Epistemic Status: True story (numbers are best recollections)

This is post three in the sequence Zbybpu’f Nezl.

Previously (required): The Darwin Game, The Darwin Pregame.

I

It was Friday night and time to play The Darwin Game. Excited players gathered around their computers to view the scoreboard and message board.

In the first round, my score went up slightly, to something like 109 from the starting 100. One other player had a similar score. A large group scored around 98. Others did poorly to varying degrees, with one doing especially poorly. That one played all 3s.

Three, including David, shot up to around 130.

If it isn't obvious what happened, take a minute to think about it before proceeding.

II

The CliqueBots had scores of 98 or so. They quickly figured out what happened.

David lied. He sent the 2-0-2 signal, and cooperated with CliqueBots, but instead of playing all 3s against others, he and two others cooperated with others too.

Whoops.

CliqueBots had been betrayed by MimicBots. The three defectors prospered, and the CliqueBots would lose.

Without those three members, the CliqueBots lacked critical mass. Members would die slowly, then increasingly quickly. If the three defectors had submitted CliqueBots, the CliqueBots would have grown in the first round, reaching critical mass. The rest of us would have been wiped out.

Instead, the three defectors would take a huge early lead, and the remaining members would constitute, as our professor put it, their 'packed lunch.'

The opening consisted of CliqueBots being wiped out, along with G-type weirdos, A-type attackers and D-style cooperators that got zero points from the CliqueBots.

Meanwhile, on the message board, the coalition members were pissed.

III

Everyone who survived into the middle game cooperated with everyone else. Victory would come down to efficiency, and size boosted efficiency. Four players soon owned the entire pool: Me and the three defectors.

I thought I had won. The coalition members wasted three turns on 2-0-2. Nothing could make up for that. My self-cooperation was far stronger, and I would outscore them over the first two rounds when we met due to the 0. It wouldn't go fast, but I would grind them out.

It did not work out that way. David had the least efficient algorithm and finished fourth, but I was slowly dying off as the game ended after round 200. Maybe there was a bug or mis...