quiet, failures
will be kept quiet more often. This trend would vary according to
another variable, that of reciprocity. Where keeping failures quiet is
likely to be reciprocated, the worst hunters are much more likely to
keep them quiet. Eventually, the percentage of failures made public
would stabilize at the optimum for all competing skill levels.
Reciprocal "face-saving" thus emerges. This appears to me to be worthy
of the label 'ESS'. Perhaps I'm wrong.
Keith

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 15 2003 - 08:36:42 MDT