Learning, competition and cooperation in simple games

Abstract

The minority model was introduced to study the competition between agents with limited information. It has the remarkable feature that, as the amount of information available increases, the collective gain made by the agents is reduced. This crowd effect arises from the fact that only a minority can profit at each moment, while all agents make their choices using the same input. We show that the properties of the model change drastically if the agents make choices based on their individual stories, keeping all remaining rules unaltered. This variation reduces the intrinsic frustration of the model, and improves the tendency towards cooperation and self organization. We finally study the stable mixing of individual and collective behavior.