Selfish Memes & Selfless Agents - Altruism in the Swap Shop

A "memetic" (Bura 1994, Dennett 1995, Hales 1997) approach is applied to a resource sharing scenario. “Agents" are represented as cells on a grid applying simple cultural learning rules which selectively replicate and repel memes from neighbours. The memes represent culturally learned traits (Axelrod’s 1995) but also influence resource sharing behaviours. In the experiments presented, multiple cultural groupings which become altruistic towards "in-group" members via a form of group selection (Pedone & Parisi 1997) emerge. This form of cultural evolution is offered as a unified approach to the study of group formation, cultural evolution, cooperation and altruism. Memes are viewed as the basic replicators upon which societies are constructed. It is demonstrated that such methods can produce more optimal societies than conventional evolutionary methods in given situations. The memetic approach is inherently distributed and dynamic, offering the possibility of application to areas such as collective robotics and software agent co-ordination.