Tootfinder

Rethinking Knowledge Distillation: A Data Dependent Regulariser With a Negative Asymmetric Payoff
Israel Mason-Williams, Gabryel Mason-Williams, Helen Yannakoudakis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12615

Rethinking Knowledge Distillation: A Data Dependent Regulariser With a Negative Asymmetric Payoff
Knowledge distillation is often considered a compression mechanism when judged on the resulting student's accuracy and loss, yet its functional impact is poorly understood. In this work, we quantify the compression capacity of knowledge distillation and the resulting knowledge transfer from a functional perspective, decoupling compression from architectural reduction, which provides an improved understanding of knowledge distillation. We employ hypothesis testing, controls, and random control d…

Quantum Deception: Honey-X Deception using Quantum Games
Efstratios Reppas, Ali Wadi, Brendan Gould, Kyriakos G. Vamvoudakis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11848 https://

Quantum Deception: Honey-X Deception using Quantum Games
In this paper, we develop a framework for deception in quantum games, extending the Honey-X paradigm from classical zero-sum settings into the quantum domain. Building on a view of deception in classical games as manipulation of a player's perception of the payoff matrix, we formalize quantum deception as controlled perturbations of the payoff Hamiltonian subject to a deception budget. We show that when victims are aware of possible deception, their equilibrium strategies surprisingly coincide …

Pattern Formation in Agent-Based and PDE Models for Evolutionary Games with Payoff-Driven Motion
Tianyong Yao, Chenning Xu, Daniel B. Cooney
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20538 htt…

Pattern Formation in Agent-Based and PDE Models for Evolutionary Games with Payoff-Driven Motion
Spatial structure can play an important role in the evolution of cooperative behavior and the achievement of collective success of a population. In this paper, we explore the role of random and directed motion on spatial pattern formation and the payoff achieved by populations in both stochastic and deterministic models of spatial populations who engage in social interactions following a hawk-dove game. For the case of purely diffusive motion, both a stochastic spatial model and a partial diffe…

Robust equilibria in continuous games: From strategic to dynamic robustness
Kyriakos Lotidis, Panayotis Mertikopoulos, Nicholas Bambos, Jose Blanchet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08138 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08138 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08138
arXiv:2512.08138v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the robustness of Nash equilibria in continuous games, under both strategic and dynamic uncertainty. Starting with the former, we introduce the notion of a robust equilibrium as those equilibria that remain invariant to small -- but otherwise arbitrary -- perturbations to the game's payoff structure, and we provide a crisp geometric characterization thereof. Subsequently, we turn to the question of dynamic robustness, and we examine which equilibria may arise as stable limit points of the dynamics of "follow the regularized leader" (FTRL) in the presence of randomness and uncertainty. Despite their very distinct origins, we establish a structural correspondence between these two notions of robustness: strategic robustness implies dynamic robustness, and, conversely, the requirement of strategic robustness cannot be relaxed if dynamic robustness is to be maintained. Finally, we examine the rate of convergence to robust equilibria as a function of the underlying regularizer, and we show that entropically regularized learning converges at a geometric rate in games with affinely constrained action spaces.
toXiv_bot_toot

Evolution of social behaviors in noisy environments
Guocheng Wang, Qi Su, Long Wang, Joshua B. Plotkin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05521 https://arxiv.org/p…

Evolution of social behaviors in noisy environments
Evolutionary game theory offers a general framework to study how behaviors evolve by social learning in a population. This body of theory can accommodate a range of social dilemmas, or games, as well as real-world complexities such as spatial structure or behaviors conditioned on reputations. Nonetheless, this approach typically assumes a deterministic payoff structure for social interactions. Here, we extend evolutionary game theory to account for random changes in the social environment, so t…

Symbiosis emergence and abandonment in nature: a coordination game approach
Simon A. Levin, Ted Loch-Temzelides
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08833 https://ar…

Symbiosis emergence and abandonment in nature: a coordination game approach
We employ an n-player coordination game to model mutualism emergence and abandonment. We illustrate our findings in the context of the host--host interactions among plants in plant-mycorrhizal fungi (MF) mutualisms. The coordination game payoff structure captures the insight that mutualistic strategies lead to robust advantages only after such "biological markets" reach a certain scale. The game gives rise to three types of Nash equilibria, which correspond to the states derived in studies of t…

Capital Games and Growth Equilibria
Ben Abramowitz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00472 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.00472

Capital Games and Growth Equilibria
We examine formal games that we call "capital games" in which player payoffs are known, but their payoffs are not guaranteed to be von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities. In capital games, the dynamics of player payoffs determine their utility functions. Different players can have different payoff dynamics. We make no assumptions about where these dynamics come from, but implicitly assume that they come from the players' actions and interactions over time. We define an equilibrium concept called "gr…

Crosslisted article(s) found for nlin.PS. https://arxiv.org/list/nlin.PS/new
[1/1]:
- Pattern Formation in Agent-Based and PDE Models for Evolutionary Games with Payoff-Driven Motion
Tianyong Yao, Chenning Xu, Daniel B. Cooney

Grouped Satisficing Paths in Pure Strategy Games: a Topological Perspective
Yanqing Fu, Chao Huang, Chenrun Wang, Zhuping Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23157 https://

Grouped Satisficing Paths in Pure Strategy Games: a Topological Perspective
In game theory and multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), each agent selects a strategy, interacts with the environment and other agents, and subsequently updates its strategy based on the received payoff. This process generates a sequence of joint strategies $(s^t)_{t \geq 0}$, where $s^t$ represents the strategy profile of all agents at time step $t$. A widely adopted principle in MARL algorithms is "win-stay, lose-shift", which dictates that an agent retains its current strategy if it ac…

A Novel Framework for Honey-X Deception in Zero-Sum Games
Brendan Gould, Kyriakos Vamvoudakis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20329 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.2…

A Novel Framework for Honey-X Deception in Zero-Sum Games
In this paper, we present a novel, game-theoretic model of deception in two-player, zero-sum games. Our framework leverages an information asymmetry: one player (the deceiver) has access to accurate payoff information, while the other (the victim) observes a modified version of these payoffs due to the deception strategy employed. The deceiver's objective is to choose a deception-action pair that optimally exploits the victim's best response to the altered payoffs, subject to a constraint on th…