Cooperation unravels without iterated mutual knowledge of cooperative intentions.

Evidence

Each needs to know that the other has the AG preference schedule. Moreover, each needs to know that the other knows that he (the first) has that preference schedule. If that is not so, each can conduct, and can replicate, reasoning that will lead him to believe that there is a risk that the other will defect, and hence he will defect himself, … Without this knowledge, or something that will stand in for it, the cooperation will unravel. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 105

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This iterative-knowledge requirement is the epistemic substrate Luhmann calls ‘familiarity’ and Hardin needs observable constraints for — directly fuels the reader’s core thesis.

Related

• Cooperation requires common knowledge of mutual preferences, not just shared preferences (similarity 0.91)
• Cooperation requires knowing others’ motives and being believed trustworthy (similarity 0.85)
• Cooperation requires trust as assurance against defection by non-dependent parties (similarity 0.82)
• Explaining trust requires understanding the conditions of cooperation (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperation-focused strategies fail where conditions for cooperation are themselves absent (similarity 0.81)
• Strategies to minimize reliance on trust have been conflated with neglecting to understand it. (similarity 0.81)
• Cooperative equilibria require conditional trust, not blind trust or blind distrust (similarity 0.81)
• Trust requires assurance that is at least somewhat well based (similarity 0.81)
• Successful constraint-based cooperation can itself build up trust over time. (similarity 0.81)
• Once cooperation stabilizes, prediction signals and self-awareness accrue (similarity 0.81)
• Cooperation collapses if no one will knowingly take the dependent role. (similarity 0.81)
• Cooperative concert can emerge even amid the maximal distrust of war. (similarity 0.80)
• Cooperative dispositions are conditional and degrade beyond a cost threshold. (similarity 0.80)
• Cooperation fails if no one can knowingly occupy a dependent party (similarity 0.80)
• Trust is a result rather than a precondition of cooperation (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Cooperation-focused strategies fail where conditions for cooperation are themselves absent #qualifies (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2822