Complexity Digest 2008.33 - 15

14-Aug-2008

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Emergence and Collapse of Peace with Friend Selection Strategies, JASSS Bookmark and Share

Abstract: A society consisting of agents who can freely choose to attack or not to attack others inevitably evolves into a battling society (a 'war of all against all'). We investigated whether strategies based on C. Schmitt's concept of the political, the distinction of a friend and an enemy, lead to the emergence and collapse of social order. Especially, we propose 'friend selection strategies' (FSSs), one of which we called the 'us-TFT' (tit for tat) strategy, which requires an agent to regard one who did not attack him or his 'friends' as a 'friend'. We carried out evolutionary simulations on an artificial society consisting of FSS agents. As a result, we found that the us-TFT results in a peaceful society with the emergence of an us-TFT community. In addition, we found that the collapse of a peaceful society is triggered by another FSS strategy called a 'coward'.