IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/11765.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Civilization and the evolution of short sighted agents

Author

Listed:
  • Basuchoudhary, Atin
  • Allen, Sam
  • Siemers, Troy

Abstract

We model an assurance game played within a population with two types of individuals -- short-sighted and foresighted. Foresighted people have a lower discount rate than short sighted people. These phenotypes interact with each other. We define the persistent interaction of foresighted people with other foresighted people as a critical element of civilization while the interaction of short sighted people with other short sighted people as critical to the failure of civilization. We show that whether the short sighted phenotype will be an evolutionary stable strategy (and thus lead to the collapse of civilization) depends on the initial proportion of short sighted people relative to people with foresight as well as their relative discount rates. Further we explore some comparative static results that connect the probability of the game continuing and the relative size of the two discount rates to the likelihood that civilization will collapse.

Suggested Citation

  • Basuchoudhary, Atin & Allen, Sam & Siemers, Troy, 2008. "Civilization and the evolution of short sighted agents," MPRA Paper 11765, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11765
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11765/1/MPRA_paper_11765.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George J. Mailath, 1998. "Corrigenda [Do People Play Nash Equilibrium? Lessons from Evolutionary Game Theory]," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 1941-1941, December.
    2. Jorgen W. Weibull, 1997. "Evolutionary Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262731215, April.
    3. Aumann, Robert J, 1987. "Correlated Equilibrium as an Expression of Bayesian Rationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 1-18, January.
    4. David, Paul A, 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 332-337, May.
    5. George J. Mailath, 1998. "Do People Play Nash Equilibrium? Lessons from Evolutionary Game Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1347-1374, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Short (sighted) people got no reason to live
      by Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo on 2008-12-02 19:07:16

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Atin Basuchoudhary, 2014. "Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson: Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 317-320, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kets, Willemien & Sandroni, Alvaro, 2015. "Challenging Conformity: A Case for Diversity," MPRA Paper 68166, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Rizzello Salvatore, 2002. "Mind and choice in economics," CESMEP Working Papers 200206, University of Turin.
    3. Tilman Slembeck, 2000. "Learning in Economics: Where Do We Stand?," Microeconomics 0004007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Roger A. McCain, 2003. "Specifying Agents: Probabilistic Equilibrium with Reciprocity," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 9, Society for Computational Economics.
    5. Jerzy Witold Wiśniewski & Ewelina Sokołowska & Jinghua Wu & Anna Dziadkiewicz, 2021. "Evolutionary Game Analysis of the Partners’ Behavior in the Rural E-Payment Market of China," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-14, December.
    6. Aliabadi, Danial Esmaeili & Kaya, Murat & Şahin, Güvenç, 2017. "An agent-based simulation of power generation company behavior in electricity markets under different market-clearing mechanisms," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 191-205.
    7. David Schüller & Thorsten Upmann, 2013. "When Focal Points are Out of Focus: A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Come Dine with Me," CESifo Working Paper Series 4138, CESifo.
    8. Alberto Locarno, 2012. "Monetary policy in a model with misspecified, heterogeneous and ever-changing expectations," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 888, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    9. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    10. Demichelis, Stefano & Ritzberger, Klaus, 2003. "From evolutionary to strategic stability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 51-75, November.
    11. Gregor Schwerhoff, 2013. "Leadership and International Climate Cooperation," Working Papers 2013.97, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    12. Bodo Herzog & Stefanie Schnee, 2022. "Exploring a Dualism of Human Rationality: Experimental Study of a Cheating Contest Game," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-13, June.
    13. Arigapudi, Srinivas & Heller, Yuval & Schreiber, Amnon, 2021. "Sampling Dynamics and Stable Mixing in Hawk–Dove Games," MPRA Paper 108819, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Áureo de Paula, 2013. "Econometric Analysis of Games with Multiple Equilibria," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 107-131, May.
    15. Holler Manfred J., 2002. "Classical, Modern, and New Game Theory / Klassische, Moderne und Neue Spieltheorie," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 222(5), pages 556-583, October.
    16. Casajus, André & Kramm, Michael & Wiese, Harald, 2020. "Asymptotic stability in the Lovász-Shapley replicator dynamic for cooperative games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    17. Boris Salazar, 2001. "¿Qué tan racional es el principio de racionalidad de Popper?," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 3(5), pages 52-77, July-Dece.
    18. Conlon, John R., 2003. "Hope springs eternal: learning and the stability of cooperation in short horizon repeated games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 35-65, September.
    19. Congleton, Roger D. & Vanberg, Viktor J., 2001. "Help, harm or avoid? On the personal advantage of dispositions to cooperate and punish in multilateral PD games with exit," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 145-167, February.
    20. Schmidtchen, Dieter & Kirstein, Roland, 1999. "Ordnung," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 99-10, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
      • Dieter Schmidtchen & Roland Kirstein, 2012. "Ordnung," FEMM Working Papers 120001, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    society; breakdown; evolution; replicator; dynamic; process; civilization; conflict; institution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11765. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.