Yep, this is roughly the type of cooperation I have in mind. Some minor points:
Overall, I am not sure whether gains from trade would arise in this specific scenario. Perhaps, it’s not better for the civilizations than if each civilization only builds habitats for itself?
The game theoretic motive is that, by doing something good for a hypothetical species, there might exist an inaccessible universe in which that species is both living and able to surmise that the humans have done this, and that they will by luck create a small utopia of humans when they do their counterpart project.
As I argue in section “No reciprocity needed: whom to treat beneficially”, the benefit doesn’t necessarily come from the species that we benefit. Even if agent X is certain that agent Y cannot benefit X, agent X may still help Y to make it more likely that X receives help from other agents who are in a structurally similar situation w.r.t. Y and think about it in a way similar to X.
Also, the other civilizations don’t need to be able to check whether we helped them, just like in the prisoner’s dilemma against a copy we don’t have to be able to check whether the other copy actually cooperated. It’s enough to know, prior to making one’s own decision, that the copy reasons similarly about these types of problems.
Yep, this is roughly the type of cooperation I have in mind. Some minor points:
Overall, I am not sure whether gains from trade would arise in this specific scenario. Perhaps, it’s not better for the civilizations than if each civilization only builds habitats for itself?
As I argue in section “No reciprocity needed: whom to treat beneficially”, the benefit doesn’t necessarily come from the species that we benefit. Even if agent X is certain that agent Y cannot benefit X, agent X may still help Y to make it more likely that X receives help from other agents who are in a structurally similar situation w.r.t. Y and think about it in a way similar to X.
Also, the other civilizations don’t need to be able to check whether we helped them, just like in the prisoner’s dilemma against a copy we don’t have to be able to check whether the other copy actually cooperated. It’s enough to know, prior to making one’s own decision, that the copy reasons similarly about these types of problems.