= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
blogospheroid comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (725)
Drawing on the true prisoner's dilemma, the story arch Three worlds collide and the recent Avatar
In the case of avatar, humans did cooperate in the prisoners dilemma first, we tried the schooling and medicine thingy and apparently it has been rejected from the na'avi side. Differences were still so high that dream-walkers (na'avi avatars of humans) were being derided with statements like 'a rock sees more'.
So, the question is, when we cooperate with an alien species, will they even recognise it as cooperation? How does that change the contours of a decision theory? If you are a superior species and have the option of taking a cooperative decision that appears to be hostile(In the avatar scenario, it could be trying to tell Na'avi that sometimes things just don't all fit into a plan, thus blowing a huge hole in their worldview), and a hostile decision that appears to be cooperative (giving away free narcotics, for eg.)
Will you be genuinely cooperative or only signal that you are cooperative?
Let us truly consider this from the perspective of superiority of humans i.e. there are no uber-guardians of pandora who can wipe humanity out like dust. (which is a possibility i would consider if humanity were going to launch another attack)
The Na'vi didn't defect. The Na'vi refused to play. The human faction wouldn't accept any outcome that didn't end with them getting the unobtainium, and the Na'vi not playing was such an outcome, so the humans forced a game and, when the Na'vi still weren't cooperative, defected big-time. Since the game was spread out in time, this permitted retaliatory defection - which isn't part of the original non-iterated PD, nor is refusing to play.
And since the Na'vi choosing to fight turns out to make human non-cooperation give a far worse outcome to them than cooperation it just isn't a Prisoner's Dilemma at all. It's a "The Na'vi are will F@#$ you up if you mess with them" game.