Re: Symmetry: Yes, that’s why I phrased the original commitment races post the way I did. For both commitments designed to exploit others, and commitments designed to render yourself less exploitable, (and for that matter for commitments not in either category) you have an incentive to do them ‘first,’ early in your own subjective time and also in particular before you think about what others will do, so that your decision isn’t logically downstream of theirs, and so that hopefully theirs is logically downstream of yours. You have an incentive to be the first-mover, basically.
And yeah I do suspect there are various symmetry-breakers that favor various flavors of fairness and niceness and cooperativeness, and disfavor brinksmanshippy risky strategies, but I’m far from confident that the cumulative effect is strong enough to ‘dissolve’ the problem. If I thought the problem was dissolved I would not still be prioritizing it!
Re: Symmetry: Yes, that’s why I phrased the original commitment races post the way I did. For both commitments designed to exploit others, and commitments designed to render yourself less exploitable, (and for that matter for commitments not in either category) you have an incentive to do them ‘first,’ early in your own subjective time and also in particular before you think about what others will do, so that your decision isn’t logically downstream of theirs, and so that hopefully theirs is logically downstream of yours. You have an incentive to be the first-mover, basically.
And yeah I do suspect there are various symmetry-breakers that favor various flavors of fairness and niceness and cooperativeness, and disfavor brinksmanshippy risky strategies, but I’m far from confident that the cumulative effect is strong enough to ‘dissolve’ the problem. If I thought the problem was dissolved I would not still be prioritizing it!