What would you think of making button pressers anonymous? Currently, I will definitely not press the button because I know that this could plausibly lead to negative social consequences for me, and be clearly tied to my identity. Which is a purely self-interested thing, rather than me actually taking agency and choosing not to unilaterally destroy the world, and demonstrating myself to be worthy of trust. I imagine this is true for other people too? Which, to me, majorly undercuts the community ritual and trust-building angles
Alternately, maybe the social consequences are how people are coordinating?
For me, Petrov’s (and Arkhipov’s) legacy, the most important lesson, is that, in real MAD life, there should be no button at all.
Seeing Neel & Habryka’s apparent disagreement (the latter seems to think this is pretty hard, while the former thinks that the absence of incentives to press the button makes it too easy), I realize that it’d be interesting to have a long discussion, before the next Petrov Day, on what is the goal of the ritual and what we want to achieve with it.
My point: it’s cool practicing “not pressing buttons” and building trust on this, and I agree with Neel we could make it more challenging… but the real catch here is that, though we can bet the stability of some web pages on some sort of Assurance Game, it’s a tremendous tragedy that human welfare has to depend on the willingness of people like Petrov to not press buttons. I think this game should be a reminder of that .
To clarify my position, I PERSONALLY find not pressing the button extremely easy, because I am strongly incentivised to not do it. This means that I don’t personally feel like I am demonstrating that I am worthy of trust. If other people feel the same way, the ritual is also ineffective on them.
Entirely consistently with this, if some people think this is dumb, get tricked, want to troll etc, it is easy for them to press the button. Ensuring none of the hundred people are like this is a hard problem, and I agree with Oliver that that is an achievement
Thanks. So your point is that the “hard part” is to select who’s going to receive the codes.
It’s not an exercise on building trust, but on selecting who is reliable.
What would you think of making button pressers anonymous? Currently, I will definitely not press the button because I know that this could plausibly lead to negative social consequences for me, and be clearly tied to my identity. Which is a purely self-interested thing, rather than me actually taking agency and choosing not to unilaterally destroy the world, and demonstrating myself to be worthy of trust. I imagine this is true for other people too? Which, to me, majorly undercuts the community ritual and trust-building angles
Alternately, maybe the social consequences are how people are coordinating?
For me, Petrov’s (and Arkhipov’s) legacy, the most important lesson, is that, in real MAD life, there should be no button at all.
Seeing Neel & Habryka’s apparent disagreement (the latter seems to think this is pretty hard, while the former thinks that the absence of incentives to press the button makes it too easy), I realize that it’d be interesting to have a long discussion, before the next Petrov Day, on what is the goal of the ritual and what we want to achieve with it.
My point: it’s cool practicing “not pressing buttons” and building trust on this, and I agree with Neel we could make it more challenging… but the real catch here is that, though we can bet the stability of some web pages on some sort of Assurance Game, it’s a tremendous tragedy that human welfare has to depend on the willingness of people like Petrov to not press buttons. I think this game should be a reminder of that .
To clarify my position, I PERSONALLY find not pressing the button extremely easy, because I am strongly incentivised to not do it. This means that I don’t personally feel like I am demonstrating that I am worthy of trust. If other people feel the same way, the ritual is also ineffective on them.
Entirely consistently with this, if some people think this is dumb, get tricked, want to troll etc, it is easy for them to press the button. Ensuring none of the hundred people are like this is a hard problem, and I agree with Oliver that that is an achievement
Thanks. So your point is that the “hard part” is to select who’s going to receive the codes. It’s not an exercise on building trust, but on selecting who is reliable.
Yes exactly