Surely there would be some contrarians who try Messing With Time (perhaps they precommit to doing something iff they learn that they didn’t do it). What happens to them?
More seriously, this is similar to a question I asked on physics stack exchange. The basic answer is there’s lots of ways the universe can be self consistent, only some of which will correspond to what you want to achieve. The best you can do is make the subset of consistent outcomes that match your needs as large as possible.
If you try your hardest to make the universe inconsistent, don’t be surprised if you end up killing yourself in a crazy freak accident where future you switches into you in exactly such a way as to cause you to rapidly switch in quick succession tearing apart half of past you in the process.
Suppose someone learns how they die (say they confirm it with high accuracy with multiple self-messages and even going to the location to observe the event themselves). Wouldn’t this cause them to feel comfortable taking extreme risks at other places/times since they know they’ll survive?
Someone who tries their hardest to avoid the death they know actually happens to them, but takes crazy risks at all other times is doing something similar to the person who’s messing with time. They’re making the obvious set of consistent outcomes much smaller, so who knows what kind of outcome will end up occurring.
It seems like the equilibrium would push very hard for a very high population density where most people’s parents wanted lots of children.
I’m not sure why this is the case?
You mentioned isolated self-parenting pairs. What regulates how many of these exist?
To be honest I’m doubtful these would actually exist but they’re definitely a theoretical possibility.
One way of achieving them might be to precommit that you will kill your parents before you’re born iff they are not you. Then one obvious equilibrium would be to have them be you. That might work but I honestly have no idea.
I would expect that a significant fraction of the futile/necessary optimization efforts would be adversarial—analogous to your chess example but on a larger scale with higher stakes, such as political outcomes or group conflicts, with each side trying to out-terminator each other.
The Highwayversians are good enough at decision theory that they might not do this, or will only do so in ways that change the point along the pareto optimal surface. However if they do there’s no way in hell that anyone in this universe is going to even begin to understand the battles they’re fighting!
It seems like the equilibrium would push very hard for a very high population density where most people’s parents wanted lots of children.
I’m not sure why this is the case?
The average lifetime number of children would have to be exactly replacement at equilibrium, and if people are generally long-lived, this would imply an extremely low number of children per year. This seems implausible since if even a small number of people were willing/able to sustain a high fertility rate, most other people would have to have no children to keep the average low, and the few high-achievers would be the parents of most of the population.
What do you think happens to them?
More seriously, this is similar to a question I asked on physics stack exchange. The basic answer is there’s lots of ways the universe can be self consistent, only some of which will correspond to what you want to achieve. The best you can do is make the subset of consistent outcomes that match your needs as large as possible.
If you try your hardest to make the universe inconsistent, don’t be surprised if you end up killing yourself in a crazy freak accident where future you switches into you in exactly such a way as to cause you to rapidly switch in quick succession tearing apart half of past you in the process.
Someone who tries their hardest to avoid the death they know actually happens to them, but takes crazy risks at all other times is doing something similar to the person who’s messing with time. They’re making the obvious set of consistent outcomes much smaller, so who knows what kind of outcome will end up occurring.
I’m not sure why this is the case?
To be honest I’m doubtful these would actually exist but they’re definitely a theoretical possibility.
One way of achieving them might be to precommit that you will kill your parents before you’re born iff they are not you. Then one obvious equilibrium would be to have them be you. That might work but I honestly have no idea.
The Highwayversians are good enough at decision theory that they might not do this, or will only do so in ways that change the point along the pareto optimal surface. However if they do there’s no way in hell that anyone in this universe is going to even begin to understand the battles they’re fighting!
The average lifetime number of children would have to be exactly replacement at equilibrium, and if people are generally long-lived, this would imply an extremely low number of children per year. This seems implausible since if even a small number of people were willing/able to sustain a high fertility rate, most other people would have to have no children to keep the average low, and the few high-achievers would be the parents of most of the population.
That sounds reasonable, yes.