Evolution of noisy learning in games

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Couto, Marta C., Santos, Fernando P., Hilbe, Christian
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Couto, Marta C.
Santos, Fernando P.
Hilbe, Christian
author_facet Couto, Marta C.
Santos, Fernando P.
Hilbe, Christian
contents People make strategic decisions many times a day - during negotiations, when coordinating actions with others, or when choosing partners for cooperation. The resulting dynamics can be studied with learning theory and evolutionary game theory. These frameworks explore how people adapt their decisions over time, in light of how effective their strategies have been. The outcomes of such learning processes depend on how sensitive individuals are to the performance of their strategies. When they are more sensitive, they systematically favor strategies they deem more successful. When they are less sensitive, their learning process is noisier and more erratic. Traditionally, most models treat this sensitivity as a fixed parameter - like the "selection strength" parameter in evolutionary models. Instead, we study how strategies and sensitivities co-evolve. We find that the co-evolutionary endpoints depend on both the type of strategic interaction and the learning rule employed. In prisoner's dilemmas, we often observe sensitivities to increase indefinitely. But in snowdrift and stag-hunt games, sensitivities often converge to a finite value, or we observe evolutionary branching altogether. These results shed light on how evolution might shape learning mechanisms for social behavior. They suggest that noisy learning does not need to be a by-product of cognitive constraints. Instead, it can serve as a means to gain strategic advantages.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21498
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolution of noisy learning in games
Couto, Marta C.
Santos, Fernando P.
Hilbe, Christian
Populations and Evolution
Dynamical Systems
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Physics and Society
People make strategic decisions many times a day - during negotiations, when coordinating actions with others, or when choosing partners for cooperation. The resulting dynamics can be studied with learning theory and evolutionary game theory. These frameworks explore how people adapt their decisions over time, in light of how effective their strategies have been. The outcomes of such learning processes depend on how sensitive individuals are to the performance of their strategies. When they are more sensitive, they systematically favor strategies they deem more successful. When they are less sensitive, their learning process is noisier and more erratic. Traditionally, most models treat this sensitivity as a fixed parameter - like the "selection strength" parameter in evolutionary models. Instead, we study how strategies and sensitivities co-evolve. We find that the co-evolutionary endpoints depend on both the type of strategic interaction and the learning rule employed. In prisoner's dilemmas, we often observe sensitivities to increase indefinitely. But in snowdrift and stag-hunt games, sensitivities often converge to a finite value, or we observe evolutionary branching altogether. These results shed light on how evolution might shape learning mechanisms for social behavior. They suggest that noisy learning does not need to be a by-product of cognitive constraints. Instead, it can serve as a means to gain strategic advantages.
title Evolution of noisy learning in games
topic Populations and Evolution
Dynamical Systems
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21498