I just realized how Wizard negotiations are so far ahead of their muggle counterparts. They accidentally stumbled upon the best possible decision theory.
Two nations going into negotiations will have the Prime Minister wake up, read a note saying “cooperate—agree to concession and gain concession ” then go into negotiations and finish in ten minutes. This seems well within the purview of normal time travel and not too far into calculating prime factors with a time-tuner. Although, I’m not sure if Robin Hanson’s pie problem would result in “Everybody cooperates” or “Do not mess with time.” Intuitively I think time tuners would still do a lot of the heavy lifting, or wizards would intentionally setup the negotiations to be time-tuner-solvable. Then again I’m no expert on time traveling wizard decision theory.
Regardless, this explains how wizards were able to come up with so many agreements. The International Warlock Convention of 1289, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in 1692, the Warlocks Convention of 1702, etc. These all occurred hundreds of years before the concept of nations in muggle lands, let alone international diplomacy as we know it today. With easy and painless negotiations, and perfect decision theory such things would be trivial. No wonder wizards have been pulling off international cooperation since the dark ages!
No wonder wizards have been pulling off international cooperation since the dark ages!
I always imagined that wizards are pretty much detached from the muggle world and their technological level and standards of living have been roughly constant for at least hundreds of years. And meanwhile their level of societal organization progressed gradually.
This is contradicted, at least slightly, within MOR if not in cannon. McGonagall mentions in her internal narrative that wizards never invented clocks or any form of magical time-keeping, and only starting using them after muggles invented them. There may will be many other such cases, certainly the extent to which a lot of magical objects superficially resemble their muggle counterparts is quite suspicious.
I just realized how Wizard negotiations are so far ahead of their muggle counterparts. They accidentally stumbled upon the best possible decision theory.
Take the prisoner’s dilemma, except this time add in time tuners. Defection will immediately be punished by defection. The only stable time-loops that can exist are cooperate-cooperate or defect-defect. Actors with mutual access to time tuners will literally have to choose as though controlling the logical output of the abstract computation they implement, includes the output of all other instantiations and simulations of that computation. You don’t need to be able to perfectly predict the other person’s actions when you can actually observe them and change your own answers to match before negotiations happen.
Two nations going into negotiations will have the Prime Minister wake up, read a note saying “cooperate—agree to concession and gain concession ” then go into negotiations and finish in ten minutes. This seems well within the purview of normal time travel and not too far into calculating prime factors with a time-tuner. Although, I’m not sure if Robin Hanson’s pie problem would result in “Everybody cooperates” or “Do not mess with time.” Intuitively I think time tuners would still do a lot of the heavy lifting, or wizards would intentionally setup the negotiations to be time-tuner-solvable. Then again I’m no expert on time traveling wizard decision theory.
Regardless, this explains how wizards were able to come up with so many agreements. The International Warlock Convention of 1289, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in 1692, the Warlocks Convention of 1702, etc. These all occurred hundreds of years before the concept of nations in muggle lands, let alone international diplomacy as we know it today. With easy and painless negotiations, and perfect decision theory such things would be trivial. No wonder wizards have been pulling off international cooperation since the dark ages!
I always imagined that wizards are pretty much detached from the muggle world and their technological level and standards of living have been roughly constant for at least hundreds of years. And meanwhile their level of societal organization progressed gradually.
This is contradicted, at least slightly, within MOR if not in cannon. McGonagall mentions in her internal narrative that wizards never invented clocks or any form of magical time-keeping, and only starting using them after muggles invented them. There may will be many other such cases, certainly the extent to which a lot of magical objects superficially resemble their muggle counterparts is quite suspicious.