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Decius comments on A brief history of ethically concerned scientists - Less Wrong
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Better than developing ethical scientists would be a policy of developing ethical political and military leaders.
Better for whom? I'd really like my rival countries to have ethical military leaders, but maybe I prefer my own country's military leaders to be ruthless.
I would prefer my own country's miilitary leaders to be ethical as well, personally. A ruthless military leader may:
...all of which are behaviours I do not prefer.
Do you defect in iterated prisoners' dilemma?
No, but I'm not sure military conflicts are necessarily iterated, especially from the perspective of me, an individual civilian within a nation.
But the selection of military leaders is iterated.
Most of us are not in a position to ever select a military leader, let alone do it an indefinite number of times.
Most adult US citizens are in a position to have nonzero input into the selection of the person who determines military policy.
Sure, and most adult US citizens are in a position to have nonzero input into the selection of today's weather by choosing to open their door with the AC on or not. Nonzero is a very small hurdle indeed.
An interesting voting mechanism, if it allows a preference that /everyone/ has to not be expressed in the outcome because each individual has a small overall effect.
I'm afraid I don't see the relevance.
I think the payoff matrix of warfare is very analogous to the PD payoff matrix, and that the previous (and even current) military leaders are available to all serious players of the game. Also, anticipate that others might make irrational decisions, like responding to a WMD attack with a WMD reprisal even if it doesn't benefit them; they might also make rational decisions, like publicly and credibly precommitting to a WMD reprisal in the even of a WMD attack.
I'm still not following you.
So first of all, you'll need to convince me that the payoff matrix for an individual civilian within a nation deciding who their military leader should be is similar to one of the prisoners in PD. In particular, we'll need to look at what "cooperate" and "defect" even mean for the individual citizen. E.g. does "cooperate" mean "elect an ethical military leader"?
Second, asuming you do convince me that the payoff matrices are similar, you'll have to clarify whether you think warfare is iterated for an individual civilian, especially when the "other" nation defects. I suspect if my leader is ethical, and their leader is not, then I will be dead, and hence no iteration for me.
Thirdly, you may wish to clarify whether all the sentences after your first are intended to be new assertions, or if they are supposed to be supporting arguments for the first sentence.
Vastly simplified:
Survival is worth three points, destroying the opposing ideology is worth two points, and having at least one survivor is worth twenty points.
If nobody uses WMDs, everyone gets 23 points. If one side uses WMDs, they survive and destroy their idealogical opponent for 25 points to the opposing 20. If both sides use WMDs, both score 2 for destroying the opponent.
Given that conflicts will happen, a leader who refuses to initiate use of WMDs while convincing the opponent that he will retaliate with them is most likely to result in the dual-cooperate outcome. Therefore the optimum choice for the organism which selects the military leaders is to select leaders who are crazy enough to nuke them back, but not crazy enough to launch first.
If you share the relative ranking above (not-extinction>>surviving>wiping out others), then your personal maximum comes from causing such a leader to be elected (not counting unrelated effects on e.g. domestic policy). The cheapest way of influencing that is by voting for such a leader.
What's the difference between "Survival" and "having at least one survivor"?
The way I see it:
We're assuming a conflict is about to happen, I guess, or else the hypothetical scenario is boring and there are no important choices for me to make.
The question is not "Do I elect a crazy leader or a non-crazy leader?", but rather, "Do I elect a leader that's believes 'all's fair in love and war?' or a leader that believes in 'always keep your word and die with honor'?"
I.e. if you think "ethical vs unethical" means "will retaliate-but-not-initiate vs will not retaliate-but-not-intiiate", then it's no wonder why we're having communication problems.
Is ruthlessness necessarily unethical in a military leader?
Sometimes compassion is a sharp sword.
Agreed; as Sun Tzu points out on several occasions, fighting should usually be considered a measure of last resort.