Perhaps willingness to play dirty signals commitment, and I expect some of the time people are more interested in showing off their commitment than actually making progress toward the putative goal.
Yeah, that’s pretty much my take. Often, signalling the willingness to play dirty without actually doing so gets us the collective benefits of “niceness, community, and civilization” while also getting us some extra individual benefits on top of that. And asserting that playing dirty is effective and that rational agents should be willing to play dirty can be an effecting way of signalling that willingness.
Yeah, that’s pretty much my take. Often, signalling the willingness to play dirty without actually doing so gets us the collective benefits of “niceness, community, and civilization” while also getting us some extra individual benefits on top of that. And asserting that playing dirty is effective and that rational agents should be willing to play dirty can be an effecting way of signalling that willingness.
Until someone comes along reads all the stuff you wrote about the importance of playing dirty and believes you.
Or alternatively uses it to argue that you aren’t trustworthy because you are willing to play dirty.