Benja comments on What a reduction of "could" could look like - Less Wrong

53 Post author: cousin_it 12 August 2010 05:41PM

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Comment author: Benja 14 August 2010 07:21:50PM *  0 points [-]

My proposal can't handle the iterated PD, only games where each player has two choices. I was replying to you saying there was an obvious generalization to more than two strategies -- if there is, then we can pass in the payoff matrix of the normal form of a finitely iterated PD (and if it's a sensible generalization, it should cooperate with itself on every round).

Your argument about bargaining makes sense, though alas I don't know enough about bargaining to have a really informed opinion. It may be that the idea only works for sufficiently PD-like games, but if we can handle a class of them without special-casing that doesn't seem so bad. It does at least handle Chicken [Edit: and Stag Hunt] correctly, AFAICS, so it's not as if it's PD-only.

Comment author: cousin_it 14 August 2010 07:28:20PM *  0 points [-]

Um, the obvious generalization to many strategies must "privilege" one of the strategies apriori, the same way as your algorithm "privileges" cooperation. Otherwise, what single statement would the proof checker be trying to prove? I don't see a way around that.

Comment author: Benja 14 August 2010 07:48:19PM 0 points [-]

Ah, sorry, now I understand what's going on. You are saying "there's an obvious generalization, but then you'd have to pick a 'fair' strategy profile that it would privilege." I'm saying "there's no obvious generalization which preserves what's interesting about the two-strategy case." So we're in agreement already.

(I'm not entirely without hope; I have a vague idea that we could order the possible somehow, and if we can prove a higher utility for strategy X than for any strategy that is below X in the ordering, then the agent can prove it will definitely choose X or a strategy that is above it in the ordering. Or something like that. But need to look at the details much more closely.)