Do the routers even “play”? Do the routers, just executing their programming, count as “agents” with “goals”? Assuming that the users don’t normally change their router’s firmware, this seems “merely” like an optimization problem, not like a problem of game theory.
You’re right—most users don’t rewrite their TCP stack. But suppose you’re designing the next version of TCP and you think “hey, instead of using fixed rules, let’s write a TCP stack that optimizes for throughput”. You will face a conceptual issue as you realize that the global outcome is now total network breakdown. So what do you optimize for instead? Superrationality says: make decisions as though deciding the output for all nodes at the current information set. This is conceptually helpful because it tells you what you should be optimizing for.
Now if you start out from the beginning (as in the paper) by thinking of optimizing over algorithms, with the assumption that the output will be run on every node then you’re already doing superrationality. That’s all superrationality is!
The PD is iterated, so the agents ought to be able to achieve cooperation without needing superrationality.
I don’t think that would work when there are many players per game.
Do the routers even “play”? Do the routers, just executing their programming, count as “agents” with “goals”? Assuming that the users don’t normally change their router’s firmware, this seems “merely” like an optimization problem, not like a problem of game theory.
You’re right—most users don’t rewrite their TCP stack. But suppose you’re designing the next version of TCP and you think “hey, instead of using fixed rules, let’s write a TCP stack that optimizes for throughput”. You will face a conceptual issue as you realize that the global outcome is now total network breakdown. So what do you optimize for instead? Superrationality says: make decisions as though deciding the output for all nodes at the current information set. This is conceptually helpful because it tells you what you should be optimizing for.
Now if you start out from the beginning (as in the paper) by thinking of optimizing over algorithms, with the assumption that the output will be run on every node then you’re already doing superrationality. That’s all superrationality is!