why are rationalists so “X” with acausal trade

Why are rationalists low on common sense (growing up having overvalued intelligence)

why are rationalists so obsessed with provably safe guarantees? [and guarantees on safety]

what happened to CFAR

why are some rationalists into knightian uncertainty

why is gwern “the ideal rationalist”

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Short version: both tribes are obsessed with getting cooperation without having to trust messy humans. Precommitments and “acausal trade” are just two flavors of the same fantasy: replace vibes with math so nobody can defect later and pretend it was an accident.

Here’s the breakdown, with minimal rolling of eyes:

1. Coordination under anarchy

   Rationalists play thought experiments where there’s no cop, only game theory. Ethereum lives in an actual place with no cop, only code. In both worlds, you need credible commitments so agents don’t time-inconsistently rug each other.

   • Rationalists: tie yourself to the mast via decision rules (FDT/UDT) or public promises.
   • Ethereum: timelocks, vesting, slashing, commit-reveal, DAO votes, “code is law.” Same idea, fewer Greek letters.

2. Time inconsistency is the real villain

   Humans discount the future and change their minds. Precommitments are anti-temptation tech.

   • Rationalists formalize “if I adopt this policy, future-me can’t cheap out.”
   • Ethereum bakes it into protocols: if you validate badly, you get slashed; if you promised not to dump, your tokens literally can’t move yet. Future-you can whine, the contract does not care.

3. Shared taste for mechanized reputation

   Both groups like reputational capital you can’t fake after the fact. Public commitments become Schelling points.

   • Rationalists: costly signals like “I’ll cooperate with agents that reason like me.”
   • Ethereum: public EIPs, multisig thresholds, on-chain governance rules. You signal “credible neutrality” by constraining yourself where everyone can see the chains on your wrists.

4. Acausal trade is just the limit case of “cooperate with copies”

   If you believe other agents similar to you will make correlated choices, you can “trade” with them by adopting policies that benefit both, even with no communication. Rationalists push this to multiverse philosophy because of course they do.

   Crypto’s version is less metaphysical: forked chains, pseudonymous agents, and repeated games create correlation via shared code and norms. You can’t contract with a fork you’ll never meet, but you can adopt policies that predictably reduce mutual harm across forks. It’s acausal trade without the cosmic fanfiction.

5. Public goods and long horizons

   Both care about funding things no single actor can justify short-term. Precommitments manufacture durable expectations.

   • Rationalists: precommit to donate or cooperate when encountering similar reasoners.
   • Ethereum: retroactive public goods funding, protocol-level burns, fee mechanics. Bind the system so freeloading is harder.

6. Cultural selection effects

   People who enjoy turning messy social life into crisp mechanisms cluster in both scenes. If your love language is mechanism design, you’ll end up here or there, nodding gravely at commitment devices while normal people just… talk.

Where this all breaks: