From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 02:59:25 MST
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 08:26:55PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Anders writes
>
> > I have always thought there should be a children's book about it.
>
> Well, I think that *children* already understand it quite well:
> just observe three year olds on a playground.
They get the tit-for-tat bit well, but they often are too
retaliatory. Just some fine-tuning needed :-)
> But a very
> easy-to-understand book does need to be written for college
> Sophomores, and for the usual sort of leftists that go around
> preaching unilateral disarmament and appeasement.
Exactly. But a childrens book is a good start, because if the kids
can understand it, then maybe the others can.
> > > I think this sort of thinking was behind Mutually Assured
> > > Destruction (MAD) in the cold war. Seems to me we got
> > > through 50 years without a global war so maybe it worked.
> > > Or maybe we just got lucky and in 999 other universes we
> > > all died :-)
>
> Yes, it may have been best for more people in more
> universes if the U.S. had adopted Bertrand Russell's
> suggestion and invaded the Soviet Union in 1947 to
> preserve an atomic monopoly forever.
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia" as somebody said. It is
an interesting what-if, but I find it hard to say whether it would
have been better in the long run.
> Yes, I agree if that is the definition of MAD. The real
> cold war scenario gave no little advantage to he who struck
> first, and the Soviet Union and the United States are to
> be congratulated on their restraint. One imagine that if
> certain other 20th century powers had been the first to
> get nukes, they would have been used, and often.
Depends on whether they were rational players or not. Most powers
are, with some awful exceptions (usually the ones that trigger
worldwars).
> The most interesting scenarios are those that start from
> MAD and then slowly evolve towards
>
> Cooperate Defect
> Cooperate 1,1 -1000, 100
> Defect 100, -1000 -100, -100
>
> Yikes! It's like slowing raising the temperature in
> a kettle holding a frog. Is one to be "hyper-rational"
> and start the war immediately as soon as one realizes
> that the evolution towards the latter table has started?
> Or is one to grimly hang-on, hoping against hope that
> either the evolution stops or the other party grimly
> also hangs on?
If the rate of change is slow, then it is likely that new factors
will appear, making the hyperrational choice cooperation in the
expectation of new options. Also, since both players to some extent
can influence the matrix, they might set out to stop the evolution.
One neat solution would be to have each side emplace bombs wherever
they want in the other side's country. Tamperproofed bombs that
could be detonated remotely, but would do so (say) half an hour
after the signal was given. That would firmly force the matrix to
the first form (retaliatory capacity on subs is of course a less
advanced and more reliable solution, but the above is the cool and
sf-friendly solution :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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