I have a PhD in AI. My research has focused on Inductive learning in the context of rich background information. I served as a DARPA PM, and founded/exited several Robotics/AI/Computer vision companies.
I find myself arriving at a similar conclusion, but via a different path.
I notice that citizens often vote in the hopes that others will also vote and thus as a group will yield benefit. the do this even when they know their vote alone will likely make no difference, and their voting does not cause others to vote.
So why do they do this? My thought is that we are creatures that have evolved instincts that are adaptive for causally-interacting, social creatures. In a similar way I expect other intelligence may have evolved in causally interacting social contexts and thus have developed similar instincts. So this is why I expect distant aliens may behave in this way.
This conclusion is similar to yours, but I think the reasoning chain is a bit different:
(1) non-self-benefiting cooperation is evolutionarily preferred for "multi-turn" causally-interacting social agents.
(2) Thus such social agents (even distant alien ones) may evolve such behavior and apply it instinctively.
(3) As a result we (and they) find ourselves/themselves applying such in cooperative behavior in contexts that are known to ourselves/themselves to be provably a-causal.
Interestingly, I can imagine such agents using your argument as their post-hoc explanation of their own behavior even if the actual reason is rooted in their evolutionary history.
How does this argument fit into or with your framework?
Chi, I think that is correct.
My arguments attempts to provide a descriptive explanation of why all evolved intelligence do have a tendency towards ECL, but it provide no basis to argue such intelligence should have such a tendency in a normative sense.
Still somehow as an individual (with such tendencies), I find the idea that other distant intelligence will also have a tendency towards ECL does provide some personal motivation. I don't feel like such a "sucker" if I spend energy on an activity like this, since I know others will to, and it is only "fair" that I contribute my share.
Notice, I still have a suspicion that this way of thinking in myself is a product of my descriptive explanation. But that does not diminish the personal motivation is provides me.
In this end, this is still not really a normative explanation. At best is could be a MOTIVATING explanation, for the normative behavior you are hoping for.
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For me, however, the main reason I like such a descriptive explanation is that it feels like it could one day be proved true. We could potentially verify that ECL follows from evolution as a statement about the inherent and objective nature of the universe. Such objective statements are of great interest to me, as they feel like I am understanding a part of reality itself.
Interesting topic!