This post received a pretty mixed-to-negative reception.
Looking back on my own writing, I think there are at least a couple of issues:
It’s pretty high context; much of the post relies on the reader already understanding or at least being familiar with https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577 and logical decision theories. To readers who are familiar with those things, the ideas in this post might not be very interesting or novel.
It’s somewhat unmotivated: it’s not clear what position or misconception a real person might actually have that this post clears up or argues against.
This post is an attempt to explain why a bunch of students who have learned all about game theory and decision theory won’t necessarily end up with a bunch of (C,C) outcomes in a classroom simulation. This is true even if the students really want to cooperate, and they have correctly understood the class material on a very deep level. There’s still a missing “implementation” piece involving legibility and counterparty modeling that requires separate cognitive skills (or the ability to set up a bot arena, make binding commitments / arrangements outside the simulation, etc.), which aren’t necessarily closely related to understanding the decision theory itself.
But maybe this point is obvious even to the (fictional) students themselves. Anyway, regardless of whether you read or liked this post, I recommend reading planecrash, especially if you like fiction with lots of decision theory mixed in.
This post received a pretty mixed-to-negative reception.
Looking back on my own writing, I think there are at least a couple of issues:
It’s pretty high context; much of the post relies on the reader already understanding or at least being familiar with https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577 and logical decision theories. To readers who are familiar with those things, the ideas in this post might not be very interesting or novel.
It’s somewhat unmotivated: it’s not clear what position or misconception a real person might actually have that this post clears up or argues against.
This post is an attempt to explain why a bunch of students who have learned all about game theory and decision theory won’t necessarily end up with a bunch of (C,C) outcomes in a classroom simulation. This is true even if the students really want to cooperate, and they have correctly understood the class material on a very deep level. There’s still a missing “implementation” piece involving legibility and counterparty modeling that requires separate cognitive skills (or the ability to set up a bot arena, make binding commitments / arrangements outside the simulation, etc.), which aren’t necessarily closely related to understanding the decision theory itself.
But maybe this point is obvious even to the (fictional) students themselves. Anyway, regardless of whether you read or liked this post, I recommend reading planecrash, especially if you like fiction with lots of decision theory mixed in.