Evolution and incremental learning in the iterative prisoner's dilemma

This paper investigates the use of evolution and incremental learning to find an optimal strategy in the iterative prisoner's dilemma (IPD) problem, given an environment with a collection of unknown strategies. The Meta-Lamarckian Memetic learning (MLML) scheme is conceptualized based on the biological evolution of man and his abilities to accumulate knowledge and learn from past experiences. Learning was found to be the dominant force for improvement in the short run while improvement in the long run is sustained by the process of evolution. Learning is also much more effective when carried out on an incremental basis as the games progress. A series of simulation results obtained verified that the best performance is attained when a hybrid combination of learning and evolution is carried out on an incremental basis, not just evolution or learning alone.