Source-linked AI summary
Effects of mobility in a population of Prisoner's Dilemma players
S. Meloni, A. Buscarino, L. Fortuna, M. Frasca, J. Gomez-Gardenes, V. Latora, Y. Moreno
TL;DR
The paper asks how individual mobility affects cooperation among Prisoner’s Dilemma players, a less-explored setting relevant to changing social and communication networks. It simulates players moving in a two-dimensional plane while repeatedly forming contacts and updating strategies, finding that cooperation survives only when temptation and velocity are sufficiently low and can lead to an all-cooperator asymptotic state.
Problem
The paper examines how cooperation is affected when individuals move continuously and encounter changing game partners, a setting with practical relevance to social systems and wireless-device coordination.
Method
The model combines two-dimensional agent motion, continuously changing distance-based interaction networks, and synchronous Prisoner’s Dilemma strategy updating on the current neighbors.
Results
Cooperation survives when both temptation to defect and agent velocity are not too high; with nonzero mobility, the system approaches either an all-cooperator or all-defector state.
Takeaways & Limitations
For small fixed temptation, cooperation prevails at low velocities, while higher velocities favor defection, informing cooperation-based protocols for motion coordination and wireless communication.
Takeaways & Limitations
The study assumes movement and evolutionary dynamics operate on the same time scale, with movement preceding contact formation, play, and strategy updating at each step.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
We address the problem of how the survival of cooperation in a social system depends on the motion of the individuals. Specifically, we study a model in which Prisoner's Dilemma players are allowed to move in a two-dimensional plane. Our results show that cooperation can survive in such a system provided that both the temptation to defect and the velocity at which agents move are not too high. Moreover, we show that when these conditions are fulfilled, the only asymptotic state of the system is that in which all players are cooperators. Our results might have implications for the design of cooperative strategies in motion coordination and other applications including wireless networks.