If there is a third kind of player, which cooperates on the first round and then slacks thereafter, then the third group will blow the second out of the water. The second group only wins because no one bothered exploiting them in your example, even though anyone easily could have.
Sure, but then you can add a fourth kind of player, who hunts with those with reputation equal or higher than themselves, it probably beats all three others (though the outcome might depend on the initial mix, if there are more 2 than 4, 3 might exploit enough 2 to beat 4).
And then other strategies can beat that. There are plenty of “nice” strategies that are less foolish than “always slack”.
Good call, I was pretty sure that there weren’t any Nash equilibria other than constant slacking, but everyone using group 4′s strategy is also a Nash equilibrium, as is everyone hunting with those with reputation is exactly equal to their own. This makes group 4 considerably harder to exploit, although it is possible in most likely distributions of players if you know it well enough. As you say, group 4 is less foolish than the slackers if there are enough of them. I still think that in practice, strategies that could be part of a Nash equilibrium won’t win, because their success relies on having many identical copies of them.
If there is a third kind of player, which cooperates on the first round and then slacks thereafter, then the third group will blow the second out of the water. The second group only wins because no one bothered exploiting them in your example, even though anyone easily could have.
Sure, but then you can add a fourth kind of player, who hunts with those with reputation equal or higher than themselves, it probably beats all three others (though the outcome might depend on the initial mix, if there are more 2 than 4, 3 might exploit enough 2 to beat 4).
And then other strategies can beat that. There are plenty of “nice” strategies that are less foolish than “always slack”.
Good call, I was pretty sure that there weren’t any Nash equilibria other than constant slacking, but everyone using group 4′s strategy is also a Nash equilibrium, as is everyone hunting with those with reputation is exactly equal to their own. This makes group 4 considerably harder to exploit, although it is possible in most likely distributions of players if you know it well enough. As you say, group 4 is less foolish than the slackers if there are enough of them. I still think that in practice, strategies that could be part of a Nash equilibrium won’t win, because their success relies on having many identical copies of them.