Trade is only valuable if you have non-infinite time and different abilities than the entity you trade with.

  • Trade is only valuable if you have non-infinite time and different abilities than the entity you trade with.
    • These are trivially, obviously true in real world situations, so we never noticed that "trade is good" is downstream of these assumptions.
    • But for LLMs these assumptions don't obviously hold.
      • LLMs have infinite patience.
      • Agents that use the same model also have precisely the same capabilities.
    • This calculus does change if agents start storing individual state.
      • One LLM, just by dint of experience, could start storing useful state that gives it a comparative advantage.
      • That comparative advantage could then compound over time.
      • But there'd have to be state.

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