It is noteworthy however, that these levels of cooperation are demonstrably stable. There is no logic in these player that would allow them to reason about the likely consequences of a defection. Human players may choose to cooperate as a result of predicting future consequences, but these automated players are incapable of such reasoning. These effects cause the memome population to be unstable in the sense that genetic drift randomizes and hence gradually erases portions of the genome that are not being utilized. Thus, during a period of all defection, genes dictating behavior when there is a high level of cooperation tend to erode.
Similar erosion occurs to low cooperation genes during eras of predominant cooperation.
The average values of the genes for the example above are displayed in figures 4-8. Figure 9 shows the average value of the gene that dictates the initial move of the iterated game. The ease with which cooperation can be established is quite sensitive to the functions that define the game. 10 and 11, are alternative payoff functions and the resulting trajectory of average number of cooperators in the population. As figure 11 demonstrates, with increasing K, the balance between cooperation and defection changes, with resulting increase of the average time to wait for cooperation to break out.