Natural Selection and Social Learning in Prisoner’s Dilemma: Co-adaptation with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks

Evolutionary game theory has been used to study the viability of cooperation in a predatory world. While previous studies have helped to identify robust strategies, little is known about how success translates into the reproduction of cultural rules. Analogs of genetic replication may be deceptive if social learning and natural selection engender different population dynamics. I distinguished selection and learning based on whether rules are hardwired or softwired in the organisms that carry them. I then used genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks to operationalize the distinction. Applied for the first time to iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, neural network experiments showed that researchers may need to be much more cautious in using Darwinian analogs as templates for modeling the evolution of cultural rules.