Taxonomy / Convention equilibrium / Worlds where agents write their own rules

Worlds where agents write their own rules

Here there is no menu of conventions to choose from. The researcher builds a persistent world in which actions have material consequences — a shared stock that can be fished out, a Minecraft landscape with roles, trade and building — hands the agents ordinary language and no rulebook, and whatever arrangements they negotiate for themselves is the convention. The design bet is that a standard will form and stick if there is something real to lose and the freedom to bargain over it; the honest finding so far is that agreements get reached and then broken more often than they hold.