Andreas_Giger comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Academian 05 November 2012 01:02AM

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Comment author: Andreas_Giger 08 November 2012 06:02:07PM *  1 point [-]

By having two agents play the same game against different opposition, you compare two scenarios that may seem similar on the surface but are fundamentally different. Obviously, making sure your opponent cooperates is not part of PD, so you can't call this winning. And as soon as you delve into the depths of meta-PD, where players can influence other players' decisions beforehand and/or hand out additional punishment afterwards, like for example in most real life situations, the rational agents will devise methods by which mutual cooperation can be assured much better than by loyalty or altruism or whatever. Anyone moderately rational will cooperate if the PD matrix is "cooperate and get [whatever] or defect and have all your winnings taken away by the player community and given to the other player", and accordingly win against irrational players, while any non-playing rationalist would support such kind of convention; although, depending on how/why PD games happen in the first place, this may evolve into "cooperate and have all winnings taken away by the player community or defect and additionally get punished in an unpleasant way".

By the way, the term CooperateBot only really makes sense when talking about iterated PD, where it refers to an agent always cooperating regardless of the results of any previous rounds.

Comment deleted 08 November 2012 06:15:22PM [-]
Comment author: Andreas_Giger 08 November 2012 07:08:13PM *  2 points [-]

In non-iterated PD, someone who cooperates is a cooperator.

Nevertheless the CooperateBots win when playing between each other, while the rational agents lose when they have no mean to credibly commit.

No, the cooperators actually lose when playing each other, because they gain less than what they could, while the only reason they get anything at all is because they are playing against other cooperators. Likewise, the defectors win when playing other defectors, and they obviously win against cooperators. Cooperating could only win if it effected your opponent's decision, which is not the case in PD.

It seems your definition of winning is flawed in that you want your agents to achieve results that are clearly outside their influence. Rationalists should win under the constraints of reality, not invent scenarios in which they have already won.

Comment deleted 08 November 2012 11:29:23PM *  [-]
Comment author: Andreas_Giger 09 November 2012 07:30:50AM 1 point [-]

Clearly in a community of unconditional cooperators every agent obtains a better payoff than any agent in a community of defectors.

As soon as you're talking about communities, you're talking about meta-PD, not PD, and as I've explained above, rationalist agents play meta-PD by making sure cooperation is desirable for the individuum as well, so they win. End of story.

Comment author: TimS 08 November 2012 11:41:33PM -1 points [-]

Nitpick: Superrationality is not a decision theory.

Comment deleted 09 November 2012 12:14:10AM [-]
Comment author: TimS 09 November 2012 01:34:15AM -2 points [-]

Wikipedia is not a determinative source.

Which answer is the "superrational" one in Newcomb's problem? In a game of chicken? In an ultimatum game?

Decision theories like Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision theory have answers, and can explain why they reached those answers. As far as I am aware, there's no equivalent formalization of "superrationality." Until such a formalization exists, it is misleading in this type of discussion to call "superrationality" a decision theory.

Comment deleted 09 November 2012 02:13:23AM *  [-]
Comment author: MugaSofer 09 November 2012 10:38:06AM 0 points [-]

In a game of chicken

Swerve.

And let the other guy win? Madness!