2. A can be denied using AFX, A can be defended using AFY , but A can be denied AFX t AFY , or 3. A can be defended using AFX and can be defended using AFY , and for each AFZ such that A can be defended using AFY t AFZ it holds that A can also be defended using AFX t AFZ,
4. A can be denied using AFX and can be denied using AFY , and for each AFZ such that A can be denied using AFY t AFZ it holds that A can be denied using AFX t AFZ.
Naturally, it follows that if AFY v AFX then X is at least as informed w.r.t. each argument in AFY as Y .

In the example mentioned earlier (eq. 1) Alex has access only to argument A, and Bob has access to arguments A, B and C. Suppose a third person (Charles) has access only to arguments A and B. Then we say that Bob is more informed than Alex w.r.t. argument A because Bob can maintain his position on A (accepted) while facing criticism from Charles, where Alex cannot. A more controversial consequence is that Charles is also more informed than Alex w.r.t. argument A, even though from the global perspective, Charles has the
"wrong" position on argument A (rejected instead of accepted). This is compensated by the fact that Bob, in his turn, is more informed than Charles w.r.t. argument A. As an analogy, it would be fair to consider Newton as more informed than his predecessors, even though his work has later been attacked by more advanced theories.

## 3 Simulation

We developed a software-simulator in order to better understand the impact of a consultant's informedness on his profit. The simulator has the objective to reveal when it pays off for a consultant to be *ill-informed*, i.e. less well-informed as is the state of the art. If ill-informedness is more profitable for a consultant than being well-informed, the spread of outdated and possibly wrong facts or arguments is preprogrammed. Of course, such a situation would be harmful to our society, and so a study of its causes seems to be important.

In the following, we describe the simulator (Sect. 3.1), show results (Sect. 3.2) and discuss these (Sect. 3.3).

## 3.1 The Simulator

In the first part of this section, we describe the client-consultant scenario that we aim to simulate. We then detail the considered argumentation framework. Two different strategies of the consultants concerning the acquisition of newly available information are defined afterwards, one representing well-informed consultants and the other representing ill-informed consultants. Finally, we specify the procedure of how clients select their consultants.

## 3.1.1 Client-Consultant Scenario

The scenario is basically defined by a set of clients, a set of consultants, and a finite number of rounds in each of which the clients seek advice from the consultants. In each round, consultants acquire new information, either from other sources (researchers, analysts, etc.), or do investigations on their own. We model this acquisition of information simply as fixed