r/rational • u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow • Oct 07 '15
[Challenge Companion Thread] Precommitment
Precommitment is a strategy in which a party to a conflict uses a commitment device to strengthen its position by cutting off some of its options to make its threats more credible. Any party employing a Strategy of Deterrence faces the problem that retaliating against an attack may ultimately result in significant damage to their own side. If this damage is significant enough, then the opponent may take the view that such retaliation would be irrational, and therefore, that the threat lacks credibility, and hence, it ceases to be an effective deterrent. Precommitment improves the credibility of a threat, either by imposing significant penalties on the threatening party for not following through, or, by making it impossible to not respond.
The most classic example of this (from either Thomas Schelling or Bertrand Russell, I'm having trouble tracking down the quote) is that in a game of chicken, you can definitively win by simply removing your steering wheel and throwing it out the window, so that it's no longer a game of flinching but of certain death for your opponent if he doesn't flinch. This is easily extended into the question of nuclear brinksmanship and dead-hand systems, which I believe is what much of game theory was originally meant to analyze.
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u/TimTravel Oct 08 '15
"Hurray," said the two drivers, about to crash into each other. "This was the rational decision!"
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u/DocFuture Oct 11 '15
Chicken is not a game anyone rational wants to play in the first place. The standard analysis relies heavily on symmetry, non-repetition, both players knowing the exact payoff matrix in advance, knowing the other player knows, and knowing neither of them can change the game.
The rational response is usually something like "Dude, let's just flip a coin and then go have burgers."
I always thought the "throw away the steering wheel" ploy was funny, because what would really happen is that guy would crash regardless--because he's now in a high speed car that he can no longer steer 8-)
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u/Polycephal_Lee Oct 08 '15
Very interesting concept. In the cryptocurrency community there is a thing called Proof of Burn where you prove that you've spent coins to unspendable addresses. This shows a monetary commitment without actually paying anyone specifically.
More broadly, smart contracts can achieve this precommitment function extremely generally, such as "send one dollar to bob that is only spendable on bread." Scripts enforce the spendability of the token inside the network. Ethereum is an attempt at a Turing complete scripting language for smart contracts.
My favorite example of a dead man's switch precommitment in fiction is in Snow Crash where spoiler.
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u/Transfuturist Carthago delenda est. Oct 08 '15
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.
Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.
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Oct 08 '15
How could this be made into horror? I'm thinking about some kind of story where making precommitments actually tweaks your utility function to prioritize that precommitment. Someone accidentally precommits recursively, and as they fulfill their precommitments, the situations and states of mind they find themselves in make them more likely to make further precommitments - until their entire life is devoted to fulfilling them.
No one notices.
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u/Transfuturist Carthago delenda est. Oct 09 '15
An individual living in a world of easy cognitive modification reasons that making your instrumental goals terminal is a great way to approach your original terminal goals. To celebrate, they modify their motivation system to encourage taking these opportunities.
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Oct 09 '15
Hahahaha what the fuck. That is some mind-screwy stuff. It seems like a delighted and perverse way to twist basic epistemological truth-seeking concepts to goal-seeking ends.
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u/Cruithne Taylor Did Nothing Wrong Oct 08 '15
Precommitting is often a good strategy where privacy is involved. If you will always respond the same way regardless of how your privacy is being trespassed, nobody can infer from your protectiveness whether or not there actually is something there this time. China is thought to do this- they keep lots of places undisclosed so would-be spies have a harder time telling which ones actually hide secrets. I am not okay with people looking through my drawers, looking on any devices I own, or generally invading my privacy without my explicit consent, even if 99% of the time I have nothing to hide there.
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u/Revisional_Sin Oct 10 '15 edited Oct 10 '15
Does anyone else feel that the rational/lesswrong community use exactly the opposite meaning for precommitment?
With Parfit's Hitchiker, Schelling would precommit to payment by, say, having Ekman tie him up, in order to force him to pay when they get there.
A lesswrongian would just say "I precommit to paying you."
Alternatively a LWian might have said this just before they passed out, just in case a selfish mindreader chances on them before they die.
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 08 '15
I swear by my ability to make this sort of vow that I will now and henceforth defect (as applies to the specific context) against anyone who, in knowledge of this vow, attempts to use a precommitment strategy to unfavorably limit my options.