Comment on AI cooperation in practice

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:54:32 GMT

Thanks for the analysis. I'll try to clarify those points, then.

Of course, I'm not suggesting my answer as a solution to the prisoner's dilemma. I actually don't think this kind of mathematical analysis is even relevant to the prisoner's dilemma in practice -- I think the latter is best dealt with by pre-commitments, reputation tracking etc. to change the payoff matrix and in particular change the assumption that the interaction is one-off -- which it typically isn't anyway. (Note that in cases involving actual criminals, we need witness protection programs to make it even approximately one-off.)

As for the logic engine, hey, I just unrolled the search loop then deleted 3^^^^3 - 1 lines of unreachable code. No different than optimizing compilers do every day :-)

If we look at the logic puzzle aspect though, this is in similar vein to this statement is true (the reverse of the classic this statement is false liar paradox -- it has two consistent solutions instead of none -- note that return 0 is just as valid a solution as return 1).

And if you ask what sort of proof system permits that, you start investigating higher-order logic, and self-reference, and the classic paradoxes thereof, and type theory and other possible solutions thereto, which are topics that are of very real significance to software verification and other branches of AI.

In summary, I think this puzzle goes places interesting enough that it's actually worth taking apart and analyzing.

Discuss