Asmodia does not say that if she started listening to all of her quiet nagging doubts, she'd never stop, because alterAsmodia has a lot fewer of those.

"That's not actually the main problem with carrying out Ione's solution if you're roleplaying an ideal selfish agent, though.  There's another couple of missing assumptions there."

"Not seeing it."

"Ione and Tonia have to believe that the other person's self-reports are accurate.  When Tonia finally says 'I'll Cooperate' and means it, Ione still has to believe that, because Tonia believes she'll Cooperate, she's right.  Being very good at reading Tonia doesn't solve that.  Tonia could say 'my self-reports are very accurate' and accurately read as sincerely believing that, and still be wrong, because she had false beliefs about how accurate her self-reports were.  That's part of what might start to go wrong with Chaotic Neutral agents, though I don't know much about what that'd be like -"

"No, I admit fault there, that's a pretty good reason it wouldn't work with Chaotic Neutral outsiders."

"And finally there's the question of why Tonia or Ione could be right in expecting themselves to Cooperate.  Why wouldn't they, when they got to the moment of finally writing the word Cooperate on paper, just throw away all the reasoning they did previously and write Defect instead?  And wouldn't they know that, and be unable to say truthfully, to the other person reading them, that they'd Cooperate?"

"Purely selfish agents, with nothing else in their utility functions, don't care about keeping promises they made to themselves."

"Isn't there - I don't know how to pin it down exactly - but say I am perfectly selfish, and only care about getting the most copper, and the way to get the most copper is to put on a magic helm of mind control that'll make me a sincere worshipper of Coppos, god of copper - and Coppos has other values, and I will too once I put the magic helm on, but I calculated it out and I'll get lots more copper this way than any other way, so I put the magic helm on -"

"One of the Law-fragments, coherence principles, that generates the Law you'd need here, states that Lawful agents never have to do that.  They have no need for magic helms, not unless somebody's doing the equivalent of offering them a billion gold pieces specifically to put on the magic helm."

"They'd no more pay a copper to force their future selves to Cooperate, so that some other agent would predict that their future selves would Cooperate, than they'd pay coppers to trade green and red and blue in a circle."

"If you put a magic helm like that on me and transformed me into something utterly selfish, that didn't care about keeping promises even to myself, and then somebody swore upon their Law to cooperate if they believed I would cooperate, I would still be able to say under truthspell to them that I'd cooperate."

"Uh, also if that happens, you need to kill me extremely quickly.  Like, literally faster than I can speak or take any other actions.  Just saying."

That was what Carissa was getting at, that you shouldn't need the magic helm, but now she is distracted by imagining that Keltham wakes up one day perfectly selfish. That'd be...good? Probably? 

"- that's a fair ask and no magic like that exists so I'm not very worried about it but - why? I'd - rather you get me back, obviously, if something happened to change my values, but I wouldn't want the new Carissa to stop existing unless she'd gotten Zon-Kuthon style utility flipped in which case she'd also want to stop existing."

"I do not think you properly realize how dangerous a dath ilani would be to Golarion, absent any constraints on how they tried to achieve their goals.  Broom, in the unlikely event something turns me perfectly selfish, you're actually the one person on Project Lawful who's responsible for killing me literally as fast as possible, right?  I'm not expecting you to confirm or deny that, but you should know that hypothetical perfectly selfish Keltham will know it."

"And then somebody needs to warn my afterlife immediately that nothing under Intelligence 30 should talk to me.  I'm not sure it actually takes that, to be clear, but, safety margin."

She doesn't, actually, think she's underestimating that.

But she nods.

"If purely selfish Keltham has had longer than 12 seconds in which to work, you need to trap his soul or do something else that stops him from being resurrected, because among the things he can do in 12 seconds is, for example, tap himself with a truthspell and Message somebody that vast riches await them if they resurrect him.  And since threats work on people here he'd probably add something Zon-Kuthon-like about what happens if they don't."

"A proverb out of dath ilani fictional novels:  You have two and a half seconds to kill the corrupted Keeper."

"To you, he is that."

- oh wait there's a specific strategic thing to do here. 

 - it's to exchange Meaningful Glances with Meritxell. 

Meritxell has no idea what's going on but she can do a Meaningful Glance right back, clear enough Keltham can see it since that's what Carissa did. 

Keltham was not particularly able to decode this, except that whatever it is, it's not meant to be secret.  Carissa telling Meritxell that Meritxell needs to start filing regular reports on counterstrategies to use against her if she goes rogue or coherently-insane?  If Meritxell makes enough progress that this seems like a live consideration, she'll start filing reports with Pilar, Keltham, and maybe Broom.  Well, he can always ask Carissa later what that was about, if he remembers.

Whatever that was, it had BETTER have happened in alterCheliax or she's turning Sevar in to Subirachs over it.

Tell Asmodia alter-Carissa, like real-Carissa, thinks that 'Keltham, who is purely selfish and a danger to all civilization' is the hottest concept she has ever heard of. 

All right, Asmodia acknowledges that the sex part of her wall is largely Sevar's personal domain.

And on that note, it's time for lunch.

Keltham will use Prestidigitation to float Carissa a note - since telling her so face-to-face seems like too much pressure, and even Message prompts an immediate reply - that he's potentially available if Carissa wants company at lunch, before the Governance representative gets here to sign the Project's articles of incorporation and to-be-replaced interim compact with Cheliax.  Also a good time to tell Keltham about whether she's liable to want company of an evening; otherwise he'll probably see about checking in on Ione's romantic route.

She'll come and join him at lunch, then. "Hey."

"Hey."

He's deliberately avoided asking anybody what happens when Zon-Kuthon worshippers succeed in trapping your soul.  It does not seem like an especially helpful thing for him to know until the war is over.

"How's Yaisa."