Cybernetic combatants support the importance of duels in the evolution of extreme weapons.

ABSTRACT: A current evolutionary hypothesis predicts that the most extreme forms of animal weaponry arise in systems where combatants fight each other one-to-one, in duels. It has also been suggested that arms races in human interstate conflicts are more likely to escalate in cases where there are only two opponents. However, directly testing whether duels matter for weapon investment is difficult in animals and impossible in interstate conflicts. Here, we test whether superior combatants experience a disproportionate advantage in duels, as compared with multi-combatant skirmishes, in a system analogous to both animal and military contests: the battles fought by artificial intelligence agents in a computer war game. We found that combatants with experimentally improved fighting power had a large adv

SUBMITTER: Fea MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7341936 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature