I am having some difficulty imagining that I am 99% sure of something, but I cannot either convince a person to outright agree with me or accept that he is uncertain and therefore should make the choice that would help more if it is right, but I could convince that same person to cooperate in the prisoner’s dilemma. However, if I did find myself in that situation, I would cooperate.
Good point. I probably could. I expect that the young-earth creationist has a huge bias that does not have to interfere with reasoning about the prisoner’s dilemma.
So, suppose Omega finds a young-earth creationist and an atheist, and plays the following game with them. They will each be taken to a separate room, where the atheist will choose between each of them receiving $10000 if the earth is less than 1 million years old or each receiving $5000 if the earth is more than 1 million years old, and the young earth creationist will have a similar choice with the payoffs reversed. Now, with prisoner’s dilemma tied to the young earth creationist’s bias, would I, in the role of the atheist still be able to convince him to cooperate? I don’t know. I am not sure how much the need to believe that the earth is around 5000 years would interfere with recognizing that it is in his interest to choose the payoff for earth being over a million years old. But still, if he seemed able to accept it, I would cooperate.
I am having some difficulty imagining that I am 99% sure of something, but I cannot either convince a person to outright agree with me or accept that he is uncertain and therefore should make the choice that would help more if it is right, but I could convince that same person to cooperate in the prisoner’s dilemma. However, if I did find myself in that situation, I would cooperate.
I’m tipping my hand here, but...
Do you think you could convince a young-earth creationist to cooperate in the prisoner’s dilemma?
Good point. I probably could. I expect that the young-earth creationist has a huge bias that does not have to interfere with reasoning about the prisoner’s dilemma.
So, suppose Omega finds a young-earth creationist and an atheist, and plays the following game with them. They will each be taken to a separate room, where the atheist will choose between each of them receiving $10000 if the earth is less than 1 million years old or each receiving $5000 if the earth is more than 1 million years old, and the young earth creationist will have a similar choice with the payoffs reversed. Now, with prisoner’s dilemma tied to the young earth creationist’s bias, would I, in the role of the atheist still be able to convince him to cooperate? I don’t know. I am not sure how much the need to believe that the earth is around 5000 years would interfere with recognizing that it is in his interest to choose the payoff for earth being over a million years old. But still, if he seemed able to accept it, I would cooperate.
(Edit: Fixed a typo reversing the payoffs.)
You’ve pretty much written tomorrow’s post for me, though I was going to throw in some existential risk to make things more fun.