I think Nesov had some similar idea about “agents deferring to a (logically) far-away algorithm-contract Z to avoid miscoordination”, although I never understood it completely, nor think that idea can solve miscoordination in the abstract (only, possibly, be a nice pragmatic way to bootstrap coordination from agents who are already sufficiently nice).
EDIT 2: UDT is usually prone to commitment races because it thinks of each agent in a conflict as separately making commitments earlier in logical time. But focusing on symmetric commitments gets rid of this problem.
Hate to always be that guy, but if you are assuming all agents will only engage in symmetric commitments, then you are assuming commitment races away. In actuality, it is possible for a (meta-) commitment race to happen about “whether I only engage in symmetric commitments”.
nor think that idea can solve miscoordination in the abstract (only, possibly, be a nice pragmatic way to bootstrap coordination from agents who are already sufficiently nice).
The central question to my mind is principles of establishing coordination between different situations/agents, and contracts is a framing for what coordination might look like once established. Agentic contracts have the additional benefit of maintaining coordination across their instances once it’s established initially. Coordination theory should clarify how agents should think about establishing coordination with each other, how they should construct these contracts.
This is not about niceness/cooperation. For example I think it should be possible to understand a transformer as being in coordination with the world through patterns in the world and circuits in the transformer, so that coordination gets established through learning. Beliefs are contracts between a mind and its object of study, essential tools the mind has for controlling it. Consequentialist control is a special case of coordination in this sense, and I think one problem with decision theories is that they are usually overly concerned with remaining close to consequentialist framing.
I think Nesov had some similar idea about “agents deferring to a (logically) far-away algorithm-contract Z to avoid miscoordination”, although I never understood it completely, nor think that idea can solve miscoordination in the abstract (only, possibly, be a nice pragmatic way to bootstrap coordination from agents who are already sufficiently nice).
Hate to always be that guy, but if you are assuming all agents will only engage in symmetric commitments, then you are assuming commitment races away. In actuality, it is possible for a (meta-) commitment race to happen about “whether I only engage in symmetric commitments”.
The central question to my mind is principles of establishing coordination between different situations/agents, and contracts is a framing for what coordination might look like once established. Agentic contracts have the additional benefit of maintaining coordination across their instances once it’s established initially. Coordination theory should clarify how agents should think about establishing coordination with each other, how they should construct these contracts.
This is not about niceness/cooperation. For example I think it should be possible to understand a transformer as being in coordination with the world through patterns in the world and circuits in the transformer, so that coordination gets established through learning. Beliefs are contracts between a mind and its object of study, essential tools the mind has for controlling it. Consequentialist control is a special case of coordination in this sense, and I think one problem with decision theories is that they are usually overly concerned with remaining close to consequentialist framing.