arXiv:2508.08301v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Humans are bounded rational at best and this, we argue, has worked in their favour in the hunter-gatherer society where emergence of a coordinated action, leading to cooperation, is otherwise the standard stag-hunt dilemma (when individuals are rational). In line with the fact the humans strive for developing self-reputation by having less propensity to cheat than to be cheated, we observe that the payoff structure of the stag-hunt game appropriately modifies to that of coordination-II game. Subsequently, within the paradigm of evolutionary game theory, we establish that a population — consisting of procedural rational players (a type of bounded rationality) — is unequivocally evolutionarily stable against emergence of more rational strategies in coordination-II game. The cooperation is, thus, shown to have been established by evolutionary forces picking less rational individuals.