= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
timtyler comments on Self-empathy as a source of "willpower" - 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 (29)
You can get cooperation through kin selection, though. If you are dealing with your brother reciprocity can be dispensed with. Thus the interest in things like showing others your source code.
Yep. Fully agree, assuming you meant twin brother. I originally left the parenthetical qualification out, then added it when I thought what you just now said.
It seems as though a lot of your third point unravels, though.
If you are a machine, you can - under some circumstances - rationally arrange cooperation with other machines without threats of punishment. The procedure involves exhibiting your actual source code (and there are ways of doing that convincingly). No punishment is needed, and it can work even if agents are unrelated, and have different goals.
None of my third point unravels. I was talking about bargaining. Bargaining between rational agents with different goals requires threats, if only threats not to make a bargain - threats not to share source.
You talk about cooperation. Certainly cooperation is possible without threats. But what do you cooperate in doing? You need to bargain so as to jointly decide that.
I'm inclined to ask you what you mean by "threat".
However, rather than do that, please imagine two agents bargaining over the price of something, who are prevented from "threatening" each other by a police man, applying your preferred definition of the term - whatever that may be.
Do you think that the police man necessarily prevents a bargain being reached?
I'm inclined to refer you to the standard literature of game theory. I assure you, you will not be harmed by the information you encounter there.
I will at least mention that the definition of "threat" is inclusive enough that a cons table would not always intervene to prevent a threat.
No, the cons table's intervention merely alters the bargaining position of the players, thus leading to a different bargain being reached. Very likely, though, one or the other of the players will be harmed by the intervention and the other player helped. Whether this shift in results is or is not a good thing is a value judgment that not even the most ideological laissez-faire advocate would undertake without serious misgivings.
If rational bargainers fail to reach agreement, this is usually because their information is different, thus leading each to believe the other is being unreasonable; it is not because one or another negotiating tactic is disallowed.
ETA: Only after posting this did I look back and see why you asked these questions. It was my statement to the effect that "bargaining requires threats". Let me clarify. The subject of bargaining includes the subject of threats. A theory of bargaining which attempts to exclude threats is not a theory of bargaining at all.