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.
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.