[extropy-chat] Appeasement

[Brett Paatsch]

The Avantguardian wrote:

>      This leads to an interesting phenomenon. In a
> society that is predominately hawks, its the doves
> that have the advantage since when 2 doves meet they
> do not fight. So they tend to be healthier than the
> hawks that are always engaging in fitness lowering
> fights when they meet.


Sorry if I'm interjecting and grabbing the wrong end of
the stick here but surely something is obviously missing
in this analysis. The chances of 2 doves surviving long
enough to meet each other in an environment otherwise
infested with hawks must be very low or require some
additional assumptions about the environment such as
that there are places doves can go to meet that hawks 
can't easily get too. 

> Recently however game theorists have come 
> up with a strategy called "forgiving-tit-for-tat" that
> outcompetes everything including the original "tit for
> tat". FTFT operates essentially as TFT except that, it
> will, a small percentage of time forgive an opponent
> that defected last time. This allows it to cooperate
> with "tit-for-tats" that have been set on retaliate by
> their previous opponent.

I'm sceptical of this but I could be wrong and would
be interested in the research.

I though Tit for Tat as per Axelrod's studies and others
latter only applied in two party games with repetition.

A getting vengence on C for tats by B isn't tit for tat in
the common understanding of tit for tat is it? 

Brett Paatsch