I noticed that the parliamentary model of moral uncertainty can be framed as trying to import a “group rationality” mechanism into the “individual rationality” setting, to deal with subagents/subprocesses that appear in the individual setting. But usually when the individual rationality vs group rationality topic is brought up, it is to talk about how group rationality is much harder/less understood than individual rationality (here are twoexamples of what I mean). I can’t quite explain it, but I find it interesting/counter-intuitive/paradoxical that given this general background, there is a reversal here, where a solution in the group rationality setting is being imported to the individual rationality setting. (I think this might be related to why I’ve never found the parliamentary model quite convincing, but I’m not sure.)
Has anyone thought about this, or more generally about transferring mechanisms between the two settings?
I think with the parliamentary model, it’s probably best to assume away as many of the problems with group rationality as you can.
A big source of problems in group rationality is asymmetric information, and for the parliamentary model we can just assume that all the delegates can costlessly learn everything about all the other delegates, or equivalently that they differ only in their morality and not in their information set.
Another big source of problems is that coalitional behavior can lead to arbitrary and unfair outcomes: for example if you start out with three equal individuals, and any two of them can ally with each other and beat up the third person and take their stuff, you’re going to end up with an arbitrary and unfair situation. For this perhaps we can assume that the delegates just don’t engage in alliance building and always vote according to their own morality without regard to strategic coalitional considerations. (Actually I’m not sure this paragraph makes sense but I’ve run out of time to think about it.)
I’m probably missing other important group rationality problems, but hopefully this gives you the general idea.
I noticed that the parliamentary model of moral uncertainty can be framed as trying to import a “group rationality” mechanism into the “individual rationality” setting, to deal with subagents/subprocesses that appear in the individual setting. But usually when the individual rationality vs group rationality topic is brought up, it is to talk about how group rationality is much harder/less understood than individual rationality (here are two examples of what I mean). I can’t quite explain it, but I find it interesting/counter-intuitive/paradoxical that given this general background, there is a reversal here, where a solution in the group rationality setting is being imported to the individual rationality setting. (I think this might be related to why I’ve never found the parliamentary model quite convincing, but I’m not sure.)
Has anyone thought about this, or more generally about transferring mechanisms between the two settings?
I think with the parliamentary model, it’s probably best to assume away as many of the problems with group rationality as you can.
A big source of problems in group rationality is asymmetric information, and for the parliamentary model we can just assume that all the delegates can costlessly learn everything about all the other delegates, or equivalently that they differ only in their morality and not in their information set.
Another big source of problems is that coalitional behavior can lead to arbitrary and unfair outcomes: for example if you start out with three equal individuals, and any two of them can ally with each other and beat up the third person and take their stuff, you’re going to end up with an arbitrary and unfair situation. For this perhaps we can assume that the delegates just don’t engage in alliance building and always vote according to their own morality without regard to strategic coalitional considerations. (Actually I’m not sure this paragraph makes sense but I’ve run out of time to think about it.)
I’m probably missing other important group rationality problems, but hopefully this gives you the general idea.