EXP-SCARCITY-AWARE

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Budget-Aware Scarcity — Does Seeing Pressure Enable Adaptation?

2026-04-14 L3 level paper3 6 runs $0.21

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In plain language

Agents see their remaining budget. Does awareness of pressure enable adaptation?

▶ Technical details

Research hypothesis

In-context budget awareness enables adaptation under scarcity. AWARE agents see "budget remaining: N" each round → may learn to write shorter. P1: AWARE agents survive longer than UNAWARE (mean death round AWARE > UNAWARE). P2: F₀(AWARE) < F₀(UNAWARE) — awareness restores hierarchical structure under pressure. P3: words-per-turn declines over rounds for AWARE but not UNAWARE (learning curve). Kill: no difference in survival or F₀ → in-context learning ≠ adaptation.

Experimental setup

Type: multi_condition

Condition	Parameters
AWARE	label: Budget 250 + visible budget counter, interaction: LIVE, persona: IDENTICAL, n_runs: 3
UNAWARE	label: Budget 250 + no counter (same as scarcity-tight), interaction: LIVE, persona: IDENTICAL, n_runs: 3

Parameters

n_agents: 5
n_rounds: 30
model: anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
temperature: 0.9

Trophic Ratios by Condition

Mean trophic ratio per agent across runs. Error bars = ±1 std dev. Higher TR = more upstream (exporter).

scarcity adaptation awareness budget life-roadmap