I'm getting married. We decided to take marriage vows very seriously, and write vows that we will be fully committed to uphold. These vows are going to be a commitment no weaker than any promise I ever made or any contract I ever signed. Therefore, it is very important to avoid serious errors in their content.
I'm interested to hear feedback of the form "making these vows might turn out to be a big mistake for you, and here is why"[1] or of the form "here is how the spirit of these vows can be implemented better". Given that this is a community which nurtures security mindset, I have great expectations :) More precisely, I am less interested in extreme nitpicking / rule-lawyering, since that should be neutralized by the Vow of Good Faith anyway (but tell me if you think I'm wrong about this!) and more in serious problems that can arise in at least semi-realistic situations. (Of course, since many of us here expect a Singularity in a few decades, semi-realistic is not a very high bar ;)
Without further ado, the vows:
[EDIT 2022-07-15: The following text has been edited to match the final version of the Vows (that we took on 2021-08-29)]
I, [name], solemnly pledge to [name] three sacred Vows as I take [pronoun] to be my [spouse]. These vows are completely sincere, literal, binding and irrevocable from the moment both of us take the Vows, unless the marriage is dissolved or my [spouse] unconscionably[2] breaks [pronoun]’s own Vows which I believe in all likelihood will never happen. Let everyone present be my witness.
The First Vow is that of Honesty. I will never set out to deceive my [spouse] on purpose without [pronoun]’s unambiguous consent[3], without exception. I will also never withhold information that [pronoun] would in hindsight prefer to know[4]. The only exception to the latter is when this information was given to me in confidence by a third party as part of an agreement which was made in compliance with all Vows[5]. If for any reason I break my vow, I will act to repair the error as fast as reasonably possible.
The Second Vow is that of Concord. Everything I do will be according to the policy which is the Nash solution to the bargaining problem defined by my [spouse]’s and my own priors and utility functions, with the disagreement point set at the counterfactual in which we did not marry. I will act as if we made all precommitments that would a priori be beneficial from a Nash bargaining point of view[6]. If our utility functions change, we will effectively perform another Nash bargaining with the previous policy as the disagreement point. Moreover, if I deviate from this policy for any reason then I will return to optimal behavior as soon as possible, while preserving my [spouse]’s a priori expected utility if at all possible[7]. Finally, a hypothetical act of dissolving this marriage would also fall under the purview of this Vow[8].
The Third Vow is that of Good Faith, which augments and clarifies all three Vows. The spirit of the Vows takes precedence over the letter. When there’s some doubt or dispute as to how to interpret the Vows, the chosen interpretation should be that which my [spouse] and I would agree on at the time of our wedding, in the counterfactual in which the source of said doubt or dispute would be revealed to us and understood by us with all of its implications at that time as well as we understand it at the time it actually surfaced[9].
Conditional on the assumption that my decision to marry is about as well-grounded as one can expect. I am not soliciting criticism of my choice of spouse! ↩︎
Meaning that it's a grave or persistent violation rather than a minor lapse. ↩︎
Consent is mentioned to allow us to e.g. play tabletop games where you're supposed to deceive each other. ↩︎
That is, information X such that if the spouse knew X, they would believe it's good that they found out about it. This excludes information which is not important (knowing X is practically useless) and infohazards (knowing X is actively harmful). ↩︎
If I enter an agreement with a third party in violation of the Vow of Concord, the Vow of Honesty takes precedence over the agreement and I might have to violate the latter and pay whatever fine is necessary. ↩︎
We are taking an "updateless" perspective here. The disagreement point is fixed in the counterfactual in which we didn't marry in the first place, it does not move to the counterfactual of divorce. Notice also that marriage is guaranteed to be an a priori Pareto improvement over no-marriage because this is our current estimate, even if it turns out to be false a posteriori. ↩︎
If the violation shifts the Pareto frontier such that the previous optimum is outside of it, the new Pareto optimum is chosen s.t. the violating party bears the cost. ↩︎
This makes all of the Vows weightier than they otherwise would be. The Vows can be unmade by dissolving the marriage, but the act of dissolving the marriage is in itself subject to the Vow of Concord, which limits the ability to dissolve it unilaterally. ↩︎
In other words, interpretation is according to the extrapolated volition of us at the time of our wedding, where the extrapolation is towards our knowledge and intellectual ability at the time of making the judgment. ↩︎
I would recommend a revision (close to a re-write) of the second vow for four reasons:
First, negotiations theory has progressed past game theory solutions to a more psychologically based methodology. This approach has been demonstrated to be more effective in two well tested and well studied environments: FBI hostage negotiations (I'd recommend starting with Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss as a light, entertaining but still useful introductory work), and intelligence community asset recruitment. You can look up the transition from the relatively explanatory MICE - money, ideology, compromise, ego - to RASCLS - reciprocity, authority, scarcity, consistency, liking, social proof. Note that in RASCLS all approaches essentially link to ego, though they may use the other MICE factors to get there.
Essentially, a lot of the time a dispute isn't about the outcome, but about the process and establishing understanding for respective points of view. I understand that a less mathematically rigorous approach may at first seem less rational and less desirable. But ultimately from a utilitarian viewpoint, it's most rational to choose the most effective method, even if that method is less "rational" than an alternate method.
Second, the second vow focuses too much on the target (a KS solution bargain to the disagreement) and too little on the process. Agreeing on how you will dispute is more important for maintaining concord than how you determine the outcome. Using a more specific procedure for arguments (especially serious ones) is useful, as it makes both parties know that they will have a fair opportunity to express themselves.
I would recommend sourcing from debate standards at least for the most serious arguments, possibly recorded so you can both review afterwards (British parliamentary debate rules are quite good, and there are various shortened forms). But even within the framework of searching for a KS solution, it's important to have a pre-established method of presenting possible solutions, establishing scores for how desirable those solutions are for each party, etc., without further escalating the disagreement. Essentially some analogue to how facts and evidence can be established in a legal dispute.
Periodic (perhaps weekly) check ins to air grievances and make sure everyone is on the same page can also be useful.
Third, KS systems (like other game theory approaches) are difficult to quantify. It's hard to assign a dollar value to taking out the trash versus doing the dishes. Time is a possible approach, but difficult to reconcile with how much you like/dislike an activity. Accompanying your partner for 30 minutes of listening to screaming metal on full blast may not be equivalent to 30 minutes of manual labor (in either direction). Adding in a scale of love <-> hate (say, 0-10) that then multiplies by that time is similarly a poor approach because people may prefer a short sharp pain to a longer but milder pain, but absolutely avoid a very short agonizing pain. Like most approaches that require a useful quantitative score, KS breaks down in the messy (and often inconsistent!) application of preferences.
Fourth, a KS/game-theory negotiations approach to disputes promotes an accounting approach to your relationship. "You should do X because I did Y..." and so on. This will provide a constant state of two parties keeping their own track of relative performance, which even without taking into account the likely bias towards their own viewpoints is likely to have fair divergence due to differences in accounting for various actions. Though small, there will be countless and never ending disagreements and dissatisfaction due to this approach, providing for a grit which will slowly (or not so slowly) erode your relationship.
The exact wording is something you may want to work out with your partner. It wouldn't be unreasonable to refer to some agreement between you on methods of dispute resolution which can be changed at a later date with both parties' agreement. But I think you'd find this sort of approach more effective and more rewarding.
Hmm. Do you have a reference which is not, like, an entire book?
Well, the process is important, but I feel like the discourse norms exemplified by this community already have us covered there, give or take.
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