Reasoning and Reflection in the Game of Nomic: Self-Organising Self-Aware Agents with Mutable Rule-Sets

The Game of Nomic was developed to investigate the idea that any modifiable rule-based system could result in situations where the ruleset is paradoxical, contradictory or incomplete. This has interesting and important implications for designers of open, self-organising, rule-based systems, if our concern is to ensure that the system should operate within a 'corridor' of behavior, or should avoid certain non-normative states. To investigate this issue, this paper presents the preliminary design, implementation and operation of a self-organising multi-agent system in which the agents play the Game of Nomic. While not yet in a position to test Suber's hypothesis fully, we can see how different agent strategies can reason, reflect, and make decisions that benefit their internal objectives relative to the game itself, by using an awareness of themselves, other players, the ruleset and the projected outcome of proposed rule modifications.