Attention EA Forum—I am a chosen user of LessWrong and I have the codes needed to destroy the EA Forum. I hereby make a no first use pledge and I will not enter my codes for any reason, even if asked to do so. I also hereby pledge to second strike—if LessWrong is taken down, I will retaliate.
I downvoted this. I’m not sure if that was an appropriate way to express my views about your comment, but I think you should lift your pledge to second strike, and I think it’s bad that you pledged to do so in the first place.
I think one important disanalogy between real nuclear strategy and this game is that there’s kind of no reason to press the button, which means that for someone pressing the button, we don’t really understand their motives, which makes it less clear that this kind of comment addresses their motives.
Consider that last time LessWrong was persuaded to destroy itself, it was approximately by accident. Especially considering the context of the event we’re commemorating was essentially another accident, I think the most likely story for why one of the sites gets destroyed is not intentional, and thus not affected by precommitments to retaliate.
Yeah, that did occur to me. I think it’s more likely that he’s telling the truth, and even if he’s lying, I think it’s worth engaging as if he’s sincere, since other people might sincerely believe the same things.
Please don’t retaliate; that just ~doubles the damage for no reason. Per David’s comments, I don’t think threatening retaliation helps the situation here.
What if LessWrong is taken down for another reason? Eg. the organisers of this game/exercise want to imitate the situation Petrov was in, so they create some kind of false alarm
Last year the site looked very obviously nuked. If I see that situation, I will retaliate. If I see some other situation, I will use my best judgement.
Surely after the site has been nuked you will no longer be able to enter the codes, because your silos will have been destroyed? And prior to that you risk mis-classifying our civilian space exploration vehicles, whose optimal launch trajectory just happens to go over LessWrong airspace, as weapons?
I hope we invested in secure second strike capabilities. I think Lesswrong has a nuclear triad—we have guest posts on other websites that can launch nukes even after Lesswrong itself has been destroyed
remove Peter Wildeford’s launch codes from the list of valid launch codes for both this forum and LessWrong. Reason: he clearly does not understand that this precommitment is unlikely to deter any of the ‘trusted’ LW users to press the button (see this David Mannheim’s comment and discussion below)
evaluate our method of chosing ‘trusted users’. We may want to put specific users that take dangerous actions like these on a black list for future instances of Petrov Day.
I would ask how users are chosen, but I imagine that making that knowledge more available increasing the information risk it will be misused by nefarious actors.
I have also used my strong downvote capability to reduce the signal of Peter’s message. I hereby apologize for any harm outside of this game (Peter’s total karma), but I saw no other way.
Attention EA Forum—I am a chosen user of LessWrong and I have the codes needed to destroy the EA Forum. I hereby make a no first use pledge and I will not enter my codes for any reason, even if asked to do so. I also hereby pledge to second strike—if LessWrong is taken down, I will retaliate.
Ahh, Nixon’s madman strategy.
I downvoted this. I’m not sure if that was an appropriate way to express my views about your comment, but I think you should lift your pledge to second strike, and I think it’s bad that you pledged to do so in the first place.
I think one important disanalogy between real nuclear strategy and this game is that there’s kind of no reason to press the button, which means that for someone pressing the button, we don’t really understand their motives, which makes it less clear that this kind of comment addresses their motives.
Consider that last time LessWrong was persuaded to destroy itself, it was approximately by accident. Especially considering the context of the event we’re commemorating was essentially another accident, I think the most likely story for why one of the sites gets destroyed is not intentional, and thus not affected by precommitments to retaliate.
All of this seems consistent with Peter’s pledge to second strike being +EV, as long as he’s lying.
Yeah, that did occur to me. I think it’s more likely that he’s telling the truth, and even if he’s lying, I think it’s worth engaging as if he’s sincere, since other people might sincerely believe the same things.
(I’ve also downvoted Peter’s comment when I first read it, for similar reasons).
Please don’t retaliate; that just ~doubles the damage for no reason. Per David’s comments, I don’t think threatening retaliation helps the situation here.
Too bad—I am committing to retaliating to establish a deterrent.
What if LessWrong is taken down for another reason? Eg. the organisers of this game/exercise want to imitate the situation Petrov was in, so they create some kind of false alarm
Last year the site looked very obviously nuked. If I see that situation, I will retaliate. If I see some other situation, I will use my best judgement.
Surely after the site has been nuked you will no longer be able to enter the codes, because your silos will have been destroyed? And prior to that you risk mis-classifying our civilian space exploration vehicles, whose optimal launch trajectory just happens to go over LessWrong airspace, as weapons?
I hope we invested in secure second strike capabilities. I think Lesswrong has a nuclear triad—we have guest posts on other websites that can launch nukes even after Lesswrong itself has been destroyed
Were you selected to have the codes for both LessWrong and the EA Forum? I see you made a similar post on LW.
That’s correct.
I motion to
remove Peter Wildeford’s launch codes from the list of valid launch codes for both this forum and LessWrong. Reason: he clearly does not understand that this precommitment is unlikely to deter any of the ‘trusted’ LW users to press the button (see this David Mannheim’s comment and discussion below)
evaluate our method of chosing ‘trusted users’. We may want to put specific users that take dangerous actions like these on a black list for future instances of Petrov Day.
I would ask how users are chosen, but I imagine that making that knowledge more available increasing the information risk it will be misused by nefarious actors.
Retracting my comment because it’s unclear what kind of event (game, ritual, experiment) this is.
That seems harsh.
I think this just gets back to what the game is.
If it’s a game, I think what Peter did was fun and cool.
If it’s a ritual, then yeah maybe it was irresponsible (maybe not I don’t know).
Personally, it made me think about precommitments, which seems good, so I’m glad he did it.
Yeah, my comments should be read as [in-game] comments, not as [ritual] comments, and I all mean it in good nature!
Damn, seeing the social complexity of this event with the uncertainty about what it is quickly made it feel more like a social minefield than a game.
Yeah I actually thought you were legit mad at me rather than just in-game strategizing, so that’s +1 to this game being unnecessarily stressful.
Thanks for clarifying.
Oops! Sorry Peter, not my intention at all!
Haha it’s ok!
Hopefully we can actually play a game version sometime.
I have also used my strong downvote capability to reduce the signal of Peter’s message. I hereby apologize for any harm outside of this game (Peter’s total karma), but I saw no other way.
You could upvote something else I said ;)
I think this is an excellent contribution to the forum: strong upvote! ;)