Ambiguity Is Kinda Good Sometimes

作者:O'Connor Cailin*
来源:Philosophy of Science, 2015, 82(1): 110-121.
DOI:10.1086/679180

摘要

In a recent article, Carlos Santana shows that in common interest signaling games when signals are costly and when receivers can observe contextual environmental cues, ambiguous signaling strategies outperform precise ones and can, as a result, evolve. I show that if one assumes a realistic structure on the state space of a common interest signaling game, ambiguous strategies can be explained without appeal to contextual cues. I conclude by arguing that there are multiple types of cases of payoff-beneficial ambiguity, some of which are better explained by Santana's models and some of which are better explained by models presented here.

  • 出版日期2015-1