In a one-off context, Pascal’s Mugging resembles a version of the Prisoner’s Game Dilemma. “Lock in a decision to cooperate that I can observe, and I promise I will also choose cooperate.” Only in this PGD, Vishal’s “cooperate” option punishes him, and he’d have to independently choose it even though he already knows for sure that you’ve picked “cooperate.”
In a one-off context, where we can’t gather further information, as the Pascal’s Mugging frame suggests, there’s a defect/defect equilibrium that I think justifies rejecting Vishal’s offer no matter how much he promises.
We do have to have the sophistication to come up with such a game theoretic framing, and we might also reject Vishal’s offer on the basis of “too weird or implausible, and I don’t understand how to think about it properly” until we come up with a better objection later.
In a one-off context, Pascal’s Mugging resembles a version of the Prisoner’s Game Dilemma. “Lock in a decision to cooperate that I can observe, and I promise I will also choose cooperate.” Only in this PGD, Vishal’s “cooperate” option punishes him, and he’d have to independently choose it even though he already knows for sure that you’ve picked “cooperate.”
In a one-off context, where we can’t gather further information, as the Pascal’s Mugging frame suggests, there’s a defect/defect equilibrium that I think justifies rejecting Vishal’s offer no matter how much he promises.
We do have to have the sophistication to come up with such a game theoretic framing, and we might also reject Vishal’s offer on the basis of “too weird or implausible, and I don’t understand how to think about it properly” until we come up with a better objection later.