I have a code. How much should I charge in counterfactual donations to effective charities to push it? How much do we think it’s worth to “win” this year’s Petrov day game?
I don’t think this is a terrible question. Personally, somewhere like $2k to $20k; $2k if one only considers the object level value (say $1M/year ÷ 365 days) , $20k if one thinks that the value is higher than $1M/year or if one really values the intangibles. And because of the unilateralist curse &c, one should probably tend towards the higher amounts anyways.
Ouch. It was a serious question, if someone were to pay 20k to malaria coalition, that’s 4 lives on expectation. Seems reasonable for the loss to our community.
Could someone explain why asking how much we should charge to press the button is taboo?
The appropriate response to someone with the launch codes to a real nuke suggesting we sell them to terrorists is to shoot them, not to wait to see if the terrorists could pay a lot of money; by comparison a downvote seems very apt!
I mean it depends how much the terrorists are going to pay compared to the value of the damage. In the real world that value is unthinkably high, here, not so much.
One thought in a similar vein is that somebody with the codes should do it the other way around.
They should hold EA/LessWrong to ransom and say that if the communities don’t donate $X by the time Y to GiveWell charities, they will destroy the websites.
I think I’d ask for the community here to agree first, but if someone suggested an amount that got half the upvotes of the total of this page I’d probably push it. That seems like the ethical choice.
I have a code. How much should I charge in counterfactual donations to effective charities to push it? How much do we think it’s worth to “win” this year’s Petrov day game?
I don’t think this is a terrible question. Personally, somewhere like $2k to $20k; $2k if one only considers the object level value (say $1M/year ÷ 365 days) , $20k if one thinks that the value is higher than $1M/year or if one really values the intangibles. And because of the unilateralist curse &c, one should probably tend towards the higher amounts anyways.
Surely the value of the nuke goes down with time? Like having it shut down right now will be kinda annoying for me; much less so for 630 AM on Monday.
Fair point.
Yeah, 20k seemed about right to me also.
Ouch. It was a serious question, if someone were to pay 20k to malaria coalition, that’s 4 lives on expectation. Seems reasonable for the loss to our community.
Could someone explain why asking how much we should charge to press the button is taboo?
It could be seen as uncooperative or pushing things too far, like “for what value of donations should an Effective Altruist let me punch them?”
Hmm, I guess I find it strange. To me, asking this question is part of taking this ritual seriously. IE how valuable is this ritual to maintain?
The appropriate response to someone with the launch codes to a real nuke suggesting we sell them to terrorists is to shoot them, not to wait to see if the terrorists could pay a lot of money; by comparison a downvote seems very apt!
I mean it depends how much the terrorists are going to pay compared to the value of the damage. In the real world that value is unthinkably high, here, not so much.
This was proposed and discussed 2 years ago here.
One thought in a similar vein is that somebody with the codes should do it the other way around.
They should hold EA/LessWrong to ransom and say that if the communities don’t donate $X by the time Y to GiveWell charities, they will destroy the websites.
This has been suggested to me.
How could we be convinced that the donations were counterfactual?
Also, do you mean you’re (considering) taking bribes (to EA charities) to push the button?
I think I’d ask for the community here to agree first, but if someone suggested an amount that got half the upvotes of the total of this page I’d probably push it. That seems like the ethical choice.