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Notes -
I hope you're right about that. I worry that a lot of the dynamics around retaliation and precommitment are anti-inductive, and as such the difficulty of determining where the bright lines actually are scales with the sophistication of the actors. This would happen because a hostile actor will go right up to the line of "most aggressive behavior that will not result in retaliation" but not cross said line, so it becomes advantageous to be a little unclear about where that line is, and that lack of clarity will be calibrated to your adversaries not to some absolute baseline. And this is the sense in which I don't see a reachable point where honesty and bargaining come to strictly dominate.
As a note I do expect that bargaining frictions will be reduced, but the existential question is whether they will be reduced by a factor large enough to compensate for the increased destructiveness of a conflict that escalates out of control. Signs look hopeful so far but our sample size is still small. Certainly not a large enough sample size that I would conclude
Only a couple minor responses, as I think we're mostly understanding each other.
My only quibble is that I don't think we really need the "honesty and" part. The question really is whether, even with dishonesty, bargaining can be achieved.
The weirdly good thing about the increase in destructiveness ("good" only in the narrow sense of bargaining and likelihood of war, not necessarily in general) is that this increases costs to both sides in the event of war. As such, it increases the range of possible bargaining solutions that keep the peace. Both factors (this and the reduced bargaining frictions) should decrease the likelihood of war.
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