ChristianKl comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong

0 Post author: David_Gerard 02 September 2013 02:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (376)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 September 2013 12:24:10PM 0 points [-]

But fighting to get more power may have positive utility for oneself, it usually has negative utility for others, so it's in everybody's interest that everybody agrees to not fighting for more power.

If you don't have enough power to win a fight fighting is also negative utility for yourself. If everyone predicts that you would win a fight, you usually don't actually have to fight it to get what you want.

Comment author: blashimov 06 September 2013 01:44:28AM 3 points [-]

Fighting has a huge signalling component: when viewed in isolation, a fight might be trivially, obviously, a net negative for both participants. However, either or both! participants might in the future win more concessions for their willingness to fight alone than the loss of the fight. As humans are adaption executers, a certain willingness to fight, to seek revenge, etc. is pretty common. At least, this seems to be the dominant theory and sensible to me.