I like this post and agree that acausal coordination is not weird fringe behavior necessarily. But thinking about it explicitly in the context of making a decision, is. In normal circumstances, we have plenty of non-acausal ways of discussing what’s going on, as you discuss. The explicit consideration is something that becomes important only outside the contexts most people act in.
That said, I disagree with the taxes example in particular, on the grounds that that’s not how government finances work in a world of fiat currency controlled by said government. Extra taxes paid won’t change how much gets spent or on what, it’ll just remove money from circulation with possible downstream effects on inflation. Also, in some states in the US (like Massachusetts this year), where the government doesn’t control the currency, there are rules that surpluses have to get returned in the form of tax refunds. So any extra state taxes I paid, would just get redistributed across the population in proportion to income.
I like the distinction between implementing the results of acausal decision theories and explicitly performing the reasoning involved. That seems useful to have.
The taxes example I think is more complicated: at some scale I do think that governments have some responsiveness to their tax receipts (e.g. if there were a surprise doubling of tax receipts governments might well spend more). It’s not a 1:1 relation, but there’s definitely a connection.
I like this post and agree that acausal coordination is not weird fringe behavior necessarily. But thinking about it explicitly in the context of making a decision, is. In normal circumstances, we have plenty of non-acausal ways of discussing what’s going on, as you discuss. The explicit consideration is something that becomes important only outside the contexts most people act in.
That said, I disagree with the taxes example in particular, on the grounds that that’s not how government finances work in a world of fiat currency controlled by said government. Extra taxes paid won’t change how much gets spent or on what, it’ll just remove money from circulation with possible downstream effects on inflation. Also, in some states in the US (like Massachusetts this year), where the government doesn’t control the currency, there are rules that surpluses have to get returned in the form of tax refunds. So any extra state taxes I paid, would just get redistributed across the population in proportion to income.
I like the distinction between implementing the results of acausal decision theories and explicitly performing the reasoning involved. That seems useful to have.
The taxes example I think is more complicated: at some scale I do think that governments have some responsiveness to their tax receipts (e.g. if there were a surprise doubling of tax receipts governments might well spend more). It’s not a 1:1 relation, but there’s definitely a connection.