If persistence of Cooperate depends entirely on Defect never being introduced, the claim reduces to: a strategy persists when it faces no competition, which is trivially true and explanatorily vacuous.

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Reasons For

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Cooperate(as used in game theory and strategy analysis): A choice or strategy where someone works together with others or follows an agreed-upon rule, rather than acting purely for their own benefit.
Explanatorily vacuous(as used in philosophical critique): A claim that doesn't actually explain anything useful because it lacks real substance or relies on circular reasoning.
defect(Used to measure how much a triangle's angle sum falls short of the Euclidean value of two right angles.): The difference between two right angles and the sum of the three interior angles of a triangle in Lobachevskian geometry.
persistence(Weyl's distinction between two kinds of constancy): Constancy maintained because a quantity is isolated and undisturbed, as opposed to actively adjusted
strategy(Logic of strategies / propositional dynamic logic): A program that instructs an agent on how to navigate a game tree, potentially recommending one or more actions at each turn; strategies may remain partial, resembling plans.
trivially true(Elster's characterization of methodological individualism; the author notes the ambiguity matters because Elster derives substantive doctrines from the commitment): Used by Elster in the vernacular sense of 'platitudinous' rather than the philosophical sense of 'tautologous'

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