# The Open-Strategy Dictator Game: Cooperation Under Mutual Transparency

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14913 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14913/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Playing repeated games with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16867/) (2023)
- [CoopEval: Benchmarking Cooperation-Sustaining Mechanisms and LLM Agents in Social Dilemmas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15267/) (2026)
- [Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma: Program Equilibrium via Provability Logic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1401.5577/) (2014)
- [Towards a Theory of AI Personhood](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13533/) (2025)
- [Evaluating LLMs in Open-Source Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00371/) (2025)
- [Characterising Simulation-Based Program Equilibria](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14570/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce the Open-Strategy Dictator Game (OSDG), a variant of the classic dictator game in which each player's strategy is a natural-language document visible to all participants. The dictator's decision, to SHARE or TAKE an endowment, may depend on the text of the recipient's strategy. A large language model adjudicates each interaction by interpreting the dictator's strategy in the context of the recipient's. We run round-robin tournaments among diverse strategies and analyze the resulting payoff matrix using softmax equilibrium frequencies, dominance analysis, and sensitivity to the relative value of cooperation. Conditionally cooperative strategies, those that share with cooperators and take from exploiters, consistently dominate, while unconditional strategies (always share or always take) are weakly dominated. The results suggest that in environments where agents can inspect each other's decision procedures, conditional cooperation is evolutionarily robust across a wide range of payoff parameters.