It’s a question of timeframes—if you actually know your utility function and believe it applies to the end of the universe, there’s very little compromise available. You’re going to act in whatever ways benefit the far future, and anything that makes that less likely you will (and must) destroy, or make powerless.
If your utility function only looks out a few dozen or a few hundred years, it’s not very powerful, and you probably don’t know (or don’t have) an actual ideal of future utility. In this case, you’re likely to seek changes to it, because you don’t actually give up much.
It’s not a question of timeframes, but of how likely you are to lose the war, how big the concessions would have to be to prevent the war, and how much the war would cost you even if you win (costs can have flow-through effects into the far future).
Not that any of this matters to the NK discussion.
“winning” or “losing” a war, outside of total annihilation, are just steps toward the future vision of galaxies teeming with intelligent life. It seems very unlikely, but isn’t impossible, that simply conceding is actually the best path forward for the long view.
It’s a question of timeframes—if you actually know your utility function and believe it applies to the end of the universe, there’s very little compromise available. You’re going to act in whatever ways benefit the far future, and anything that makes that less likely you will (and must) destroy, or make powerless.
If your utility function only looks out a few dozen or a few hundred years, it’s not very powerful, and you probably don’t know (or don’t have) an actual ideal of future utility. In this case, you’re likely to seek changes to it, because you don’t actually give up much.
It’s not a question of timeframes, but of how likely you are to lose the war, how big the concessions would have to be to prevent the war, and how much the war would cost you even if you win (costs can have flow-through effects into the far future).
Not that any of this matters to the NK discussion.
“winning” or “losing” a war, outside of total annihilation, are just steps toward the future vision of galaxies teeming with intelligent life. It seems very unlikely, but isn’t impossible, that simply conceding is actually the best path forward for the long view.