A more correct analysis is that CDT defects against itself in iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, provided there is any finite bound to the number of iterations. So two CDTs in charge of nuclear weapons would reason “Hmm, the sun’s going to go Red Giant at some point, and even if we escape that, there’s still that Heat Death to worry about. Looks like an upper bound to me”. And then they’d immediately nuke each other.
A CDT playing against a “RevengeBot”—if you nuke it, it nukes back with an all out strike - would never fire its weapons. But then the RevengeBot could just take out one city at a time, without fear of retaliation.
Since CDT was the “gold standard” of rationality developed during the time of the Cold War, I am somewhat puzzled why we’re still here.
So two CDTs in charge of nuclear weapons would reason “Hmm, the sun’s going to go Red Giant at some point, and even if we escape that, there’s still that Heat Death to worry about. Looks like an upper bound to me”. And then they’d immediately nuke each other.
This assumes that the mutual possession of nuclear weapons constitutes a prisoners dilemma. There isn’t necessarily a positive payoff to nuking folks. (You know, unless they are really jerks!)
Well nuking the other side eliminates the chance that they’ll ever nuke you (or will attack with conventional weapons), so there is arguably a slight positive for nuking first as opposed to keeping the peace.
There were some very serious thinkers arguing for a first strike against the Soviet Union immediately after WW2, including (on some readings) Bertrand Russell, who later became a leader of CND. And a pure CDT (with selfish utility) would have done so. I don’t see how Schelling theory could have modified that… just push the other guy over the cliff before the ankle-chains get fastened.
Probably the reason it didn’t happen was the rather obvious “we don’t want to go down in history as even worse than the Nazis”—also there was complacency about how far behind the Soviets actually were. If it had been known that they would explode an A-bomb as little as 4 years after the war, then the calculation would have been different. (Last ditch talks to ban nuclear weapons completely and verifiably—by thorough spying on each other—or bombs away. More likely bombs away I think.)
A more correct analysis is that CDT defects against itself in iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, provided there is any finite bound to the number of iterations. So two CDTs in charge of nuclear weapons would reason “Hmm, the sun’s going to go Red Giant at some point, and even if we escape that, there’s still that Heat Death to worry about. Looks like an upper bound to me”. And then they’d immediately nuke each other.
A CDT playing against a “RevengeBot”—if you nuke it, it nukes back with an all out strike - would never fire its weapons. But then the RevengeBot could just take out one city at a time, without fear of retaliation.
Since CDT was the “gold standard” of rationality developed during the time of the Cold War, I am somewhat puzzled why we’re still here.
Well, it’s good that you’re puzzled, because it wasn’t—see Schelling’s “The Strategy of Conflict.”
I get the point that a CDT would pre-commit to retaliation if it had time (i.e. self-modify into a RevengeBot).
The more interesting question is why it bothers to do that re-wiring when it is expecting the nukes from the other side any second now...
This assumes that the mutual possession of nuclear weapons constitutes a prisoners dilemma. There isn’t necessarily a positive payoff to nuking folks. (You know, unless they are really jerks!)
Well nuking the other side eliminates the chance that they’ll ever nuke you (or will attack with conventional weapons), so there is arguably a slight positive for nuking first as opposed to keeping the peace.
There were some very serious thinkers arguing for a first strike against the Soviet Union immediately after WW2, including (on some readings) Bertrand Russell, who later became a leader of CND. And a pure CDT (with selfish utility) would have done so. I don’t see how Schelling theory could have modified that… just push the other guy over the cliff before the ankle-chains get fastened.
Probably the reason it didn’t happen was the rather obvious “we don’t want to go down in history as even worse than the Nazis”—also there was complacency about how far behind the Soviets actually were. If it had been known that they would explode an A-bomb as little as 4 years after the war, then the calculation would have been different. (Last ditch talks to ban nuclear weapons completely and verifiably—by thorough spying on each other—or bombs away. More likely bombs away I think.)