Ultimate Ecology: How a socio-economic game can evolve into a resilient ecosystem of agents

摘要

This article introduces a novel approach towards modeling evolutionary game-theoretical systems by creating a self-regulating societal ecosystem. We here develop a very simple model of a cooperating agent population that interacts with a dynamically changing environment. These interaction patterns are initially random but adapt with time in a process mimicking natural adaptation and selection in biological evolution: Ultimately, a homeostatic system emerges from scratch that regulates the growth of populations and environmental resources in a sustainable way, exhibiting strong resilience to perturbations. Moreover, the agent population exhibits horizontal social behavior represented by the Ultimatum Game but also vertical evolution-relevant behavior represented by reproductive strategies. The interplay between these horizontal and vertical mechanisms is in the focus of the analysis presented here. We found emergence of co-dependent horizontal and vertical norms. Ultimately, we analyzed the interplay between micro-and macro-properties and found significant effects, suggesting occurrence of emergence within the system: Micro properties are local and individual while macro properties are global and population-wide. We show that both levels interact and influence each other bilaterally as a result of the nonlinear and complex system behavior.