Well, you seem to have understood everything pretty well, without the need for extra information.
Actually, I didn’t understand at all on first reading. I only came up with the “dynamic consistency” interpretation on a third draft of the grandparent, as I struggled to explain my earlier complaint more fully.
I didn’t actually put in dynamic consistency by hand—it just seems that anything that is Pareto optimal in expected utility for GG requires dynamical consistency.
anything that is Pareto optimal in expected utility for GG requires dynamical consistency.
Which is a cool result.
In my opinion, it is an intuitively obvious, but philosophically suspect, result.
Obvious because of course you travel farthest if you continue in a straight line, refusing to change course in mid stream.
Suspect because you have received new information in midstream suggesting that your original course is no longer the direction you want to go. So isn’t an insistence on consistency a kind of foolishness, a “hobgoblin of little minds”?
But then, arguing for consistency, it could be pointed out that we are allowed to take new information into account in adjusting our tactics so as to achieve optimal results—maximizing the acquisition of joint utility in accordance with our original goals. The only thing we are not allowed to do is to use the new information to adjust our notion of fairness.
But then, arguing against consistency, we must ask “Why not adjust our notion of fairness?” After all, fairness is not some standard bestowed upon us from heaven—it is something we constructed ourselves for an entirely practical purpose—fairness exists so as to bind together agents with divergent purposes so they can cooperate.
So, if the arrival of new information suggests that a new bargain should be struck, why not strike a new bargain? Otherwise we can get into a situation in which one or the other of the agents no longer has any reason to cooperate except for a commitment made back in his younger and more ignorant days.
So you can call the result “cool” if you wish. I’m going to call it puzzling and provocative. Yes, I know that the “rules” of cooperative game theory include free enforcement of commitments. What puzzles me, though, is why the agents are willing to commit themselves to a course of action which may seem foolish later.
In your example, they are, in a sense, trading commitments—the commitments are a kind of IOU (or, since they are conditional, a kind of lottery ticket). In effect, someone who makes a commitment is printing money, which can then be used in trade. An interesting viewpoint on bargaining—a viewpoint worth exploring, I think.
Actually, I didn’t understand at all on first reading. I only came up with the “dynamic consistency” interpretation on a third draft of the grandparent, as I struggled to explain my earlier complaint more fully.
I didn’t actually put in dynamic consistency by hand—it just seems that anything that is Pareto optimal in expected utility for GG requires dynamical consistency.
Which is a cool result.
In my opinion, it is an intuitively obvious, but philosophically suspect, result.
Obvious because of course you travel farthest if you continue in a straight line, refusing to change course in mid stream.
Suspect because you have received new information in midstream suggesting that your original course is no longer the direction you want to go. So isn’t an insistence on consistency a kind of foolishness, a “hobgoblin of little minds”?
But then, arguing for consistency, it could be pointed out that we are allowed to take new information into account in adjusting our tactics so as to achieve optimal results—maximizing the acquisition of joint utility in accordance with our original goals. The only thing we are not allowed to do is to use the new information to adjust our notion of fairness.
But then, arguing against consistency, we must ask “Why not adjust our notion of fairness?” After all, fairness is not some standard bestowed upon us from heaven—it is something we constructed ourselves for an entirely practical purpose—fairness exists so as to bind together agents with divergent purposes so they can cooperate.
So, if the arrival of new information suggests that a new bargain should be struck, why not strike a new bargain? Otherwise we can get into a situation in which one or the other of the agents no longer has any reason to cooperate except for a commitment made back in his younger and more ignorant days.
So you can call the result “cool” if you wish. I’m going to call it puzzling and provocative. Yes, I know that the “rules” of cooperative game theory include free enforcement of commitments. What puzzles me, though, is why the agents are willing to commit themselves to a course of action which may seem foolish later.
In your example, they are, in a sense, trading commitments—the commitments are a kind of IOU (or, since they are conditional, a kind of lottery ticket). In effect, someone who makes a commitment is printing money, which can then be used in trade. An interesting viewpoint on bargaining—a viewpoint worth exploring, I think.