there’s no need to have identical notions of what’s fair in order to cooperate (and no need to have even similar notions in order to cooperate most of the time)
commitment races are not a real problem, theres no reason to do it, you don’t need to care about logical commitment/decision time in order to incentivize fair splits of gains, and in general, the core of being an FDT agent is being the kind of agent that takes the best actions (and this being predictable about you, without you having to pre-commit to specific actions in specific situations in advance). (I’ve had detailed discussions around this and related stuff with James Faville; some of it was in the format of a debate, and according to people who were around for the debate, I won. one can simply follow the procedure I described in the game of chicken.)
an agent that incentivizes fair splits ends up in a better situation than most other agents; agents and parts of agents that follow LDTs, including agents that give in to counterfactual mugging are selected for
Sorry, I don’t yet see how this engages with the argument in my post.
Your original post’s claims, as I understand them: “There’s a policy such that (1) if your counterpart best-responds to that policy, you all split things fairly, and (2) if your counterpart doesn’t best-respond, you all don’t totally destroy the pie. And (sec 2.4) it’s fine that other agents might make commitments before you make any decisions, because it’s not rational for other agents to commit to threaten you if you have this policy.”
My post’s counterargument: “That second sentence ignores the problem. You’re saying, it’s not rational ex post for some agent Bob to commit to threaten you if they know you have this policy. But the whole problem is that Bob might have thought ex ante that you would use some other policy.”
Why I don’t think you’ve addressed my counterargument:
(Your first bullet seems orthogonal to my counterargument.)
Second bullet: Bob might think ex ante that (a) you won’t follow FDT,[1] and (b) you’ll be more likely to meet his demands if he sticks with his unfair demand than if he doesn’t. Hence we haven’t dodged “the whole problem” above.
Third bullet: I think this is a really strong (empirical) claim, which you’ve only asserted rather than argued for.
there’s no need to have identical notions of what’s fair in order to cooperate (and no need to have even similar notions in order to cooperate most of the time)
commitment races are not a real problem, theres no reason to do it, you don’t need to care about logical commitment/decision time in order to incentivize fair splits of gains, and in general, the core of being an FDT agent is being the kind of agent that takes the best actions (and this being predictable about you, without you having to pre-commit to specific actions in specific situations in advance). (I’ve had detailed discussions around this and related stuff with James Faville; some of it was in the format of a debate, and according to people who were around for the debate, I won. one can simply follow the procedure I described in the game of chicken.)
an agent that incentivizes fair splits ends up in a better situation than most other agents; agents and parts of agents that follow LDTs, including agents that give in to counterfactual mugging are selected for
Sorry, I don’t yet see how this engages with the argument in my post.
Your original post’s claims, as I understand them: “There’s a policy such that (1) if your counterpart best-responds to that policy, you all split things fairly, and (2) if your counterpart doesn’t best-respond, you all don’t totally destroy the pie. And (sec 2.4) it’s fine that other agents might make commitments before you make any decisions, because it’s not rational for other agents to commit to threaten you if you have this policy.”
My post’s counterargument: “That second sentence ignores the problem. You’re saying, it’s not rational ex post for some agent Bob to commit to threaten you if they know you have this policy. But the whole problem is that Bob might have thought ex ante that you would use some other policy.”
Why I don’t think you’ve addressed my counterargument:
(Your first bullet seems orthogonal to my counterargument.)
Second bullet: Bob might think ex ante that (a) you won’t follow FDT, [1] and (b) you’ll be more likely to meet his demands if he sticks with his unfair demand than if he doesn’t. Hence we haven’t dodged “the whole problem” above.
Third bullet: I think this is a really strong (empirical) claim, which you’ve only asserted rather than argued for.
(Or rather, whichever version of “FDT” is stipulated by definition to never give in — I think this is debatable under the standard definition of FDT.)