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, and are caught in rounds of perpetual punishment preventing them from flourishing. Surprisingly, despite the detrimental effect of noise on the population, it does not 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 that evolves 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 does not favour clarity.

Issue Section:
Special Session: Agent-Based Modelling of Human Behaviour (ABMHuB’23)
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© 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license
2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Issue Section:
Special Session: Agent-Based Modelling of Human Behaviour (ABMHuB’23)