i code, therefore i am
“Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousins; we and our cousins against the invader.” It is an oft-quoted proverb that sounds rather backward and provincial these days, but the sentiment it conveys is deeply rooted in human societies. This paper examines the effectiveness of such in-group behaviour within the context of a spatial iterated prisoner’s dilemma model that supports limited communciation between agents. Conditions that promote and retard in-group behavior are studied, and experimental results are presented. The dynamics of agent interactions, both within and at the boundary of stable groups, are investigated.
