I was considering simply measuring the behavior of my current opponent against programs that aren’t me and determining their behavior as cooperatebot, mutualbot, defectbot, cooperate if they simulate me, cooperate against long programs, cooperate IFF they cooperate IFF I cooperate, or some other beast. That allows their behavior to depend on my behavior versus them, but my behavior only depends on their behavior versus third parties.
I can’t see a way to check another program for the desired IFF behavior without going beyond my skill level, but I think a mutualbot with a tiny chance of cooperating followed by a mutualbot with a tiny chance of defecting comes close; the first puts a lot of copies on the stack and then the top one cooperates unilaterally; if the response of the opponent is mutuality, it will be cooperate all the way down. If my opponent defects at his top level because I didn’t cooperate for the right reason, it yields a defection… all the way down. A perfect program wouldn’t do that, because it could see that it was probably in a simulation.
I was considering simply measuring the behavior of my current opponent against programs that aren’t me and determining their behavior as cooperatebot, mutualbot, defectbot, cooperate if they simulate me, cooperate against long programs, cooperate IFF they cooperate IFF I cooperate, or some other beast. That allows their behavior to depend on my behavior versus them, but my behavior only depends on their behavior versus third parties.
I can’t see a way to check another program for the desired IFF behavior without going beyond my skill level, but I think a mutualbot with a tiny chance of cooperating followed by a mutualbot with a tiny chance of defecting comes close; the first puts a lot of copies on the stack and then the top one cooperates unilaterally; if the response of the opponent is mutuality, it will be cooperate all the way down. If my opponent defects at his top level because I didn’t cooperate for the right reason, it yields a defection… all the way down. A perfect program wouldn’t do that, because it could see that it was probably in a simulation.