Stag hunts (which are not the same as the hunter/prey scenarios discussed elsewhere in this thread) are another theoretically nontrivial category of coordination games with interesting social/behavioral implications—arguably more than the prisoner’s dilemma, though that probably depends on what kind of life you happen to find yourself in. I don’t know why they don’t get much exposure on LW, but it might have something to do with the fact that they don’t have the PD’s historical links to AI.
I agree that Stag hunt is theoretically and practically interesting, but I would say that it is not as interesting as the Prisoner’s dilemma.
In order to “solve” a Stag hunt (in the sense of realizing the Pareto-optimal outcome), all you need is a communication channel between the players, even an one-shot one-way channel suffices. In a Prisoner’s dilemma, communication is not enough, you need either to iterate the game or to modify the payoff matrix.
I’m not aware of these links, do you have a reference?
Not offhand, but the PD (specifically, the iterated version) is a classic exercise to motivate prediction and interaction between software agents. I wrote a few in school, though I was better at market simulations. Believe LW ran a PD tournament at some point, too, though I didn’t participate in that one.
Stag hunts (which are not the same as the hunter/prey scenarios discussed elsewhere in this thread) are another theoretically nontrivial category of coordination games with interesting social/behavioral implications—arguably more than the prisoner’s dilemma, though that probably depends on what kind of life you happen to find yourself in. I don’t know why they don’t get much exposure on LW, but it might have something to do with the fact that they don’t have the PD’s historical links to AI.
I agree that Stag hunt is theoretically and practically interesting, but I would say that it is not as interesting as the Prisoner’s dilemma.
In order to “solve” a Stag hunt (in the sense of realizing the Pareto-optimal outcome), all you need is a communication channel between the players, even an one-shot one-way channel suffices.
In a Prisoner’s dilemma, communication is not enough, you need either to iterate the game or to modify the payoff matrix.
There are other games that have significant practical applicability, such as Chicken/Volunteer’s dilemma and Ultimatum.
I’m not aware of these links, do you have a reference?
Not offhand, but the PD (specifically, the iterated version) is a classic exercise to motivate prediction and interaction between software agents. I wrote a few in school, though I was better at market simulations. Believe LW ran a PD tournament at some point, too, though I didn’t participate in that one.
I believe it’s because it is at the same time very simple to explain and very interesting.
I think they ran two variations of program-equilibrium PD. I participated in the last one.