I was with you for most of the post, though I don’t think “counterfactual contract” really fits. It’s more like “speculative agent” where someone decides whether to act on another person’s behalf, and later presents that person with a choice of whether to accept or reject their actions (possibly with some associated price).
The street performer one seems slightly different in being collective rather than individual: a street performer doesn’t really act on behalf of any one audience member, but performs speculatively for the audience as a group. Any of them can choose to listen/watch or not, pay or not, complain to local authorities or not.
Further out on the fringes of this concept are some forms of promotions, such as “we think you would like X so here’s a discount for it”.
I don’t think that any of the decision theory problems are examples of the same sort of thing, though.
I like the promotions example. It can be framed as a company “sticking their neck out” for a particular customer, and the customer can reciprocate by buying the item if they actually like it, and not buying it if the ad/promotion is a waste of their time.
Yeah framing the decision theory problems as counterfactual contracts is more of a stretch, not sure if its actually useful.
I was with you for most of the post, though I don’t think “counterfactual contract” really fits. It’s more like “speculative agent” where someone decides whether to act on another person’s behalf, and later presents that person with a choice of whether to accept or reject their actions (possibly with some associated price).
The street performer one seems slightly different in being collective rather than individual: a street performer doesn’t really act on behalf of any one audience member, but performs speculatively for the audience as a group. Any of them can choose to listen/watch or not, pay or not, complain to local authorities or not.
Further out on the fringes of this concept are some forms of promotions, such as “we think you would like X so here’s a discount for it”.
I don’t think that any of the decision theory problems are examples of the same sort of thing, though.
I like the promotions example. It can be framed as a company “sticking their neck out” for a particular customer, and the customer can reciprocate by buying the item if they actually like it, and not buying it if the ad/promotion is a waste of their time.
Yeah framing the decision theory problems as counterfactual contracts is more of a stretch, not sure if its actually useful.