What evidence do you have to believe things are balanced?
What evidence do you have to believe that things are 1) unbalanced 2) in your favor?
You don’t know what kinds of PD’s you’re going to encounter, so you prepare for all of them by setting up the appropriate precommitments, if your decision theory requires precommitments. If it doesn’t, you’ll just figure out and do the thing that you would have wanted to precommit to doing, “on the fly”.
Credibility is indeed assumed in these problems. If you can’t verify that the other player really has made the precommitment or really is a UDT kind of guy, you can’t take advantage of this kind of coordination.
What evidence do you have to believe that things are 1) unbalanced 2) in your favor?
You don’t know what kinds of PD’s you’re going to encounter, so you prepare for all of them by setting up the appropriate precommitments, if your decision theory requires precommitments. If it doesn’t, you’ll just figure out and do the thing that you would have wanted to precommit to doing, “on the fly”.
Credibility is indeed assumed in these problems. If you can’t verify that the other player really has made the precommitment or really is a UDT kind of guy, you can’t take advantage of this kind of coordination.