Petter comments on Acausal trade barriers - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 11 March 2015 01:40PM

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Comment author: Petter 12 March 2015 10:31:37PM 0 points [-]

So, first you have the utility functions that pay both agents 10 if they cooperate and 1 if they don’t.

Then you change the utility functions to pay the agents 0 if they cooperate and 1 if they don’t. Naturally they will then stop cooperating.

I don’t get it. If you are the one specifying the utility functions, then obviously you can make them cooperate or defect, right?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 13 March 2015 12:20:58PM 2 points [-]

The change in utility function isn't removing 10 by hand; it's by removing any utility they gain from acausal trade (whatever it is) while preserving utility gained through direct actions. Thus incentivising them to only focus on direct actions (roughly).

Comment author: Petter 15 March 2015 04:50:42PM -1 points [-]

Then the entire result of the modification is tautologically true, right?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 19 March 2015 01:44:53PM 1 point [-]

All of maths is tautologically true, so I'm not sure what you're arguing.