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In a Weakly Dominated Strategy Is Strength: Evolution of Optimality in Stag Hunt Augmented with a Punishment Option

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Peter Vanderschraaf
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Abstract

I explore the evolution of strategies in an Augmented Stag Hunt game that adds a punishing strategy to the ordinary Stag Hunt strategies of cooperating, which aims for optimality, and defecting, which “plays it safe.” Cooperating weakly dominates punishing and defecting is the unique evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Nevertheless, for a wide class of Augmented Stag Hunts, polymorphic strategies combining punishing and cooperating collectively have greater attracting power for replicator dynamics than that of the ESS. The analysis here lends theoretical support to the altruistic punishment hypothesis in the social sciences.

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Type
Research Article
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 29 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†.

My thanks to Russell Golman, Arnold Kim, Scott Page, and two anonymous referees for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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