Your post is nicely put together, but the analogy unfortunately misses the mark.
You have called it a race, so let’s call making an ASI first a “win”, and anyone else making an ASI first a “loss”. The payoff matrix at the end of the race (when someone has made an ASI) has axes: win/loss, aligned/unaligned.
If it lands loss/aligned, you are at the mercy of the winner. If it lands loss/unaligned or win/unaligned, you are at the mercy of the ASI. If it lands win/aligned, then you likely own the lightcone and everyone else hopes you are merciful.
There are many fitting analogies here, but the Trojan horse is not one of them.
There are only two rational strategies to a player exposed to that payoff matrix: play as hard as you can, or find a way to stop the whole game.
Interesting, for non-players (i.e the entire world population minus literally at most a dozen people) the payoff matrix is far more tragic. There is no good outcome cell at all.
Your post is nicely put together, but the analogy unfortunately misses the mark.
You have called it a race, so let’s call making an ASI first a “win”, and anyone else making an ASI first a “loss”. The payoff matrix at the end of the race (when someone has made an ASI) has axes: win/loss, aligned/unaligned.
If it lands loss/aligned, you are at the mercy of the winner. If it lands loss/unaligned or win/unaligned, you are at the mercy of the ASI. If it lands win/aligned, then you likely own the lightcone and everyone else hopes you are merciful.
There are many fitting analogies here, but the Trojan horse is not one of them.
There are only two rational strategies to a player exposed to that payoff matrix: play as hard as you can, or find a way to stop the whole game.
Interesting, for non-players (i.e the entire world population minus literally at most a dozen people) the payoff matrix is far more tragic. There is no good outcome cell at all.