I think you need verifiable pre-commitment, not just communication—in a free-market economy, enforced property rights basically function as such a pre-commitment mechanism. Where pre-commitment (including property right enforcement) is imperfect, only a constrained optimum can be reached, since any counterparty has to assume ex-ante that the agent will exploit the lack of precommitment. Imperfect information disclosure has similar effects, however in that case one has to “assume the worst” about what information the agent has; the deal must be altered accordingly, and this generally comes at a cost in efficiency.
Yeah, I would agree with that. My bar for “sufficiently rational” is quite high though, closer to the mathematical ideal of rationality than to humans. (For example, sufficiently rational agents should be able to precommit.)
To me, this sounds like saying that sufficiently rational agents will never defect in prisoner dilemma provided they can communicate with each other.
I think you need verifiable pre-commitment, not just communication—in a free-market economy, enforced property rights basically function as such a pre-commitment mechanism. Where pre-commitment (including property right enforcement) is imperfect, only a constrained optimum can be reached, since any counterparty has to assume ex-ante that the agent will exploit the lack of precommitment. Imperfect information disclosure has similar effects, however in that case one has to “assume the worst” about what information the agent has; the deal must be altered accordingly, and this generally comes at a cost in efficiency.
The whole point of the prisoner’s dilemma is that the prisoners cannot communicate. If they can, it’s not a prisoner’s dilemma any more.
Yeah, I would agree with that. My bar for “sufficiently rational” is quite high though, closer to the mathematical ideal of rationality than to humans. (For example, sufficiently rational agents should be able to precommit.)