Considering a possibility doesn’t automatically make you believe it. Why not think about the different possible Nash equilibria in order to select the best one?
Yep, thinking about different possibilities changes reality. In this particular case, it makes it worse, since mutual cooperation (super-rationality, twin prisoner’s dilemma, etc.) has by definition the highest payoff in symmetric games.
Wait. Some thoughts enable actions, which can change reality. Some thoughts may be directly detectable and thereby change reality (say, pausing before answering a question, or viewers watching an fMRI as you’re thinking different things). But very few hypothetical and counterfactual thoughts in today’s humans actually effect reality in either of these ways.
Are you claiming that someone who understands cooperation and superrationality can change reality by thinking more about it than usual, or just that knowledge increases the search space and selection power over potential actions?
In practice, a lot of things about one person’s attitudes toward cooperation ‘leak out’ to others (as in, are moderately detectable). This includes reading things like pauses before making decisions, which means that merely thinking about an alternative can end up changing the outcome of a situation.
Considering a possibility doesn’t automatically make you believe it. Why not think about the different possible Nash equilibria in order to select the best one?
Yep, thinking about different possibilities changes reality. In this particular case, it makes it worse, since mutual cooperation (super-rationality, twin prisoner’s dilemma, etc.) has by definition the highest payoff in symmetric games.
Wait. Some thoughts enable actions, which can change reality. Some thoughts may be directly detectable and thereby change reality (say, pausing before answering a question, or viewers watching an fMRI as you’re thinking different things). But very few hypothetical and counterfactual thoughts in today’s humans actually effect reality in either of these ways.
Are you claiming that someone who understands cooperation and superrationality can change reality by thinking more about it than usual, or just that knowledge increases the search space and selection power over potential actions?
In practice, a lot of things about one person’s attitudes toward cooperation ‘leak out’ to others (as in, are moderately detectable). This includes reading things like pauses before making decisions, which means that merely thinking about an alternative can end up changing the outcome of a situation.