Deterrent effects would fall under “things present and to come”. If you expect some kind of future benefit from a retaliatory act, that’s one thing. On the other hand, if you seek vengeance because you’re outraged that someone would dare wrong you, then you’re mentally living in the past.
Deterrent effects would fall under “things present and to come”.
Fair enough, but there’s also a sense in which deterrence is acausal. In order to make a truly credible threat of retaliation for defection, you have to be completely willing to follow through with the retaliation if they defect, even if, after the defection, following through does not seem to have any future benefits.
I shouldn’t have phrased that so confidently; I was essentially just thinking out loud. Would anyone who knows more about decision theory mind explaining where I went wrong?
It’s not wrong. In many contexts such a strategy is advisable. It’s the theory behind mutually assured destruction. You personally aren’t going to benefit from launching a retaliatory nuclear strike, but the knowledge that you’d do it anyway might just keep your enemy from launching a first strike. On a smaller scale, you can see this sort of thing going on in prisons and criminal organizations where appearing weak can turn you into a target.
One drawback is that while a reputation for retaliating against every wrong will make people less likely to wrong you, those who decide to wrong you anyway will make sure to leave you in no position to retaliate.
There’s another drawback that occurs if you allow for miscommunication: retaliation against something you wrongfully thought was a defection can lead your opponent to retaliate against what he perceives is an unprovoked attack.
It all depends on the situation. Sometimes it’s better to be more forgiving and sometimes it’s better to be more vindictive.
I don’t know a lot about decision theory, and I have to guess at an unidentified person’s thought process, but I’ll take a swing at this:
They might have downvoted you because real-world deterrence involves causal influence. Usually where there’s talk of precommitments, there’s also talk of acausal trade, so I think your brain lumped them together, but agents can precommit in ordinary trade as well. However, it is true that you can analyze ordinary trade in acausal terms, and it seems that you have done this. So your words implied that deterrence doesn’t involve any causal effects, which is false, but you really just wanted to point out that you can analyze ordinary trade acausally, which is true.
They might have downvoted you because they think it’s silly to talk about provably cooperative humans, or further, because they find it objectionable that your ideas about decision theory and provable cooperation would lead you to what they consider a morally repugnant conclusion in your counterfactual (i.e. retaliate anyway); I think I’ve seen some people who think things like that. I do consider this a lot less likely than the first possibility.
They might have downvoted you because the agent in the downvoter’s simulation of your counterfactual was using causal decision theory.
Also, I don’t really get what the point would be if deterrence were acausal. Were you thinking something like, “Deterrence is acausal, therefore maybe tense is not a concept that we can even apply to deterrence.”?
You don’t have to be angry (and it is probably better if you aren’t), but deterrents are still a thing.
Deterrent effects would fall under “things present and to come”. If you expect some kind of future benefit from a retaliatory act, that’s one thing. On the other hand, if you seek vengeance because you’re outraged that someone would dare wrong you, then you’re mentally living in the past.
Fair enough, but there’s also a sense in which deterrence is acausal. In order to make a truly credible threat of retaliation for defection, you have to be completely willing to follow through with the retaliation if they defect, even if, after the defection, following through does not seem to have any future benefits.
I shouldn’t have phrased that so confidently; I was essentially just thinking out loud. Would anyone who knows more about decision theory mind explaining where I went wrong?
It’s not wrong. In many contexts such a strategy is advisable. It’s the theory behind mutually assured destruction. You personally aren’t going to benefit from launching a retaliatory nuclear strike, but the knowledge that you’d do it anyway might just keep your enemy from launching a first strike. On a smaller scale, you can see this sort of thing going on in prisons and criminal organizations where appearing weak can turn you into a target.
One drawback is that while a reputation for retaliating against every wrong will make people less likely to wrong you, those who decide to wrong you anyway will make sure to leave you in no position to retaliate.
There’s another drawback that occurs if you allow for miscommunication: retaliation against something you wrongfully thought was a defection can lead your opponent to retaliate against what he perceives is an unprovoked attack.
It all depends on the situation. Sometimes it’s better to be more forgiving and sometimes it’s better to be more vindictive.
You weren’t. A single down vote doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
I don’t know a lot about decision theory, and I have to guess at an unidentified person’s thought process, but I’ll take a swing at this:
They might have downvoted you because real-world deterrence involves causal influence. Usually where there’s talk of precommitments, there’s also talk of acausal trade, so I think your brain lumped them together, but agents can precommit in ordinary trade as well. However, it is true that you can analyze ordinary trade in acausal terms, and it seems that you have done this. So your words implied that deterrence doesn’t involve any causal effects, which is false, but you really just wanted to point out that you can analyze ordinary trade acausally, which is true.
They might have downvoted you because they think it’s silly to talk about provably cooperative humans, or further, because they find it objectionable that your ideas about decision theory and provable cooperation would lead you to what they consider a morally repugnant conclusion in your counterfactual (i.e. retaliate anyway); I think I’ve seen some people who think things like that. I do consider this a lot less likely than the first possibility.
They might have downvoted you because the agent in the downvoter’s simulation of your counterfactual was using causal decision theory.
Also, I don’t really get what the point would be if deterrence were acausal. Were you thinking something like, “Deterrence is acausal, therefore maybe tense is not a concept that we can even apply to deterrence.”?