Comments on: Prediction Goes To War

By: Michael Caton

Michael Caton — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:23:37 +0000

Unsourced claim that I recall from a documentary: in WWII the Luftwaffe would drop leaflets on some of their targets in France, with essays explaining how Nostradamus had not only predicted the battle in that town, but that the Germans would win, prompting the French target town to surrender.

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By: In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war continued by other means » Death Is Bad

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 19:27:04 +0000

[…] mentioned a few times I have difficulty accepting reality as real. Say you were trying to keep a limitless number of humans happy and occupied for an unbounded amount of time. You provide them PvE content to get them started. But you don’t want the PvE content to be their […]

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By: Watchmaker

Watchmaker — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 09:43:54 +0000

The conclusion I drew from this is that certain standards of behavior must be enforced before a market is implemented. If futarchy enables extortion, then futarchy causes more extortion. A properly functioning market isn’t just game theory between rational agents. It’s girded by legal and, more importantly, cultural norms.

If a properly functioning futarchy is possible, it will have to disallow certain types of coasean bargaining which would incentive the creation of more coasean bargaining.

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By: The Citizen

The Citizen — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 11:53:36 +0000

Another great post.

So basically, Prisoner’s Dilemma. In most real-world scenarios I can think of, it’s possible to some degree for there to be deception involved and for the agreement to not be honoured. Assuming a betrayal can’t be hidden once it starts, you’ve got a situation very similar to the Prisoners. Assuming they are totally rational parties, you’ve got the issue that the last iteration betrayal has no consequence, and therefore the previous iteration will predict that and become equally treachorous, right back all the way to the start.

Of course, maybe there’s a consequence for countries that betray, but this would of course be severely reduced if the betrayal involved almost completely crushing the other country. I don’t doubt that rationality helps (“irrational” countries would just fight regardless), but I think you would still get a situation similar to the Cold War (two partially rational actors with different goals).

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By: Futarchy, superintelligences, and assorted links to related topics | kewl beans

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 03:53:33 +0000

[…] In this post he gives a nice example of how rational so-called futarchies (and global rationality in general) can be far more appealing than modern-day democracies and other current modes of governance, at least from the utilitarian standpoint of e.g. thousands of people not needlessly dying. I’ll quote at length from that post below, but first: futa-what? […]

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By: Tab Atkins

Tab Atkins — Sun, 12 Oct 2014 08:45:52 +0000

@Ken Arromdee:

You cannot formally verify an arbitrary program.

You can’t compress an arbitrary bitstring, either. But somehow every music file I’ve ever seen has been compressed more than 10x.

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By: Anonymous`

Anonymous` — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 21:36:16 +0000

Yay, the rare “True and Necessary, but not Kind”! Although it would’ve been pretty easy to hit all three, like JME did.

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By: Ginkgo

Ginkgo — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 16:12:54 +0000

“America might just ask “Hey, oracle, what would happen if we invaded Canada and tried to capture Toronto?” The oracle might answer “Well, after 20,000 deaths on both sides and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, you would eventually capture Toronto.” Then the Americans could tell Canada, “You heard the oracle! Give us Toronto!” – which would be free and easy – when maybe they would never be able to muster the political and economic will to actually launch the invasion. ”

In fact this doesn’t take an oracle, just combatants that value their lives more than whatever benefits might accrue form winning, as when those benefits accrue to someone else. So for instance during the Renaissance in Italy where wars were typically fought with mercenaries, mercenaries on opposing sides would confer (why not; they weren’t actual enemies) decide who was likeliest to win, and then report back to their clients what the likely outcome was and settle the squabble that way. It still cost the clients some money, but the collateral damage was kept to a minimum.

“What about when the aggressor wins? For example, the Mexican-American War, where the United States won the entire Southwest at a cost of “only” ten thousand American casualties and $100 million (with an additional 20,000 Mexican deaths and $50 million in costs to Mexico)?”

This war shows all you draw from it, but it shows something deeper even more clearly. it is an example of cultural conventions – in this case the doctrine of national integrity and national boundaries – overruling realistic analysis.

Realistic analysis would have shown that Mexico had no real control over those areas. The Comanche controlled almost all of Texas, and quite a bit more, and the Hopi and Zuni had crippled Spanish (and thus Mexican) control in their areas in 1680. Nobody but the Navajo controlled their area, and southern Arizona was controlled by the Maricopa-Pima alliance. In all these cases the wars and treaties with Mexico were basically idle, and the Texans and the US took control of these areas either through warfare or by treaty. The Maricopa-Pima alliance specifically had the US out-gunned, so there was no chance of war, and they decided they were tired of the Mexicans so they threw in with the US.

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By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 08:46:01 +0000

I’ve pulled that trick in a computer strategy game or two (Master of Orion II is the first example that comes to mind). Only I didn’t offer payment for the territories I wanted, I just told them “give me what I want or I’ll crush you”. Over and over, until they were reduced to just a tiny area on the map and I could crush them with much less effort and much fewer losses than it would have originally taken. I might not even have invaded in the first place, due to being afraid of losing the war.

I think the AI in those games wasn’t superintelligent.

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By: RCF

RCF — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:49:18 +0000

Perhaps you should educate yourself on what the word “premise” means, and stop wasting our time with posts that display on utter failure to understand what you’re responding to.

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