JoachimSchipper comments on SotW: Check Consequentialism - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 March 2012 01:35AM

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Comment author: JoachimSchipper 29 March 2012 07:23:21AM *  0 points [-]

Careful, there: some vindictiveness ("if you attack me in Africa despite our pact, I will go totally apeshit on you for the rest of the game") is an essential part of playing e.g. Risk well (in our group) - naive consequentialism ("looks like I lost Africa, taking Australia from (unrelated player) seems best now") does not work very well on intelligent and adversarial agents.

Of course, most of the world is not an intelligent and adversarial agent - pre-committing to going totally apeshit on an unthinking animal is just stupid. The easiest and biggest wins for consequentialism are there, not in games of Risk.

(Non-naive consequentialism works fine. Naive consequentialism probably works fine in many games, e.g. two-player games like Magic.)

Comment author: wedrifid 29 March 2012 12:18:07PM 1 point [-]

Careful, there: some vindictiveness ("if you attack me in Africa despite our pact, I will go totally apeshit on you for the rest of the game") is an essential part of playing e.g. Risk well (in our group) - naive consequentialism ("looks like I lost Africa, taking Australia from (unrelated player) seems best now") does not work very well on intelligent and adversarial agents.

Totally agree. I'm ruthlessly vindictive but perfectly trustworthy (meaning I refrain from making promises I do not keep) when it comes to strategic situations like that. It looks superficially like being completely unsophisticated but it works.