- Location
- USA
That all makes sense, thanks for the additional info.
Oops, sorry. In retrospect that was a poor idea on my part. Won't happen again.
-
For all readers and writers
After much ado, our new tagging system is here and being rolled out to the userbase. Read more here!
- Status
- Location
- USA
Based on your assessment here (which I generally agree with) and Vecht's response, I will propose a much smaller and more general SOP addition:
* Spend up to one tenth of our current VP on time-sensitive research related to old magic or Link's essence changes.
Fi's reply to your question is still relevant to this, but I think general preparation for other time sensitive issues is a good idea even if Link's essence changes turn out not to be.
- Location
- USA
That sounds fair to me. That said we can wait to see if anyone else objects and should wait until after the update drops anyway, per Vecht's request.
- Location
- USA
Yep, agreed. Just wanted to get some basic phrasing worked on ahead of time so we can be ready after the update drops.
Also, unrelated, but it might be useful to ask Fi some questions about this world that might be useful for figuring out how much it differs from Earth. Like,
- How many seconds are there in a day on Zelda's world, using earth seconds as a measurement?"
- How strong is gravity on her planet, in earth "g" units?
- If this can't be answered directly, how fast do objects drop on Zelda's planet, using earth seconds as a mesurement?
- What is the average daytime temperature in Celsius in the area where Zelda is traveling? What's the average night time temperature?
- What's the length of a year on Zelda's planet?
- How many moons, if any, does her planet have?
- How many suns, if any, does her planet have?
- What's the size of Zelda's planet, in square miles?
- What is the closest other planet to her's? How distant is it?
- Etc.
- Location
- Second star to the right.
I like the concept of a SOP to spend up to 10% of current VP to examine any weird artifacts we come across.
Do we want to add something about when to activate the detector artifact, or are we leaving that up to our Marked's prerogative?
Can we have a separate vote for changing the SOP?
Do we want to add something about when to activate the detector artifact, or are we leaving that up to our Marked's prerogative?
Can we have a separate vote for changing the SOP?
- Location
- Second star to the right.
Also our current plan doesn't chastise either Marked for not giving us a chance to examine the magical artifacts they destroyed. Zelda I think feels bad already and is unlikely to do it again... but it might be good to add a line to the next plan informing them we'd like to examine any old magic things they come across.
MMKII
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
AFAICT this is adjustable at player discretion, and there need not only be one. @Kurkistan is just maintaining one that aligns with the thread consensus that everyone's linking to.
- Location
- UK
Why are these useful?
- Location
- USA
Really good question in regards to the detector artifact, but I can see going either way on it.
Things like:
- Knowing the force of gravity is super important for assisting Zelda with things like building flying machines and projectile weapons.
- We know this is a cosmere setting now, and we know that not all cosmere planets have the same level of gravity, size, etc. For example, Roshar has 70% standard cosmere gravity.
- Knowing nearby planets, number of moons, number of suns, etc. might tell us if other cosmere canon planets are nearby. This is potentially relevant for dealing with worldhoppers, or if we want to worldhop ourselves.
- Knowing things like the size of the planet will tell us approximately what % of the world have we already seen, potential travel times, etc.
- Climate is relevant to our advice in terms of things like armor usage, as well as giving us a better image of how to deal with things like the famine problems they're running into.
- Things like day length and year length are important just for maintaining proper communication. Again, these are not standard values in cosmere.
- Example: Roshar has a 500 day year, with 20 hour days.
ADeshantis
King on the Chromium Throne
- Location
- United states
As cool as kick-starting personal flight would be, I'm like 99% sure it wouldn't actually help much. You know what they call flying soldiers on the battlefield?
Skeet.
Shock Arrows are a terrifying prospect in the sky, especially if Hylian lightning is anything like as mean as it was in Breath of the Wild.
Skeet.
Shock Arrows are a terrifying prospect in the sky, especially if Hylian lightning is anything like as mean as it was in Breath of the Wild.
- Location
- Second star to the right.
Close air support needs to be fast or durable. However bombing runs can be done from high enough up that our flyers can be safely out of range of enemy arrows and hard to aim at for enemy spells, (we don't know enough about magic to know effective spell ranges.) It's hard to aim from that high though so I'm not sure how effective it would be. Still good for use against large groups. (either dropping darts or explosives if we can manage it.)
Depending on what detection and ranged weapons are available to our enemies, scouting in a sky blue squirrel suit could also be very effective if we can get enough lift, (magic and/or different gravity/density of atmosphere.)
I'm not sure if now is the time to test any of these, but we seem to have a lull so it's a good time to check what is possible.
Last edited:
MMKII
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To incentivize interesting discussion, for the next 72 hours or so I'm offering 20 "VechtPoints" for the top 4 most interesting/thoughtful/awesome/exciting/brainstormy/spitbally posts, plots, plans, or ideas (these qualia evaluated on a post by post basis, so just posting entirely random stuff won't get you anything ) as well as an additional 5 VP for the first 7 or so folks to seriously participate at all in the exercise (I'll award these mostly on good faith efforts, first come first serve).
In addition to good discussion, you'll also have more points to pay @Kurkistan with to write up clever arguments in favor of cool stuff you like and want to do. Who doesn't want that?!
) as well as an additional 5 VP for the first 7 or so folks to seriously participate at all in the exercise (I'll award these mostly on good faith efforts, first come first serve).In addition to good discussion, you'll also have more points to pay @Kurkistan with to write up clever arguments in favor of cool stuff you like and want to do. Who doesn't want that?!
- Location
- USA
Let's talk plan "[] Arm The Getters Initiative", as it's not very well defined in this thread, versus the fairly simple "blow up all the shit and run" understanding in MfD.
Let us take as a premise that Hyrule as a kingdom is in large part screwed. Could be this Blight, could be the next, could be Ganondorf, could be political turmoil, could be a hostile Entity wrecking our shit. Doesn't matter what it is, but we'll assume that everything's been messed up enough that the kingdom per se is no longer an asset but a liability.
At that point we unleash our band of marauders to cut down all the grass, smash all the pots, loot all the holy sites, and otherwise destroy all that is wholesome and good in the unwavering pursuit of greater firepower.
Up until this point we've been maintaining a balance between increasing the personal power of our Marked and the welfare of the kingdom/NPCs. Screw that noise. Any altruism shall be selfishly-motivated, any power-ups or artifacts will be firmly in our hands unless given damn good reason otherwise, and priority numero uno shall be looking out for numbers 1, 2, and 3.
As an example, let's imagine that next update consists entirely of this missive from Castletown:
"The death toll is catastrophic. We must bow to their wishes. You must contact me!", with Ganondorf holding a sword to Taetus' neck in the hologram.
So yeah in this case Zelda and Link should take a hard left and head for the Death Mountain or something, raiding any museums, holy sites, or noble estates along the way for magic items and Sacrificing the shit out of everything they can get their hands on until we secure a VP source. Once they have a base of operations focus on VP generation, getting Zelda combat-capable, and completing Link's vision quests, with a medium term goal of getting off of this plane of existence and into one that's less on fire.
Let us take as a premise that Hyrule as a kingdom is in large part screwed. Could be this Blight, could be the next, could be Ganondorf, could be political turmoil, could be a hostile Entity wrecking our shit. Doesn't matter what it is, but we'll assume that everything's been messed up enough that the kingdom per se is no longer an asset but a liability.
At that point we unleash our band of marauders to cut down all the grass, smash all the pots, loot all the holy sites, and otherwise destroy all that is wholesome and good in the unwavering pursuit of greater firepower.
Up until this point we've been maintaining a balance between increasing the personal power of our Marked and the welfare of the kingdom/NPCs. Screw that noise. Any altruism shall be selfishly-motivated, any power-ups or artifacts will be firmly in our hands unless given damn good reason otherwise, and priority numero uno shall be looking out for numbers 1, 2, and 3.
As an example, let's imagine that next update consists entirely of this missive from Castletown:
"The death toll is catastrophic. We must bow to their wishes. You must contact me!", with Ganondorf holding a sword to Taetus' neck in the hologram.
So yeah in this case Zelda and Link should take a hard left and head for the Death Mountain or something, raiding any museums, holy sites, or noble estates along the way for magic items and Sacrificing the shit out of everything they can get their hands on until we secure a VP source. Once they have a base of operations focus on VP generation, getting Zelda combat-capable, and completing Link's vision quests, with a medium term goal of getting off of this plane of existence and into one that's less on fire.
Last edited:
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Right now our biggest problem is we have very limited information about the world, and we can only dedicate very limited time and energy into exploring more about it. The best option to finding out information is to probably find Hoid/Seff and convince him to spill somehow, but I'm not sure how. Given he can travel between worlds we have no guarantee he's still present on the planet, let alone in Hyrule itself, and the division we would normally use for such things is very busy with the Blin invasion, and we can't afford to take resources off of that any time soon. Nor can we afford to part with Link for any length of time.
Our best bet is probably to try to figure out how to present him something he wants; presumably the Investiture(s) of this world and leak information so he hears about it. (If it happens he will hear about it. He's terrifying at that kind of thing). I'm not suggesting we try to cheat him, but he should accept a trade for information as long as we aren't too greedy. It will be enough so we aren;t operating on OOC knowledge. Perhaps he'd know something about the Master Sword, considering he tends to keep aware of significant investiture-imbued objects. There's a reason he instantly recognized the courage fragment - and instantly gave it back when he discovered Link was the destined wielder.
Our best bet is probably to try to figure out how to present him something he wants; presumably the Investiture(s) of this world and leak information so he hears about it. (If it happens he will hear about it. He's terrifying at that kind of thing). I'm not suggesting we try to cheat him, but he should accept a trade for information as long as we aren't too greedy. It will be enough so we aren;t operating on OOC knowledge. Perhaps he'd know something about the Master Sword, considering he tends to keep aware of significant investiture-imbued objects. There's a reason he instantly recognized the courage fragment - and instantly gave it back when he discovered Link was the destined wielder.
- Location
- Second star to the right.
Link has just told us the Blin war is well in hand and we have a strategy to win the whole thing without any outside help. We have been operating under the assumption that we are screwed and there is no way our army can hold the larger Blin force off. (Thus the current trip to seek allies.)
Are we screwed short term? Or did our destruction of the forces assaulting Castletown and use of Sheikah create and/or reveal a weakness we can use to actually stabilize things and get time to spend dungeon delving/researching things/powering up for the next problem?
We have a few ways we can go from here:
1.) Presume everything is ok. We don't need the Lynx, (but hey allies are nice, just make sure they don't cost too much.) This means we can spend time leveling up to face the next challenge, (get Link to find the dungeons from his vision and loot them. Get Zelda to work on improving our military's equipment and/or technology for the next threat. Or maybe spend time figuring out what plots are going on and who's behind them.)
2.) Presume we are still screwed and the plan won't work so we badly need the Lynx at almost any cost, (but the war will probably still be a conventional one so if our forces + Lynx forces > Blin forces we will win.)
3.) Presume our plan won't work because our generals haven't accounted for multiple warlords as they haven't faced them before and are presuming the enemy are all idiots. In this case chastising our generals when we know so little about how war works on this world seems like a recipe for disaster. We might ask, "how much are we risking on them not having enough warlords, what happens if they do?". In this case we should probably also get the Lynx's help, but our general's response will determine how badly we need them.
4.) Presume our plan would work if there was no active agent of Malice, (but there is so we will need to counter them.) This means we don't necessarily need the Lynx, but we badly need more info about what kinds of things an agent of Malice can do. Getting the Lynx on our side is still probably very important as it increases our options in the short term so long term demands are probably ok, but we need info from them more than soldiers. However top priority should be scrying on the battles with the Blin, and scouting around them for enemy pincer maneuvers as we try to defeat them in detail and making sure we can counter any trickery the agent of Malice does.
Personally I think 1 is wishful thinking. 2 seems unlikely but possible and the easiest to deal with. 3 is getting closer to likely, but I'm afraid the real situation is actually 4, or worse a combination of 3 and 4.
Are we screwed short term? Or did our destruction of the forces assaulting Castletown and use of Sheikah create and/or reveal a weakness we can use to actually stabilize things and get time to spend dungeon delving/researching things/powering up for the next problem?
We have a few ways we can go from here:
1.) Presume everything is ok. We don't need the Lynx, (but hey allies are nice, just make sure they don't cost too much.) This means we can spend time leveling up to face the next challenge, (get Link to find the dungeons from his vision and loot them. Get Zelda to work on improving our military's equipment and/or technology for the next threat. Or maybe spend time figuring out what plots are going on and who's behind them.)
2.) Presume we are still screwed and the plan won't work so we badly need the Lynx at almost any cost, (but the war will probably still be a conventional one so if our forces + Lynx forces > Blin forces we will win.)
3.) Presume our plan won't work because our generals haven't accounted for multiple warlords as they haven't faced them before and are presuming the enemy are all idiots. In this case chastising our generals when we know so little about how war works on this world seems like a recipe for disaster. We might ask, "how much are we risking on them not having enough warlords, what happens if they do?". In this case we should probably also get the Lynx's help, but our general's response will determine how badly we need them.
4.) Presume our plan would work if there was no active agent of Malice, (but there is so we will need to counter them.) This means we don't necessarily need the Lynx, but we badly need more info about what kinds of things an agent of Malice can do. Getting the Lynx on our side is still probably very important as it increases our options in the short term so long term demands are probably ok, but we need info from them more than soldiers. However top priority should be scrying on the battles with the Blin, and scouting around them for enemy pincer maneuvers as we try to defeat them in detail and making sure we can counter any trickery the agent of Malice does.
Personally I think 1 is wishful thinking. 2 seems unlikely but possible and the easiest to deal with. 3 is getting closer to likely, but I'm afraid the real situation is actually 4, or worse a combination of 3 and 4.
Last edited:
MMKII
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To incentivize interesting discussion, for the next 72 hours or so I'm offering 20 "VechtPoints" for the top 4 most interesting/thoughtful/awesome/exciting/brainstormy/spitbally posts, plots, plans, or ideas (these qualia evaluated on a post by post basis, so just posting entirely random stuff won't get you anything
In addition to good discussion, you'll also have more points to pay @Kurkistan with to write up clever arguments in favor of cool stuff you like and want to do. Who doesn't want that?!
Dawn(ehh) of the Second Day, ~48 hours remain
- Location
- Galicia,Spain
I think this is probably what we should do in that situation but let's hope we don't have to because it's likely that Zelda and or Link won't want to abandon the kingdom even if it's doomed.
Or if they do morale will be really bad.
Btw on the topic of our lack of information, do we even have a rough understanding on how often can people use Magic on diferent levels of hability?(assuming they can't spam it)
Do they have some kind of magic resource (mana or whatever), or is it more like exhaustion and mostly comes if you try to use too much too fast? .
How much people can the average person who is magically talented enough to be recruited as a green mage heal per whatever unit of time, or like how much do the different?
And that kind of thing.
If it hasn't been done it might be worth to do some experiments to quantify magic use.
Last edited:
- Location
- Yes
I think scenario 1b) is more likely.
1b) Hyrule can retake Fort Talus and eliminate any roving Blin bands. However, the casualties from the Blin, deaths from the upcoming famine, and the property destruction have crippled Hyrule enough that it can no longer hold Fort Talus against even a normal Blin raid.
1b) Hyrule can retake Fort Talus and eliminate any roving Blin bands. However, the casualties from the Blin, deaths from the upcoming famine, and the property destruction have crippled Hyrule enough that it can no longer hold Fort Talus against even a normal Blin raid.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Alright fine.Dawn(ehh) of the Second Day, ~48 hours remain
How to Succeed in Life by Playing Chicken with the Universe
Or: A Brief Theoretical & Practical Guide to Outcome Pumps
Or: A Brief Theoretical & Practical Guide to Outcome Pumps
Part 1: Underlying Theory
Suppose there's a magical object with the following properties:
- A binary utility function U(x) whose argument is the entire state of the world.
- An ability to globally manipulate probability, such that it could cause any sequence of events whose probability is higher than P.
- Omniscience.
- If U(world) = 1, it does nothing.
- If U(world) = 0, it:
- Looks at all possible timelines branching off from this temporal point;
- Ranks them based on a) the time T it takes until U = 1 again, and b) the prior probability of this timeline p;
- Removes all timelines where p<P;
- Chooses the timeline with the smallest T from the remaining timelines;
- Makes it actual.
Outcome pumps are as ridiculously powerful as they are dangerous. The crucial thing to note is that they are not your friends; they are literal genies, they are paperclip-maximizers. If the quickest way to get rid of that tree from above is to cause a bus full of people to ram into it, throw it off a conveniently-situated cliff, and follow it into the abyss, Cleaner would absolutely make that happen — even if there was an infinitesimally-less-likely timeline where that tree is peacefully cut into pieces by a bunch of wandering lumberjacks.
But if you're sufficiently careful, the possibilities for exploitation are endless, boundless.
Suppose that you have a very strong will. You go to Cleaner, throw some trash on the ground, resolve to only pick it back up if you find a valid proof/disproof of the Riemann hypothesis, and start furiously thinking about math. What next? That depends. Maybe there's another person nearby, and they walk up to your trash and clean it up. Maybe there's a moose nearby, Cleaner causes it to see you as a threat, and it throws your trash off a cliff with a careless kick... in the process of throwing you off that same cliff. Maybe you've overestimated your resolve, Cleaner causes you to think of nightmarish scenarios where it manipulates a moose into throwing you off a cliff, you chicken out and clean up yourself.
But if you've ensured that there would be no interference, that the most probable trashless timeline is the one you chose, then you arrive on the valid proof in a few hours/days, clean up, and go on to claim all kinds of prizes.
How to exploit an outcome pump, more formally:
- Determine the outcome pump's utility function and "power" (i. e., value of P).
- Choose an Event A that you want to happen. Estimate its probability, P(A). Only proceed if P(A) > P.
- Choose a convenient Intervention X such that it minimizes the outcome pump's utility.
- Minimize chaos within the spatial location relevant to the outcome pump, until the probability P(!X) of a random event undoing Intervention X is less than P(A).
- Conduct Intervention X. Commit to undo it IFF Event A happens.
Part 2: Relevance
I'm not familiar with Cosmere, but it's been suggested on Discord that "Seff" is one Hoid, and he would presumably know what he is talking about. The return of Zelda's bracers support his account — they've caused that long string of coincidences with the explicit purpose of returning to Zelda. (The alternative explanation here is that Malg lied to Cove, and they were actually returned on Vesnyr's order, but I think it's not overwhelmingly more probable.)
That leaves some questions, of course.
Part 3: Testing Procedures
- How do they determine ownership? Raolin was able to transfer his fragment of Courage to Link, so literally transferring ownership presumably works. Stealing doesn't work. Would killing the owner work? Surely they're not powerful enough to spontaneously resurrect the owner...
- How do they determine possession?
- Physical proximity? Test it by having Zelda give the bracers to a trusted group of the Sheikah, who will then move to a different city for a week. On day 2, they're to roll 4d6; if all four die roll 6, they're to return the bracers to Zelda immediately; otherwise, stay away for a week even in the case of a dire emergency.
- The owner must be able to access the fragment any time they want? Do the above, but have the Sheikah move somewhere where Zelda (and her people) wouldn't be able to find them.
- Something more complicated? Arrange for them to be stolen by some thief, ideally without Zelda's (or Link's) knowledge. Have Zelda steal Link's fragment, for example, or vice versa, and roll 4d6 on whether to return it within a week or immediately.
- (The worst-case scenario is if there's some intelligent entity watching events and determining whether the fragments are still in their owners' possession on a case-by-case basis, instead of based on some pre-determined rule. If so, it'll just see that they aren't "really" lost if we plan to return them in a week, and it would do nothing.)
- How powerful are they? Hard to say without additional testing. Apparently Link's fragment managed to befuddle an actor, but that doesn't necessarily make it more powerful than P=1/20. Zelda's bracers, however, caused a Sheikah to lose them, and then to be found again by someone who knew whom they belonged to. 1/500? 1/1000?
- Testing could be done the same way: with die. Determine how they determine possession, then just keep repeating the experiments from the section above, but with progressively more die, until the outcome pump stops bothering manipulating their rolls and has the fragments returned some other way/gives up and waits the week. 4d6 is one-in-a-thousand, 5d6 is one-in-eight-thousand, 6d6 is one-in-fifty-thousand, and so on.
So, we've conducted our experiments, determined whether fragments of Triforce are outcome pumps, how they define possession, and how powerful they are. What next?
Part 4: Practical Applications
Enjoy our limited PtV.
At the foundation of everything here lies the same trick: have the fragment "taken" by some group with a strong will, who precommit to return it if and only if a certain condition is met.
Note that conditions should be verified prior to the fragment's return (otherwise the outcome pump will just fool us into believing they're achieved). Additionally, it is probably not viable to use them for long-term plans (it's unlikely we'll be able to keep P(!X) low for months or years on end) or open-ended wishes ("Zelda thinks the day was maximally productive" just puts Zelda in a good mood, but likely doesn't make the day actually productive).
Possible conditions:
- Our causalities in a given battle are low.
- The Sheikah successfully assassinate a Warlord.
- Wymar makes a correct guess about the Blin's troop movements.
- Fi successfully researches an Old Magic.
- Zelda's latest invention is a success.
- Zelda makes a good impression on the Council; they respect her more and are more cooperative.
- Taetus makes a blunder that gives Zelda a leverage on him.
- We find Seff.
- (Tentative) Fi thinks that today was an unusually successful day.
- It's open-ended, but Fi may be an exception. If she's inhumanly rational and possesses quantitative superintelligence, she may be "strong-willed"/"infallible" enough that it's actually more likely for a day to be unusually successful than for her judgement to be compromised.
tl;dr: We could use the Triforce fragments' return-to-owner probability-manipulating power as a more flexible, precise, and generally better version of the Luck spell.
Last edited:
MMKII
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Now THIS is podracing dot react !!!
- Location
- USA
I'm rather unsure if the fragments manage to fulfill the second and third condition.
Regarding probability manipulation, so far as evidence we've seen the fragments being able to nudge human behavior, or maybe even just move around a bit so that they fall out/snag at an inopportune moment. Anything beyond that hasn't really been shown. To that end rolling dice and looking for improbable outcomes might not be a good metric, as the fragments might have some path-home ability which simply does not have the capability to interact with random cubes.
For omniscience: that seems a reach. For Link's case it had to affect events within a few feet over the span of a few minutes. For Zelda's fragment coming back it looks like there might be a lot more foresight going into it, fair, but I still think it's a stretch from "a lot more" to "all of the".
--
Assuming that the fragments may be way more low-power than not, I'd like to start out with exceptionally trivial and low-stakes experiments where the fragment barely leaves its owners presence. Zelda lends Link her fragments and he promises not to give it back until he's guessed her favorite color and song or in an hour, whichever comes first. Then the same with coin-flips, etc. Staking anything large on it or in any way risking the fragments falling out of our possession shouldn't be in the cards near- or medium-term.
Pet peeve: The word "precommit". Commitment already has a game-theoretic meaning of being actually committed to something and unable to change your mind, so far as I know. Thus "precommitment" is just adding "pre-" to the beginning for fun.
Beyond that, though, I've seen "precommitment" used essentially to mean "commitment, but in the game-theoretic rather than colloquial sense", since people use the word "commit" for less-than-ironclad commitments, such as "I commit not to pay more than $500 for Boardwalk. Wait you'll sell for $550? Deal!" So sure, "precommit" has value in that it drags us back to the proper meaning of "commit" and clarifies how ironclad it is.
The problem arises when I see sentences like this, where we have someone with "a strong will" "precommitting" to something. The whole point of the thing is that it doesn't matter what you think or how strong your will is any more, you're already committed. Precommitment here isn't a stoic Sheikah promising himself not to break until the dice come up quadruple-6, it's that Sheikah carrying around a rocket containing the fragment, one that'll launch the fragment into the nearest volcano if he tries to open it or bring it within a mile of Zelda without having rolled the dice right.
Last edited:
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
According to Vestele and Zelda, they're "the most powerful artifacts in existence", the sources of all global magic, and could grant their wielder the full power of Hylia's creators. Given the scale and the power levels involved, I don't think it's unwarranted to expect them to posses some truly ridiculous abilities.
Sure, that's sensible.
Hmm. In my view, the difference between commiting and precommiting is in whether you plan to update your decision based on new information. If you "commit" to do X, that means you're intending to do X, stake your resources/reputation on doing X, but leave open the possibility of de-commiting if new information relevant to the decision becomes known to you. If you precommit to do X, you intend to disregard any new information or developments and do X regardless.
Commitments are supposed to be breakable if all relevant parties are no longer interested in upholding them; precommitments are supposed to be carried out in literally all possible situations and cannot be overridden.
- Location
- USA
We'll see. My read of it is that most of their phenomenal cosmic power is potential and/or tied up in embodying chromatic magic. It's like a huge neon sign illuminating a whole neighborhood which also happens to run hot enough that you can cook hot dogs on it: yeah there's a lot of juice flowing through it, but that doesn't mean you're going to get much out of it beyond that.
Of course I could be wrong, so investigation is appropriate.
The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begs to differ.
I think a key here is that you're using commitment/precommitment nearly entirely to describe mindsets or attitudes, rather than reflecting objective realities. The encyclopedia gives an example of a man threatening to harm both himself and the other player if he doesn't get his way, which isn't a credible threat because (in a game that's one-off and/or one where garnering a reputation for follow-through isn't a big enough part of the utility calculation to tip the scales) following through would hurt both players.
I'd describe what you're talking about as "committing" as planning, not committing. In the case where you stake your resources/reputation in addition to planning then I'd say that's best described as a soft commitment because you are intentionally limiting your decision space; though since it's not to the point where you truly can't go back on it it's still mostly just a plan where you've for one reason or another also marginally reduced the net utility of other courses of action.
Precommitment, by this understanding, is just planning really hard without any tangible backing beyond your own mental fortitude and mildly-irrational refusal to reevaluate changing utility values as circumstances change.
---
Linguistic quibbles aside, this mental precommitment does have some benefits. One can imagine that many of what I shall call "tangible commitment" strategies have some actual cost associated with them, or at least an inconvenience: Hiring an assassin to kill you if you don't ride out dips in the stock market will certainly save you from making such a mistake, but it also costs you about $350 to pay that guy off of Craigslist. So if all you're looking to control is your own behavior—and we're willing to accept the (somewhat dubious, I think) proposition that a given person will have the iron will to ignore any and all exceptionally good reasons to swerve from their current course—then we can avoid the costs associated with tangible commitments.
Tangible commitments have their benefits too, though, beyond reliability. Game theory generally assumes the mental resilience of its participants such that they don't need to psyche themselves up into doing the highest utility action at any given time. What commitment does for game theory is serve as a signal to other players so that you can constrain or guide their actions. In chicken the winning move is to rip off the steering wheel and wave it around before throwing it out the window. It's not to mentally resolve to never swerve no matter what, or even to tell the other guy that you've made such a mental resolve. By tangibly and publicly committing yourself to/away from a course of action you can constrain or drive the behavior of others. Not so much by just making a mental resolve about it.
-Now for this particular example you could argue that we're dealing with some omniscient entity which can, in fact, see from just looking at your brain that you'll never ever ever change your mind. That assumes a fair bit about both the true strength of your willpower and the depth of the insight of this entity, though, so I find it a bit dubious. It's also a fairly niche case that I don't believe is what's being referenced most times I see people in rational-adjacent spheres referencing "precommitment".
---
So to sum I think that your model of commitment/precommitment is intelligible enough, but don't particularly like the actual words you're using. Using "commit" this way in what are generally game theory-adjacent contexts is confusing and muddies the waters, particularly when I think "plan" and "irrevocably resolve" would probably do the trick just as well without such muddying.
All that said thanks for clarifying what you mean when you say "precommit" et al.
Last edited:
- Status