What is it about?
Long-run social interactions are very important for sustaining cooperation in humans. Social strategies range from simple to extremely complex, but some strategies are better than others. It turns out that when the agents I interact with are simple, then typically I should use a simple social strategy as well. In this paper we explain how complex strategies give no theoretical advantage in many cases.
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Why is it important?
Our results help researchers to study the evolution of social behavior. We explain how evolution can take place in a small space of simple social strategies and still reach outcomes that are robust in the presence of complex ones. Small strategy spaces are possible to study theoretically by mathematical models and computer simulations.
Perspectives
Social strategies is a very exciting and interesting topic, since the optimal behavior usually depends on what others are doing. The math involved, which is game theory, can seem a little dry and abstract. This project is fun because the results are a little bit counterintuitive --- if I am involved in a long-run strategic social interaction with a partner who can only remember the last five actions, wouldn't it be an advantage if I could remember the last 100 actions and respond in a custom way to each possibility? But it turns out this is generally not the case!
Philip LaPorte
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Payoff equivalence and complete strategy spaces of direct reciprocity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2518486123.
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