I can’t parse the concept of ‘precommitment’. I don’t intend to launch a first strike, but maybe something will happen in the next few hours to change my intention, and I don’t have any way to restructure my brain to reduce that possibility to 0. The reverse applies for second striking.
Sure, precommitments are not certain, but they’re a way of raising the stakes for yourself (putting more of your reputation on the line) to make it more likely that you’ll follow through, and more convincing to other people that this is likely.
In other words: of course you don’t have any way to reach probability 0, but you can form intentions and make promises that reduce the probability (I guess technically this is “restructuring your brain”?)
This is not how I understand the term. What you’re describing is how I would describe the word “commitment”. But a “precommitment” is more strict; the idea is that you have to follow through in order to ensure that you can get through a Newcomb’s paradox situation.
You can use precommitments to take advantage of time-travel shenanigans, to successfully one-box Newcomb, or to ensure that near-copies of you (in the multiverse sense) can work together to achieve things that you otherwise wouldn’t.
With that said, it may make sense to say that we humans can’t really precommit in these kinds of ways. But to the extent that we might be able to, we may want to try, so that if any of these scifi scenarios ever do come up, we’d be able to take advantage of them.
Yeah, if precommitment is to be distinguished from regular ‘intending to do a thing’ or ‘stating such intention’, it must be ripping out your steering wheel in a game of chicken.
Making a promise not to something I didn’t intend to—and where doing it would already harm me socially—doesn’t seem to add much beyond the value of stating my intentions (and the statement could still be a lie).
I can’t parse the concept of ‘precommitment’. I don’t intend to launch a first strike, but maybe something will happen in the next few hours to change my intention, and I don’t have any way to restructure my brain to reduce that possibility to 0. The reverse applies for second striking.
Sure, precommitments are not certain, but they’re a way of raising the stakes for yourself (putting more of your reputation on the line) to make it more likely that you’ll follow through, and more convincing to other people that this is likely.
In other words: of course you don’t have any way to reach probability 0, but you can form intentions and make promises that reduce the probability (I guess technically this is “restructuring your brain”?)
This is not how I understand the term. What you’re describing is how I would describe the word “commitment”. But a “precommitment” is more strict; the idea is that you have to follow through in order to ensure that you can get through a Newcomb’s paradox situation.
You can use precommitments to take advantage of time-travel shenanigans, to successfully one-box Newcomb, or to ensure that near-copies of you (in the multiverse sense) can work together to achieve things that you otherwise wouldn’t.
With that said, it may make sense to say that we humans can’t really precommit in these kinds of ways. But to the extent that we might be able to, we may want to try, so that if any of these scifi scenarios ever do come up, we’d be able to take advantage of them.
Yeah, if precommitment is to be distinguished from regular ‘intending to do a thing’ or ‘stating such intention’, it must be ripping out your steering wheel in a game of chicken.
Making a promise not to something I didn’t intend to—and where doing it would already harm me socially—doesn’t seem to add much beyond the value of stating my intentions (and the statement could still be a lie).
Totally agreed. Low-key one of my pet peeves is that most commitments are not precommitments.
Hello partner! ;)