I strongly agree with the spirit of this post, and strong upvoted it. However I would criticise this...
Additionally, if you’re familiar with decision theory, you’ll know that credibly pre-committing to follow certain principles—such as never engaging in fraud—is extremely advantageous, as it makes clear to other agents that you are a trustworthy actor who can be relied upon.
… as being too abstract, both in the sense that to a lay person it could sound manipulative, like we’re only saying this for PR reasons, and in the theoretical sense that it’s a murky concept at best, and arguably nonsensical. Any con artist can assert ‘precommitment’ as a statement of intent as easily as they can assert any other kind of intent—the only thing that could prove intent is making a physically inescapable commitment, which the EA community has no way of doing here.
Eh, we can always have it be an acausal deal to some simulator via multiverse cooperation and use some game theory to actually make sure that they won’t cheat, after all...
I strongly agree with the spirit of this post, and strong upvoted it. However I would criticise this...
… as being too abstract, both in the sense that to a lay person it could sound manipulative, like we’re only saying this for PR reasons, and in the theoretical sense that it’s a murky concept at best, and arguably nonsensical. Any con artist can assert ‘precommitment’ as a statement of intent as easily as they can assert any other kind of intent—the only thing that could prove intent is making a physically inescapable commitment, which the EA community has no way of doing here.
Eh, we can always have it be an acausal deal to some simulator via multiverse cooperation and use some game theory to actually make sure that they won’t cheat, after all...
As long as they are rational.
There’s a literature on this.