implicit in that was the assumption that the baron was rational, knew his source and the countess’ and would arrive at a decision in finite time—hence he must be correct in his assumption. I nearly wrote it that way, but thought this layout would be more intuitive.
You say here that the baron is rational and he knows the countess’s. This being the case the only way for the countess to be blackmailed is if she implements a defective decision algorithm. Yet you describe the difference between the two as an ‘inferior epistemic vantage point’. This does not seem like the right label. It seems to me that the advantage is instrumental and not epistemic.
We don’t have a decision theory that reliably responds to offers, not to threats. We do have an algorithm that responds to offers, not to threats. Approximately it goes “when dealing with with rational agents and there is full epistemic awareness thrown all over the place respond to offers, not to threats because that is what works best.” Unfortunately, integrating that into situations with epistemic uncertainty is all sorts of complex and probably beyond me. But that is a general problem that can be expected with any decision theory.
You say here that the baron is rational and he knows the countess’s. This being the case the only way for the countess to be blackmailed is if she implements a defective decision algorithm. Yet you describe the difference between the two as an ‘inferior epistemic vantage point’. This does not seem like the right label. It seems to me that the advantage is instrumental and not epistemic.
We do not yet have a decision algorithm that reliably “respond to offers, not to threats”.
Therefore ‘defective decision algorithm’ must include everything we are capable of designing today :-)
We don’t have a decision theory that reliably responds to offers, not to threats. We do have an algorithm that responds to offers, not to threats. Approximately it goes “when dealing with with rational agents and there is full epistemic awareness thrown all over the place respond to offers, not to threats because that is what works best.” Unfortunately, integrating that into situations with epistemic uncertainty is all sorts of complex and probably beyond me. But that is a general problem that can be expected with any decision theory.