The Effect of Noise on the Emergence of Continuous Norms and its Evolutionary Dynamics

Abstract

We examine the effect of noise on societies of agents using an agent based model of evolutionary norm emergence. Generally we see that noisy societies are more selfish, smaller and discontent, with noisy societies caught in rounds of perpetual punishment preventing them from flourishing. Surprisingly, despite the detrimental effect of noise on the population, it doesn’t seem to evolve away, in fact, in some cases it seems the level of noise increases. We carry out further analysis and provide reasons for why this might be the case. Furthermore, we claim that our framework evolving the noise/ambiguity of norms is a new way to model the tight/loose framework of norms, suggesting that despite ambiguous norms’ detrimental effect on society, evolution doesn’t favour clarity.