You wrote of U: “This one is a real beast, with code more that twice as long as that of its competitors. It actually models the opponent’s behaviour as a random process specified by two parameters: probability of cooperation when the second strategy (which is the RackBlockShooter) also cooperates, and probability of cooperation when RBS defects. This was acausal: the parameters depend on RBS’s behaviour in the same turn, not in the preceding one.”
Isn’t that just a simple bug in U? Probably Nic Smith meant it to model the opponent’s responses to U’s behavior on the previous turn, not the correlations between their actions on a given turn.
Sort of. When I wrote it and sent it in, it was exactly as you described. Prase noticed and asked if that was actually what I meant, and I said to keep it that way since it sounded interesting, and I thought it had the potential to be a “good bad bug.”
You wrote of U: “This one is a real beast, with code more that twice as long as that of its competitors. It actually models the opponent’s behaviour as a random process specified by two parameters: probability of cooperation when the second strategy (which is the RackBlockShooter) also cooperates, and probability of cooperation when RBS defects. This was acausal: the parameters depend on RBS’s behaviour in the same turn, not in the preceding one.”
Isn’t that just a simple bug in U? Probably Nic Smith meant it to model the opponent’s responses to U’s behavior on the previous turn, not the correlations between their actions on a given turn.
Sort of. When I wrote it and sent it in, it was exactly as you described. Prase noticed and asked if that was actually what I meant, and I said to keep it that way since it sounded interesting, and I thought it had the potential to be a “good bad bug.”
It would be nice to see a run with that modified.