From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 19:35:50 MDT
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 11:30:14AM -0700, Hal Finney wrote:
> However, these hypotheticals don't really work, because rational people
> can't disagree! See our previous discussion on this issue. So I think
> that for rational altruists, all 2-person games have identical payoffs
> to both individuals, making them in effect one person games.
Actually, it's rational "honest truth-seeking agents with common priors"
who can't disagree. Rational altruists can certainly disagree if they are
not honest or are not truth seekers, which they are not because being
honest and truth seeking is not always the best way to increase total or
average happiness. Meaning if you are an altruist belonging to the
total-happiness school, you might find it useful to lie (or do something
worse) to someone who believes in the supremacy of average happiness.
(The reference, for Lee's benefit, is http://hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf.)
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