Publicação
Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in multiplayer games
| Resumo: | Cooperation is an act where individuals can contribute something, at a cost to themselves, to provide a benefit for others. We can find situations where this kind of act can arise at almost every layer of human societies and also in the animal world. Such a widespread behavior can be studied using Game Theory, a mathematical formulation of multi-optional interactions. The theory takes its predictions from social games between rational individuals that want to maximize their profit. When applied to dilemmas of cooperation, the theory predicts the demise of those who contribute, thus contradicting extensive empirical evidence. Evolutionary Game Theory was created to counteract this shortcoming. It drops the rationality assumption of Game Theory and instead places individuals in a dynamical context where natural selection applies. Thus, in view of this theory, the most successful individuals (who profit the most from games) are more likely to be leave descendants or be imitated by others, depending on the kind of dynamics being considered. Nevertheless, this process by itself does not yet explain the emergence of cooperation and only by adding other mechanisms to the dynamics can we make this property appear. In this thesis we present three such mechanisms all in the context of Public Goods Games. In these games, individuals in a group choose if they want to contribute to a common good that is then transformed into a benefit to be equally shared by all group members. The first mechanism applies to infinite well-mixed population dynamics and consists of a detaching in time the impact of the game on the system. By applying a time delay to the profits, we can modify a specific public goods game in order to give cooperation a chance. The other mechanisms are somewhat similar and apply to finite structured populations where individuals are restricted to interacting with specific opponents. They both consider that this interaction structure is shaped by the game dynamics and can evolve over time. The second and third mechanisms are thus a numerical and analytical implementation, respectively, of this co-evolutionary dynamics. |
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| Autores principais: | Moreira, João Amado Gomez |
| Assunto: | Física Teses de mestrado - 2011 |
| Ano: | 2011 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | Cooperation is an act where individuals can contribute something, at a cost to themselves, to provide a benefit for others. We can find situations where this kind of act can arise at almost every layer of human societies and also in the animal world. Such a widespread behavior can be studied using Game Theory, a mathematical formulation of multi-optional interactions. The theory takes its predictions from social games between rational individuals that want to maximize their profit. When applied to dilemmas of cooperation, the theory predicts the demise of those who contribute, thus contradicting extensive empirical evidence. Evolutionary Game Theory was created to counteract this shortcoming. It drops the rationality assumption of Game Theory and instead places individuals in a dynamical context where natural selection applies. Thus, in view of this theory, the most successful individuals (who profit the most from games) are more likely to be leave descendants or be imitated by others, depending on the kind of dynamics being considered. Nevertheless, this process by itself does not yet explain the emergence of cooperation and only by adding other mechanisms to the dynamics can we make this property appear. In this thesis we present three such mechanisms all in the context of Public Goods Games. In these games, individuals in a group choose if they want to contribute to a common good that is then transformed into a benefit to be equally shared by all group members. The first mechanism applies to infinite well-mixed population dynamics and consists of a detaching in time the impact of the game on the system. By applying a time delay to the profits, we can modify a specific public goods game in order to give cooperation a chance. The other mechanisms are somewhat similar and apply to finite structured populations where individuals are restricted to interacting with specific opponents. They both consider that this interaction structure is shaped by the game dynamics and can evolve over time. The second and third mechanisms are thus a numerical and analytical implementation, respectively, of this co-evolutionary dynamics. |
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