It is, in fact. I’m finalising the code and the announcement post. Expect it in a couple of days.
William H. Press & Freeman Dyson’s proposed extortionate strategies.
As I understand them (which is admittedly not much; the paper is surprisingly dense and metaphorical) can take advantage of ‘evolutionary’ strategies but not strategies with a ‘theory of mind’ - and it appears that tit-for-tat falls under the ‘theory of mind’ category. Although I would state once more that I’m not sure I understand the paper.
How’s your progress? You said you were “finalising the code and the announcement post”, so I’m wondering whether you ran into any unexpected problems since then?
Unexpected, yes; problems, no. I’m currently re-implementing the entire thing in Clojure, as it gives me a really elegant, simple, “simulate my opponent” function (which is exciting!) and makes everything else much neater to boot. I’ve also gotten a friend interested in this project; he’s probably going to help me build a semi-permanent results / interaction page for the project—something like this and this put together. On that second page, about shuffle algorithms, you can enter your own custom shuffling method. We are excited about having something like that for bots—visualise the data, and enter your own custom strategy to see how it performs. This lets us have a sort of long-running ‘informal’ tournament. But it is still on its way!
Fantastic! I’m very much interested in trying my hand at developing a strategy, thank you for putting this work together and I’m sure you will get a lot of positive feedback, once you finish it and release it.
Press and Dyson’s setup had two areas where ‘strategies’ come into play.
The first area is the set of four probabilities you provide to the game, which determine your score when combined with the other player’s set of four probabilities. Tit-for-tat is one particular choice of four probabilities (and, based on the nature of the game, should actually be represented as “slightly forgiving tit-for-tat”, which cooperates with probability epsilon in the defect-defect or defect-cooperate case, so that when playing against itself all states will terminate with cooperate-cooperate).
The second area is how the players modify those sets over time. Here, ‘theory of mind’ is relevant: both players with and without theories of mind can play any particular 4-probability set, like tit-for-tat. Players with theory of mind think (at least) two steps ahead- when I change my probabilities, how will my opponent change their probabilities? Players without theory of mind think only one step ahead- given my opponent’s probabilities, which play maximizes my score?
It is, in fact. I’m finalising the code and the announcement post. Expect it in a couple of days.
As I understand them (which is admittedly not much; the paper is surprisingly dense and metaphorical) can take advantage of ‘evolutionary’ strategies but not strategies with a ‘theory of mind’ - and it appears that tit-for-tat falls under the ‘theory of mind’ category. Although I would state once more that I’m not sure I understand the paper.
How’s your progress? You said you were “finalising the code and the announcement post”, so I’m wondering whether you ran into any unexpected problems since then?
Unexpected, yes; problems, no. I’m currently re-implementing the entire thing in Clojure, as it gives me a really elegant, simple, “simulate my opponent” function (which is exciting!) and makes everything else much neater to boot. I’ve also gotten a friend interested in this project; he’s probably going to help me build a semi-permanent results / interaction page for the project—something like this and this put together. On that second page, about shuffle algorithms, you can enter your own custom shuffling method. We are excited about having something like that for bots—visualise the data, and enter your own custom strategy to see how it performs. This lets us have a sort of long-running ‘informal’ tournament. But it is still on its way!
Fantastic! I’m very much interested in trying my hand at developing a strategy, thank you for putting this work together and I’m sure you will get a lot of positive feedback, once you finish it and release it.
Press and Dyson’s setup had two areas where ‘strategies’ come into play.
The first area is the set of four probabilities you provide to the game, which determine your score when combined with the other player’s set of four probabilities. Tit-for-tat is one particular choice of four probabilities (and, based on the nature of the game, should actually be represented as “slightly forgiving tit-for-tat”, which cooperates with probability epsilon in the defect-defect or defect-cooperate case, so that when playing against itself all states will terminate with cooperate-cooperate).
The second area is how the players modify those sets over time. Here, ‘theory of mind’ is relevant: both players with and without theories of mind can play any particular 4-probability set, like tit-for-tat. Players with theory of mind think (at least) two steps ahead- when I change my probabilities, how will my opponent change their probabilities? Players without theory of mind think only one step ahead- given my opponent’s probabilities, which play maximizes my score?