Manfred comments on Hazing as Counterfactual Mugging? - Less Wrong

3 Post author: SilasBarta 11 October 2010 02:17PM

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Comment author: Manfred 14 October 2010 05:03:19PM 0 points [-]

That seems silly. I'd think the time difference thoroughly breaks the symmetry that the TDT answer to the prisoner's dilemma that I've seen relies on. It's like if one of the prisoners got to hear the other prisoners' answer before deciding.

But I suppose your answer does increase the usefulness of this problem as something to think about.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 October 2010 06:03:28PM 0 points [-]

TDT agents do what they'd want to precommit to doing. Thus, in PD where one prisoner sees the other's decision, TDT agents still cooperate (since if the second player doesn't cooperate, then it won't benefit from first player's cooperation, but it wants to, hence it does cooperate).

Comment author: Manfred 14 October 2010 10:38:23PM 0 points [-]

And now it's Parfit's hitchhiker! :D

Except instead of having psychic powers and only accepting people who intend to pay, now the driver accepts everyone and is a mute.

Hm, so perhaps hazing isn't quite like this asymmetric PD, since the current generation cannot give anything back to the older generation. But still, it's interesting to talk about, so:

Would the second player cooperate even if the first player defected, since that's what they would do if they'd precommitted?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 15 October 2010 09:43:51AM 0 points [-]

Would the second player cooperate even if the first player defected, since that's what they would do if they'd precommitted?

If the first player is even a cooperating rock, the second player should defect. The argument only applies to a "sufficiently similar" TDT agent as the first player, which won't defect, hence your new problem statement doesn't satisfy that condition.

Comment author: Manfred 15 October 2010 11:19:43AM 0 points [-]

Oh, okay. I hadn't fully understood how restricted the range of "cooperate" was by the lack of information about the other player.