Cheap talk, reinforcement learning, and the emergence of cooperation

Alexander, J. McKenzie (2015) Cheap talk, reinforcement learning, and the emergence of cooperation. Philosophy of Science, 82 (5). 969 - 982. ISSN 0031-8248

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Abstract

Cheap talk has often been thought incapable of supporting the emergence of cooperation because costless signals, easily faked, are unlikely to be reliable (Zahavi and Zahavi, 1997). I show how, in a social network model of cheap talk with reinforcement learning, cheap talk does enable the emergence of cooperation, provided that individuals also temporally discount the past. This establishes one mechanism that suffices for moving a population of initially uncooperative individuals to a state of mutually beneficial cooperation even in the absence of formal institutions.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal...
Additional Information:	© 2014 University of Chicago Press
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory Q Science > QA Mathematics
Date Deposited:	01 Jul 2014 13:14
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2024 07:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/57315

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