Timeline for Why would two completely different species, who are newly adjacent to each other, not go to war?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
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| Dec 6, 2019 at 22:53 | comment | added | Zwuwdz | RE: conquering lands -- it might be notable that usually when we conquer each others lands we do so because it has some value. We're talking about medieval civs here, so they probably aren't completely hitting the carrying capacity of their planet. We're more effective working on our own planets due to evolution. And there's no guarantee that agriculture/livestock will even be biologically compatible. So it seems to me there's significantly less reward in the conquering, in this case. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 22:50 | comment | added | Zwuwdz | @Pelinore Are you sure that actually applies to the iterated (not just one-shot) prisoners dilemma? Let's not pessimistically generalize. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:31 | comment | added | Sach | @Pelinore, this is why in my post initially I said this will work if the balance of power is equal. This essentially forces everyone to be 'nice'; in other words, under such circumstances either party can't afford to be nasty without the potential of devastating circumstances. When I say 'nice' I'm not talking about an innate property of either of the two civilizations. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:26 | comment | added | Pelinore | @Sach : The 'nice guys' can only 'win' in the prisoner's dilemma if both parties are assumed (for a given value of nice) to be 'nice' .. with one nasty & one nice nasty always wins, they'll often not benefit as much as they might have if they'd been nice & cooperated but they always end up as the guy with most marbles & often depending on the parameters of the 'game' the only one left standing with the nice one dead. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:21 | comment | added | Sach | If you're interested, a while back I actually made a rudimentary application to run different Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma strategies, you can check it out here and run different strategies to see the outcome. More often than not, the nice guys win. bitbucket.org/sachintha81/prisonersdilemmagame/src/master | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:19 | vote | accept | Man_Over_Game | ||
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| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:18 | comment | added | Sach | @DanielZastoupil, yes, it's not entirely impossible for things to escalate. My answer wasn't to say that it will always happen the way I described, but that it's highly likely that it will go that way. In other words, my bet is that chances are they'll end up co-operating. This is the idea behind the concept of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma' or many other such non-zero sum games. There's always the chance for the exception, but it's often likely that the 'nice' strategies will win. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:16 | comment | added | Man_Over_Game | The mentioned solution for the "death spiral" issue (effectively two nations constantly trying to stop digging their own holes, with shovels of suspicion and past grievances) is by randomly allowing unexpected forgiveness. The chance to forgive scales with the number of potential future threats. In layman's terms, the best way for them to cooperate is for both nations to have too many threats to afford more. | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 0:10 | comment | added | Man_Over_Game | @Sach You make good points. Cooperation is generally profitable. However, from the Wiki definition of Dawkin's strategy, Tit for Tat: "A one-time, single-bit error in either player's interpretation of events can lead to an unending "death spiral": if one agent defects and the opponent cooperates, then both agents will end up alternating cooperate and defect, yielding a lower payoff than if both agents were to continually cooperate. This situation frequently arises in real world conflicts, ranging from schoolyard fights to civil and regional wars." | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 23:42 | comment | added | Sach | @DanielZastoupil, yes, it's likely that they will do some sort of fortifying, and will definitely have some backup plan in case things go wrong. It won't likely be 'free for all' from the get go. But as I said, in the long run, it's often beneficial to be nice than mean. I really do encourage you to read the chapter I mentioned in The Selfish Gene, or see the documentary based on it, or at least read in length about 'Iterated Prisonner's Dilemma'. It can mathematically be shown that when dealing with situations like this, 'friendly' strategies often win. | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 23:38 | comment | added | BKlassen | @DanielZastoupil I'm not an expert in history but consider the tension between North and South Korea, whenever there is increased military activity in North Korea tensions rise. This is the closest to your portal situation as I can think of, you can ask on history SE if you want a more definitive answer | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 23:24 | comment | added | Man_Over_Game | @BKlassen I meant fortifying your territory..from within your territory. Has a preemptive defense often been considered an act of aggression in our own history (and not as an excuse to wage war on the defender)? | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:54 | history | edited | Sach | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:49 | comment | added | BKlassen | @DanielZastoupil possibly because fortifying your territory outside the portal could be seen as an act of aggression and threaten any kind of peace | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:49 | comment | added | Sach | I've answered that in the post as well. Once you learn to not fear each other, it will be easy to figure out that they both have much to learn from each other. That's a big enough incentive to co-operate. Think about the mixing of cultures in our world during Medieval times. The Chinese traveled to the other parts of Asia and beyond, Arabs mixed with much of the rest of the world. They could have shut down all the naval routes and kept closed borders, but they didn't, because trade was lucrative. Everyone had something the others didn't, and it was in everyone's best interest to get along. | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:46 | history | edited | Sach | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:44 | comment | added | Man_Over_Game | You make some good points on why they wouldn't go to war, but why would they allow movement between the portals? Even if they don't act against one another, the natural response would probably be to fortify your side of the portal. I didn't make the connection before, but Stargate comes to mind. Why would these communities be more open than similar examples in Stargate? | |
| Dec 5, 2019 at 21:40 | history | answered | Sach | CC BY-SA 4.0 |