The problem is that the model is so stripped down it doesn’t illustrate the principle any more. The principle, as I understand it, is that there are certain “everyone does X” equilibria in which X doesn’t have to be useful or even good per se, it’s just something everyone’s agreed upon. That’s true, but only to a certain point. Past a certain degree of utter insanity and masochism, people start solving the coordination problem by reasonably assuming that no one else can actually want X, and may try rebellion. In the thermostat example, a turn in which simply two prisoners rebelled would be enough to get a lower temperature even if the others tried to punish them. At that point the process would snowball. It’s only “stable” to the minimum possible perturbation of a single person turning the knob to 30, and deciding it’s not worth it any more after one turn at a mere 0.3 C above the already torturous temperature of 99 C.
I’m confused. Are you saying that the example is bad because the utility function of “everyone wants to minimize the average temperature” is too simplified? If not, why is this being posted as a reply to this chain?
The problem is that the model is so stripped down it doesn’t illustrate the principle any more. The principle, as I understand it, is that there are certain “everyone does X” equilibria in which X doesn’t have to be useful or even good per se, it’s just something everyone’s agreed upon. That’s true, but only to a certain point. Past a certain degree of utter insanity and masochism, people start solving the coordination problem by reasonably assuming that no one else can actually want X, and may try rebellion. In the thermostat example, a turn in which simply two prisoners rebelled would be enough to get a lower temperature even if the others tried to punish them. At that point the process would snowball. It’s only “stable” to the minimum possible perturbation of a single person turning the knob to 30, and deciding it’s not worth it any more after one turn at a mere 0.3 C above the already torturous temperature of 99 C.
I’m confused. Are you saying that the example is bad because the utility function of “everyone wants to minimize the average temperature” is too simplified? If not, why is this being posted as a reply to this chain?