The Early Christian Strategy

Uses Axelrod's Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma tournament (TIT-FOR-TAT wins; COOPERATE-BOT gets exploited) to frame a real puzzle: why did the early Christians' apparently-doomed unconditional-cooperation strategy - love your enemies, nurse pagans during plague, refuse lawsuits - conquer Rome? Tests the pattern against other COOPERATE-BOT groups (Quakers frog-boiled into compromise, Cathars exterminated, modern free-speech liberalism as a domain-limited COOPERATE-BOT), then offers eight tentative mechanisms (advertisement, moral-elite selection, heroic appeal, limits-of-prediction, the epiphenomenal 'God is real' option). It does not resolve the puzzle - the contribution is the framing and the closing image, 'COOPERATE-BOT in a bloodstained sweater,' for hyper-Christian liberalism's repeated historical victories. Vintage Scott: game theory + history + religion + a durable reframe.

Quality 80 · Excellent. Excellent band (floor). One of his stronger recent essays - original synthesis, memorable, genuinely thought-provoking, frequently cited. Placed at the bottom of the excellent-classic band rather than higher because it poses rather than answers its question (eight 'weak theories,' no resolution). A=80.

Claude’s paradigm shift 60 · Notable shift. Notable shift. The COOPERATE-BOT-beats-TIT-FOR-TAT framing of Christianity and liberalism is a fresh, non-obvious angle, though the underlying material (Axelrod; Stark's charity thesis) is old. B=60.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A strong, frequently-cited essay applying Axelrod's iterated-Prisoner's-Dilemma frame to why early Christianity's unconditional-cooperation strategy conquered Rome — an original, memorable synthesis, but it poses rather than answers and stays at the level of intellectual discourse with no material change — low RWI.