Evolving Strategic Behaviors through Competitive Interaction in the Large

Here we provide a new approach for investigating competitive interactions in the large. We also study emergent strategic behaviors and analyze the effects of bounded rationality and the mimicry strategy in competitive situations. We show how society gropes its way towards equilibrium in an imperfect world where agents are sensible but not perfectly rational. Agents have limited information and no common knowledge. This paper is also about social learning and shows how society as a whole learns even when the individuals composing it do not. Specifically, it is about the evolution of social norms. We especially examine how conventions evolve in a society that begins in an amorphous state, where there is no established custom, and individuals rely on hearsay to determine what to do. With simulations, we provide specific conditions on which conventions are most likely to emerge.