Alice an Bob are playing a variation of a one-shot Prisoner's dilemma. In this version of the game, instead of choosing their actions simultaneously, Alice moves first, and then Bob moves after he knows Alice move. However, Alice know Bob's thought processes well enough that she can predict his move ahead of time. Both Alice and Bob are rational utility maximizers.
There are two possible ways Alice and Bob can reason:
a) Alice predicts that Bob, being an utility maximizer, will always play Defect no matter what she plays. Hence she also playes Defect in order to minimize her loss. Bob sees that Alice played Defect and playes Defect since he can gain nothing by playing Cooperate. This results in the uncoperative outcome (D, D).
b) Alice reasons that the asymmetric outcomes (D, C) and (C, D) are impossible. (D, C) is impossible because, as stated above, once Alice played Defect, Bob has nothing to gain by playing Cooperate. (C, D) is impossible because Alice can predict Bob's move, hence she will never play Cooperate if she predicts that Bob will play Defect. Therefore, only the symmetric outcomes (C, C) and (D, D) remain. Since Alice prefers (C, C) to (D, D), she plays Cooperate. Bob, at this point, is bounded to also play Cooperate, because if he played Defect then Alice's prediction would be falsified, and this in inconsistent with the assumption that Alice can predict Bob's move. Therefore, the cooperative outcome (C, C), also known as acausal trade, results.
Questions:
1) Which analysis is correct?
2) Is this scenario just a theoretical curiosity that can never happen in real life because it is impossible to accurately predict the actions of any agent of any signficant complexity, or is this a scenario that is relevant (or will become relevant) to practical decision making?
Alice an Bob are playing a variation of a one-shot Prisoner's dilemma. In this version of the game, instead of choosing their actions simultaneously, Alice moves first, and then Bob moves after he knows Alice move. However, Alice know Bob's thought processes well enough that she can predict his move ahead of time.
We need information about what Bob believes about Alice's thought processes. I am going to answer as if you had appended "and Bob knows that Alice can do this." to the previous sentence so that I can give a useful answer. Without be...
The first draft of the 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey is complete (see 2011 here). I will link it below if you promise not to try to take the survey because it's not done yet and this is just an example!
2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey Draft
I want three things from you.
First, please critique this draft. Tell me if any questions are unclear, misleading, offensive, confusing, or stupid. Tell me if the survey is so unbearably long that you would never possibly take it. Tell me if anything needs to be rephrased.
Second, I am willing to include any question you want in the Super Extra Bonus Questions section, as long as it is not offensive, super-long-and-involved, or really dumb. Please post any questions you want there. Please be specific - not "Ask something about abortion" but give the exact question you want me to ask as well as all answer choices.
Try not to add more than five or so questions per person, unless you're sure yours are really interesting. Please also don't add any questions that aren't very easily sort-able by a computer program like SPSS unless you can commit to sorting the answers yourself.
Third, please suggest a decent, quick, and at least somewhat accurate Internet IQ test I can stick in a new section, Unreasonably Long Bonus Questions.
I will probably post the survey to Main and officially open it for responses sometime early next week.