[ExI] Next moment, everything around you will probably change

[Christopher Healey]

> On 21/06/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> I admit that there is irony in the situation of a person or 
> program trying to destroy instances that are identical to 
> itself, even though it has been programmed to safeguard 
> "its own existence".  But I consider the programs or persons 
> acting in such a fashion to simply be deeply mistaken.
> All *outside* observers who are much less biased see them as 
> identical.  Why aren't they identical?  Why should we view them 
> as separate *people* or separate *programs* just because they're 
> at each other's throats?

Interesting question.

Perhaps they are quite literally at each other's throats *because* the context in which they are embedded lacks the default mechanisms to distinguish them in some formal way.  

>From a game theoretical standpoint this seems to make sense, since the infrastructure in which we are embedded normally provides for some significant resource controls that guard our individual interests.  In a system that cannot distinguish the difference between two agents, then they are in full competition for all their shared resources.  Sure, they may decide to cooperate, but the normal mechanisms that would enforce cooperation to some degree would be reduced or entirely lacking, allowing those agents to violate agreements between themselves without consequence.

I'd be wary of interacting with my twin if he wouldn't partially and voluntarily limit his ability to outright violate our agreements, and iterating this across the surface area of our ongoing interactions seems to amount to rebuilding the defunct capabilities normally provided by the infrastructure of society.  After providing for some enforceable contractual safeguards to eliminate mutual vulnerabilities in the zero-sum resource pool, I don't see why tightly bound cooperation wouldn't be highly likely toward the production of non-zero-sum gains.  

Does this make sense?

-Chris Healey