Taking a shower in Youth Hostels: risks and delights of heterogeneity
arXiv:0801.1573 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.84.016107
Abstract
Tuning one's shower in some hotels may turn into a challenging coordination game with imperfect information. The temperature sensitivity increases with the number of agents, making the problem possibly unlearnable. Because there is in practice a finite number of possible tap positions, identical agents are unlikely to reach even approximately their favorite water temperature. We show that a population of agents with homogeneous strategies is evolutionary unstable, which gives insights into the emergence of heterogeneity, the latter being tempting but risky.
13 pages, 7 figures