I’m disappointed that a cooperative solution was not reached
I think you would have had to make the total cooperation payoff greater than the total one-side-defects payoff in order to get cooperation as the final result. From a “maximize money to charity” standpoint, defection seems like the best outcome here (I also really like the “pre-commit to flip a coin and nuke” solution). You’d have to believe that the expected utility/$ of the “enemy” charity is less than 1⁄2 of the expected utility/$ of yours; otherwise, you’d be happier with the enemy side defecting than with cooperation. I personally wouldn’t be that confident about the difference between AMF and MIRI.
This is exactly right! It’s a poor analogy for the Cold War both because the total payoff for defection was higher than the total payoff for cooperation, and because the reward was fungible. The cooperative solution is for one side to “nuke”, in order to maximize the total donation to both organizations, and then to use additional donations to even out the imbalance if necessary. That’s exactly what happened, and I’m glad the “nuking” framing didn’t prevent EAs from seeing what was really happening and going for the optimal solution.
I think the fungibility is a good point, but it seems like the randomizer solution is strictly better than this. Otherwise one side clearly gets less value, even if they are better off than they would have been had the game not happened. It’s still a mixed motive conflict!
And I’m not entirely sure you should call it a defect. Perhaps more a cooperation outcome with a potential side payment. With the single defect and a $100 side payment by the remaining group to the nuked group you’ve accomplished a Pareto move to a superior outcome. Both organizations are at least as well off as if none were nuked. And if the nuked group just thinks the other is doing just as good work without the side payment they might think it’s a wash who actually gets the additional $100.
What I would be really interested in is just how this outcome actually attained. Seems like everyone was pretty smart (and altruistic) to realize retaliation was not the right response. In short, was this a case of a Petrovian restraint in responding to the reported nuke attack in a sense.
I’m not sure that anyone exercised restraint in not responding to the last attack, as I don’t have any evidence that anyone saw the last response. It’s quite possible people did see it and didn’t respond, but I have no way to know that.
I think you would have had to make the total cooperation payoff greater than the total one-side-defects payoff in order to get cooperation as the final result. From a “maximize money to charity” standpoint, defection seems like the best outcome here (I also really like the “pre-commit to flip a coin and nuke” solution). You’d have to believe that the expected utility/$ of the “enemy” charity is less than 1⁄2 of the expected utility/$ of yours; otherwise, you’d be happier with the enemy side defecting than with cooperation. I personally wouldn’t be that confident about the difference between AMF and MIRI.
This is exactly right! It’s a poor analogy for the Cold War both because the total payoff for defection was higher than the total payoff for cooperation, and because the reward was fungible. The cooperative solution is for one side to “nuke”, in order to maximize the total donation to both organizations, and then to use additional donations to even out the imbalance if necessary. That’s exactly what happened, and I’m glad the “nuking” framing didn’t prevent EAs from seeing what was really happening and going for the optimal solution.
I think the fungibility is a good point, but it seems like the randomizer solution is strictly better than this. Otherwise one side clearly gets less value, even if they are better off than they would have been had the game not happened. It’s still a mixed motive conflict!
And I’m not entirely sure you should call it a defect. Perhaps more a cooperation outcome with a potential side payment. With the single defect and a $100 side payment by the remaining group to the nuked group you’ve accomplished a Pareto move to a superior outcome. Both organizations are at least as well off as if none were nuked. And if the nuked group just thinks the other is doing just as good work without the side payment they might think it’s a wash who actually gets the additional $100.
What I would be really interested in is just how this outcome actually attained. Seems like everyone was pretty smart (and altruistic) to realize retaliation was not the right response. In short, was this a case of a Petrovian restraint in responding to the reported nuke attack in a sense.
I’m not sure that anyone exercised restraint in not responding to the last attack, as I don’t have any evidence that anyone saw the last response. It’s quite possible people did see it and didn’t respond, but I have no way to know that.
Oh I should have specified, that I would consider the coin flip to be a cooperative solution! Seems obviously better to me than any other solution.