It is generally agreed that "changing" the game can - and
very often does - move the players from a non-
cooperative mode (leading to Paretto-dominated results,
which are never desirable) - to a cooperative one. A
government can force its citizens to cooperate and to obey
the law. It can enforce this cooperation. This is often
called a Hobbesian dilemma. It arises even in a population
made up entirely of altruists. Different utility functions
and the process of bargaining are likely to drive these
good souls to threaten to become egoists unless other
altruists adopt their utility function (their preferences,
their bundles). Nash proved that there is an allocation of
possible utility functions to these agents so that the
equilibrium strategy for each one of them will be this kind
of threat. This is a clear social Hobbesian dilemma: the
equilibrium is absolute egoism despite the fact that all the
players are altruists. This implies that we can learn very
little about the outcomes of competitive situations from
acquainting ourselves with the psychological facts
pertaining to the players. The agents, in this example, are
not selfish or irrational - and, still, they deteriorate in their
behaviour, to utter egotism. A complete set of utility
functions - including details regarding how much they
know about one another's utility functions - defines the
available equilibrium strategies. The altruists in our
example are prisoners of the logic of the game. Only an
"outside" power can release them from their predicament
and permit them to materialize their true nature. Gauthier
said that morally-constrained agents are more likely to
evade Paretto-dominated outcomes in competitive games
- than agents who are constrained only rationally. But this
is unconvincing without the existence of an Hobesian
enforcement mechanism (a state is the most common
one). Players would do better to avoid Paretto dominated
outcomes by imposing the constraints of such a
mechanism upon their available strategies. Paretto
optimality is defined as efficiency, when there is no state
of things (a different distribution of resources) in which at
least one player is better off - with all the other no worse
off. "Better off" read: "with his preference satisfied". This
definitely could lead to cooperation (to avoid a bad
outcome) - but it cannot be shown to lead to the formation
of morality, however basic. Criminals can achieve their
goals in splendid cooperation and be content, but that does
not make it more moral. Game theory is agent neutral, it is
utilitarianism at its apex. It does not prescribe to the agent
what is "good" - only what is "right". It is the ultimate
proof that effort at reconciling utilitarianism with more
deontological, agent relative, approaches are dubious, in
the best of cases. Teleology, in other words, in no
guarantee of morality.
Acts are either means to an end or ends in themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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