There is convoluted-causality in a lot of trust relationships. “I trust this transaction because most people are honest in this situation”, which works BECAUSE most people are, in fact, honest in that situation. And being honest does (slightly) reinforce that for future transactions, including transactions between strangers which get easier only to the degree they’re similar to you.
But, while complex and involving human social norms and “prediction”, it’s not comparable to Newcomb (one-shot, high-stakes, no side-effects) or acausal trade (zero-shot, no path to specific knowledge of outcome).
Common social knowledge has predictive power and causal pathways to update the knowledge (and others’ knowledge of the social averages which contain you). Acausal trade isn’t even sharing the same physical universe - it’s pure theory, with no way to adjust over time.
There is convoluted-causality in a lot of trust relationships. “I trust this transaction because most people are honest in this situation”, which works BECAUSE most people are, in fact, honest in that situation. And being honest does (slightly) reinforce that for future transactions, including transactions between strangers which get easier only to the degree they’re similar to you.
But, while complex and involving human social norms and “prediction”, it’s not comparable to Newcomb (one-shot, high-stakes, no side-effects) or acausal trade (zero-shot, no path to specific knowledge of outcome).
In which way is sharing some common social knowledge relevantly different from sharing the same physical universe?
Common social knowledge has predictive power and causal pathways to update the knowledge (and others’ knowledge of the social averages which contain you). Acausal trade isn’t even sharing the same physical universe - it’s pure theory, with no way to adjust over time.