The coco solution doesn’t assume a constant disagreement point, but it does assume transferrable utility, which has its own problems, due to difficulties with defining interpersonal comparisons of utility [source: lots].
Interpersonal comparisons of utility in general make no sense at all, because each agent’s utility can be scaled/shifted independently. But I don’t think that’s a problem for transferrable utility, which is what we need for coco. Transferrable utility just requires money (or some analogous resource), and it requires that the amounts of money-equivalent involved in the game are small enough that utility is roughly linear in money. We don’t need interpersonal comparability of utility for that.
For the games that matter most, the amounts of money-equivalent involved are large enough that utility is not roughly linear in it. (Example: Superintelligences deciding what to do with the cosmic endowment.) Or so it seems to me, I’d love to be wrong about this.
Seems true, though I would guess that the coco idea could probably be extended to weaker conditions, e.g. expected utility a smooth function of money. I haven’t looked into this, but my guess would be that it only needs linearity on the margin, based on how things-like-this typically work in economics.
Great post! One relatively-minor nitpick:
Interpersonal comparisons of utility in general make no sense at all, because each agent’s utility can be scaled/shifted independently. But I don’t think that’s a problem for transferrable utility, which is what we need for coco. Transferrable utility just requires money (or some analogous resource), and it requires that the amounts of money-equivalent involved in the game are small enough that utility is roughly linear in money. We don’t need interpersonal comparability of utility for that.
For the games that matter most, the amounts of money-equivalent involved are large enough that utility is not roughly linear in it. (Example: Superintelligences deciding what to do with the cosmic endowment.) Or so it seems to me, I’d love to be wrong about this.
Seems true, though I would guess that the coco idea could probably be extended to weaker conditions, e.g. expected utility a smooth function of money. I haven’t looked into this, but my guess would be that it only needs linearity on the margin, based on how things-like-this typically work in economics.
Interesting. I hope you are wrong.
Heh. Beware lest you wish yourself from the devil you know to the devil you don’t.