Rock Scissors Paper Game
An evolutionary game that actually turns out to be a children’s game is rock-paper-scissors. The game is simple – rock bests scissors (blunts it), scissors bests paper (cuts it), and paper bests rock (wraps it up). Anyone who has ever played this simple game knows that it is not sensible to have any favoured play – your opponent will soon notice this and switch to the winning counter-play. The best strategy (a Nash equilibrium) is to play a mixed random game with any of the three plays taken a third of the time. This, in EGT terms, is a mixed strategy. But many lifeforms are incapable of mixed behavior — they only exhibit one strategy (known as a “pure” strategy”). If the game is played only with the pure Rock, Scissor and Paper strategies the evolutionary game is dynamically unstable: Rock mutants can enter an all scissor population, but then – Paper mutants can take over an all Rock population, but then – Scissor mutants can take over an all Paper population – and on and on…. This is easily seen on the game payoff matrix, where if the paths of mutant invasion are noted, it can be seen that the mutant "invasion paths" form into a loop. This in triggers a cyclic invasion behaviour.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Game Theory
Famous quotes containing the words rock, paper and/or game:
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)