3 essays by AI researcher Douglas Hofstadter exploring cooperation/game theory/‘superrationality’ in the context of the failure of political coordination to prevent global nuclear war
The following 3 essays were prepared from pages 737–780 of an ebook of Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (198539ya) by Douglas Hofstadter, an anthology of articles & essays primarily published in Scientific American “between January 198143ya and July 1983”. (I omit one entry in “Sanity and Survival”, the essay “The Tumult of Inner Voices, or, What is the Meaning of the Word ‘I’?”, which is unconnected to the other entries on cooperation/decision theory/nuclear war.) All hyperlinks are my insertion.
They are interesting for introducing the idea of ‘superrationality’ in game theory, an attempt to devise a decision theory/algorithm for agents which can reach global utility maxima on problems like the prisoner’s dilemma even in the absence of coercion or communication which has partially inspired later decision theories like UDT or TDT, linking decision theory to cooperation (eg. 2017) & existential risks (specifically, nuclear warfare), and one networking project.