The war Pareto improvement is not realistic from a game-theory perspective if both of the players act rationally. Obviously, one can always imagine some deus-ex-machina-Pareto-improvement (A silly example would be to imagine that one of the sides creates a god that changes the game completely and prevents the war, and brings both sides to a post-scarcity utopia). Still, I think it misses the point as the idea is to play within the realistic versions of the games. Your toy model solution requires a level of cooperation/ability to predict the future that doesn’t exist.
Status is hierarchical and always relative; by increasing the status of bob, you effectively lower the status of all the other players. If you increased the status of everyone by 10% (whatever that means...), reality wouldn’t change at all.
A pareto improvement is a change that harms no one and helps at least one person. The options I’ve outlined don’t always happen. (Although countries often don’t go to war, it isn’t clear if this is cooperating in a prisoners dilemma, or that they expect going to war to be worse for them.) The point of a Pareto improvement is that it is something within the combined action space. Ie something they would do if they somehow gained magical coordination ability. It doesn’t realy on any kind of magical capabilities, just different decisions. If both agents are causal decision theorists, and the war resembles a prisoners dilemma situation, “cooperate—cooperate” might be unrealistic, but its still a pareto improvement.
The war Pareto improvement is not realistic from a game-theory perspective if both of the players act rationally. Obviously, one can always imagine some deus-ex-machina-Pareto-improvement (A silly example would be to imagine that one of the sides creates a god that changes the game completely and prevents the war, and brings both sides to a post-scarcity utopia). Still, I think it misses the point as the idea is to play within the realistic versions of the games. Your toy model solution requires a level of cooperation/ability to predict the future that doesn’t exist.
Status is hierarchical and always relative; by increasing the status of bob, you effectively lower the status of all the other players. If you increased the status of everyone by 10% (whatever that means...), reality wouldn’t change at all.
A pareto improvement is a change that harms no one and helps at least one person. The options I’ve outlined don’t always happen. (Although countries often don’t go to war, it isn’t clear if this is cooperating in a prisoners dilemma, or that they expect going to war to be worse for them.) The point of a Pareto improvement is that it is something within the combined action space. Ie something they would do if they somehow gained magical coordination ability. It doesn’t realy on any kind of magical capabilities, just different decisions. If both agents are causal decision theorists, and the war resembles a prisoners dilemma situation, “cooperate—cooperate” might be unrealistic, but its still a pareto improvement.