Being someone who keeps their word can have value, but sometimes it doesn’t. If someone kidnaps you and then forces you to promise to give them all your money when they release you, it’s bad. If they knew you wouldn’t keep your word, they wouldn’t have kidnapped you. That’s why contracts made under duress aren’t binding. I don’t think duress is the only reason to break a promise. Another one is that you were stupid. You don’t want to make promises you’ll later regret, so if someone doesn’t accept your promise because they predict you’ll come to regret it, that’s good.
The kidnapper should precommit to kidnap a fixed number of people regardless of their propensity to keep to contracts made under duress. Like many precommitments, this harms the kidnapper if he actually has to follow through with it under unfavorable circumstances (he may know that nobody keeps such contracts, in which case he’s precommitted to kidnapping people for no profit at all). However, it reduces the measure of worlds with such unfavorable characteristics, thus financially benefitting the kidnapper on average—if you know the kidnapper has made this precommitment, you can no longer use the reasoning you just use above and so you will obey contracts made under duress.
Being kidnapped isn’t that big a deal. Are you saying that he should just kill everyone who isn’t known to keep contracts made under duress? If “he” is a large organized crime syndicate or a government or something, that might work, but there’s no way one person could kill enough people to make it worth while to start paying people to kidnap you just because he might be the one getting payed. He’d have to cooperate on the prisoner’s dilemma with all the other kidnappers, who are themselves defecting from the rest of society. Why would he do that?
There’s a reason for the idea of fairness. Consider the ultimatum game. There’s a Nash equilibrium for every strategy where one player will accept no less than x points and the other no less than 1-x points. It seems like you could demand 1-ɛ and they’d have to accept the ɛ because it’s better than nothing, but by the same logic you wouldn’t be able to ask for more than ɛ because they’d demand 1-ɛ. So you pick a schelling point and demand that much. You demand half. They demand half. You agree to split it evenly. If they demand more than the schelling point, you give them nothing. If there’s some reason that the schelling point isn’t completely obvious, you might give them some benefit of the doubt and probabilistically accept so you don’t both get nothing, but you make it unlikely enough that them demanding more than the schelling point is not a viable strategy. This is what fairness is. It’s why shouldn’t agree to unfair deals, even if the alternative is no deal.
The point is that “if they knew, they wouldn’t have kidnapped you” is defeated by a precommitment to kidnap people whether they know or not. They don’t have to kill anyone to do this.
Being kidnapped, promising to pay ransom, being released, and not paying is better than being kidnapped, promising to pay ransom, being released, and paying. Keeping your word gives no advantage.
Precommitment is relevant in a second way here. You have to (before being released) precommit to pay ransom after being released. Once you are released, your precommitment would force you to pay the ransom afterwards.
If you are incapable of rewiring your brain so that you will pay the ransom, there could instead be laws recognizing that contracts made under duress are valid. That would have the effect of precommitting.
This precommitment is disadvantageous in the sense that being released without it is better than being released with it, but it also increases your chance of surviving to be released rather than being shot for not having any ransom. Precommitments tend to work like that—precommitting to do an action that can only harm you in a particular situation can be overall advantageous because it alters the odds of being in that situation.
Assuming they only married me because they knew I was never going to leave them, no it isn’t.
Being someone who keeps their word can have value, but sometimes it doesn’t. If someone kidnaps you and then forces you to promise to give them all your money when they release you, it’s bad. If they knew you wouldn’t keep your word, they wouldn’t have kidnapped you. That’s why contracts made under duress aren’t binding. I don’t think duress is the only reason to break a promise. Another one is that you were stupid. You don’t want to make promises you’ll later regret, so if someone doesn’t accept your promise because they predict you’ll come to regret it, that’s good.
The kidnapper should precommit to kidnap a fixed number of people regardless of their propensity to keep to contracts made under duress. Like many precommitments, this harms the kidnapper if he actually has to follow through with it under unfavorable circumstances (he may know that nobody keeps such contracts, in which case he’s precommitted to kidnapping people for no profit at all). However, it reduces the measure of worlds with such unfavorable characteristics, thus financially benefitting the kidnapper on average—if you know the kidnapper has made this precommitment, you can no longer use the reasoning you just use above and so you will obey contracts made under duress.
Being kidnapped isn’t that big a deal. Are you saying that he should just kill everyone who isn’t known to keep contracts made under duress? If “he” is a large organized crime syndicate or a government or something, that might work, but there’s no way one person could kill enough people to make it worth while to start paying people to kidnap you just because he might be the one getting payed. He’d have to cooperate on the prisoner’s dilemma with all the other kidnappers, who are themselves defecting from the rest of society. Why would he do that?
There’s a reason for the idea of fairness. Consider the ultimatum game. There’s a Nash equilibrium for every strategy where one player will accept no less than x points and the other no less than 1-x points. It seems like you could demand 1-ɛ and they’d have to accept the ɛ because it’s better than nothing, but by the same logic you wouldn’t be able to ask for more than ɛ because they’d demand 1-ɛ. So you pick a schelling point and demand that much. You demand half. They demand half. You agree to split it evenly. If they demand more than the schelling point, you give them nothing. If there’s some reason that the schelling point isn’t completely obvious, you might give them some benefit of the doubt and probabilistically accept so you don’t both get nothing, but you make it unlikely enough that them demanding more than the schelling point is not a viable strategy. This is what fairness is. It’s why shouldn’t agree to unfair deals, even if the alternative is no deal.
The point is that “if they knew, they wouldn’t have kidnapped you” is defeated by a precommitment to kidnap people whether they know or not. They don’t have to kill anyone to do this.
Being kidnapped, promising to pay ransom, being released, and not paying is better than being kidnapped, promising to pay ransom, being released, and paying. Keeping your word gives no advantage.
Precommitment is relevant in a second way here. You have to (before being released) precommit to pay ransom after being released. Once you are released, your precommitment would force you to pay the ransom afterwards.
If you are incapable of rewiring your brain so that you will pay the ransom, there could instead be laws recognizing that contracts made under duress are valid. That would have the effect of precommitting.
This precommitment is disadvantageous in the sense that being released without it is better than being released with it, but it also increases your chance of surviving to be released rather than being shot for not having any ransom. Precommitments tend to work like that—precommitting to do an action that can only harm you in a particular situation can be overall advantageous because it alters the odds of being in that situation.
Currently, laws do not enforce contracts made under duress. How frequently are people murdered in protest of this?