- Cooperative dispositions(as what agents commit to in advance)
- A tendency or habit to work together with others and follow shared rules, rather than always trying to get the maximum benefit for yourself.
- David Gauthier(the statement references his work)
- A Canadian philosopher known for thinking about how rational people should cooperate with each other, especially through contracts or agreements.
- Derek Parfit(as a philosopher being cited for his theory on personal identity)
- A highly influential philosopher who argued that personal identity (what makes you 'you' over time) is less important than we think, and that we're not the unified, continuous selves we assume we are.
- Effective outcomes(as what the statement says are altered by pre-commitment)
- The actual real-world results that happen because of people's choices and strategies.
- Game theory(mathematics and philosophy)
- The mathematical study of strategic interactions where each person's outcome depends not just on their own choices, but on what other people choose to do.
- Pre-commit(as a strategy for ensuring you follow through on cooperative behavior)
- To decide in advance that you will act a certain way, making it harder to change your mind later even if you want to.
- Resolute chooser(as a concept in decision theory and game theory)
- A person who makes a decision and sticks to it firmly, even when they're tempted to change their mind later because circumstances have changed.
- constrained maximization(Gauthier's advocated strategy)
- A strategy in which a player j cooperates if the other would cooperate if j did, and defects otherwise.