[FRIAM] What's in a name? MOTH to a Flame

[Stephen Guerin]

Nick,

On a recent FRIAM you expressed mild regret on your naming of MOTH (My Way
or the Highway)
  http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/9/2/4.html


*Given a chance to rename it what were some of the options over the years?
Does the list have better suggestions?*

Naming may seem trivial and arbitrary but it is important as this CS
aphorism attests <https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html>.
      "There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation,
naming things, and off-by-1 errors."

For the list, MOTH is a winning strategy in an expanded Iterated Prisoners
Dilemma game where agents can leave a relationship during a round in the
tournament and be randomly assigned another unassociated agent. They always
cooperate and then leave if defected against. MOTH agents unconditionally
cooperate and conditionally associate.

An example of an expanded TIT-FOR-TAT strategy in this game might be to
conditionally cooperate and unconditionally associate. ie cooperate until
defected against then switch to always defect and  stay in the association.
(think of a bad marriage without divorce).

We continue to think MOTH remains an important simple heuristic for link
formation/maintenance in trust networks / decentralized systems. And naming
is important.

-Stephen


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