First, I clicked the link in the second poll[1]. My thought process looked as follows:
I quickly skimmed the content of the message
My split-second-judgement registered that there is a RACE
Moreover, the race is on very small time scales: every second of indecision might cost me victory!
Moreover, split-second-judgment estimates that winning the race is good-in-expectation (where “expectation” should be thought of as including the “logical uncertainty” resulting from having to rely on split-second-judgement).
Therefore, click NOW before it’s too late!
Worse, even after clicking and reading the text again, I misunderstood its content. Somehow, I thought that this year’s celebration will be determined by the plurality, whereas next year’s will be determined by the fastest minority. This system is strange, but is not obviously defect-y, i.e. not obviously inferior to e.g. using plurality twice in a row, from behind the veil-of-ignorance.
Only after reading the OP and starting composing this comment in my mind, did I understand the actual meaning of the text in the second poll: that only the next year’s celebration is decided upon, and only according to a minority (if anyone in a minority clicks). Now, this is more or less clearly defect-y and in hindsight I don’t endorse clicking it.
What is my take-away lesson? The process I used to make the decision seems correct to me: if you have to make a split-second decision, then you need to use your split-second judgement because there is nothing else to go by. There might be some case for a bias towards inaction, but it’s not an overwhelming case. Personally, I know that I’m usually too slow to respond in emergency scenarios, so I don’t want to train myself to prefer inaction.
The right way to optimize this is to train your split-second judgement to do well in the sort of situations in which split-second judgement is likely to be required. The sort of reasoning required of us here is not likely to be tied to a split-second decision anywhere outside of Petrov Day games[2], so I think my split-second judgement did as well as expected and there’s nothing to correct.
[EDIT: Actually, there is a correction to be made here, and it refers to my wrong reading of the message after clicking the link. The lesson is: if I make a split-second decision, I need to carefully reexamine it after the fact, in order to understand its true consequences, and beware of anchoring on my split-second reasoning: this anchoring is probably motivated by wanting to justify myself later.]
Second, I think that going with the majority in this case is not honoring your word. You explicitly said “the first to do so out of any minority group”. If you break your word and go with the majority, I won’t completely lose my trust in you: but that’s mostly because this is a game. In a situation with more serious stakes, I expect you to take the precise meaning of your promises way more seriously, and I would be extremely disappointed if you don’t.
Third, I think this was a cool way to celebrate Petrov’s Day (modulo the issue with breaking your word, which is really bad and must not be repeated). Kudos!
The actual Petrov had more time to make his decision, and also if I got Petrov’s job I would train my fast-judgement on Petrov-like situations in advance.
I think that going with the majority in this case is not honoring your word. You explicitly said “the first to do so out of any minority group”.
You make a very good point! I think I should update here. I too have been acting in haste. While in past years we spent quite significant number of person-days on Petrov Day, this year we’ve been focused elsewhere so this post was quickly written too. Fortunately, it gets feedback. Thanks, and I’ll update the OP to at least say I’ll need to review the decision here.
How can you honour your word at all if the premise of the link was false for more than half the respondents? There is no action that is consistent with your words.
It seems quite easy to me. Imagine me stating “The sky is purple, if you come to the party I’ll introduce you to Alice.” If you come to the party then me performing the promised introduction honours a commitment I made, even though I also lied to you.
A closer analogy is “You are an interesting person, and I will introduce the first interesting person who comes to the party to Alice”. You come to the party, you’re told that you’re the first there, but you’re not introduced to Alice because you’re not an interesting person after all. Instead they introduce the first interesting person to Alice (who for some reason only has time to meet one person).
Ah never mind, I now see what you meant. Yes in general you can narrowly honour your commitment by carrying out the action, but I mean more by “honouring your word” than just that. As I see it, someone who deliberately lies has not honoured their word, regardless of any subsequent actions that they might perform.
They’ve made two statements, one vouching that something is true, and one vouching that something will be true. Ensuring that the latter will be true does nothing to restore their loss of honour from the deliberate falsity of the former. In this case they can’t even honour the latter part, since they made a mutually exclusive promise to two different people.
Seems to me that in this case, the two are connected. If I falsely believed my group was in the minority, I might refrain from clicking the button out of a sense of fairness or deference to the majority group.
Consequently, the lie not only influenced people who clicked the button, it perhaps also influenced people who did not. So due to the false premise on which the second survey was based, it should be disregarded altogether. To not disregard would be to have obtained by fraud or trickery a result that is disadvantageous to all the majority group members who chose not to click, falsely believing their view was a minority.
I think, morally speaking, avoiding disadvantaging participants through fraud is more important than honoring your word to their competitors.
The key difference between this and the example is that there’s a connection between the lie and the promise.
[EDIT: Actually, there is a correction to be made here, and it refers to my wrong reading of the message after clicking the link. The lesson is: if I make a split-second decision, I need to carefully reexamine it after the fact, in order to understand its true consequences, and beware of anchoring on my split-second reasoning: this anchoring is probably motivated by wanting to justify myself later.]
I really like this takeaway, and generally like how “rationality test self-assessment” process here.
First, I clicked the link in the second poll[1]. My thought process looked as follows:
I quickly skimmed the content of the message
My split-second-judgement registered that there is a RACE
Moreover, the race is on very small time scales: every second of indecision might cost me victory!
Moreover, split-second-judgment estimates that winning the race is good-in-expectation (where “expectation” should be thought of as including the “logical uncertainty” resulting from having to rely on split-second-judgement).
Therefore, click NOW before it’s too late!
Worse, even after clicking and reading the text again, I misunderstood its content. Somehow, I thought that this year’s celebration will be determined by the plurality, whereas next year’s will be determined by the fastest minority. This system is strange, but is not obviously defect-y, i.e. not obviously inferior to e.g. using plurality twice in a row, from behind the veil-of-ignorance.
Only after reading the OP and starting composing this comment in my mind, did I understand the actual meaning of the text in the second poll: that only the next year’s celebration is decided upon, and only according to a minority (if anyone in a minority clicks). Now, this is more or less clearly defect-y and in hindsight I don’t endorse clicking it.
What is my take-away lesson? The process I used to make the decision seems correct to me: if you have to make a split-second decision, then you need to use your split-second judgement because there is nothing else to go by. There might be some case for a bias towards inaction, but it’s not an overwhelming case. Personally, I know that I’m usually too slow to respond in emergency scenarios, so I don’t want to train myself to prefer inaction.
The right way to optimize this is to train your split-second judgement to do well in the sort of situations in which split-second judgement is likely to be required. The sort of reasoning required of us here is not likely to be tied to a split-second decision anywhere outside of Petrov Day games[2], so I think my split-second judgement did as well as expected and there’s nothing to correct.
[EDIT: Actually, there is a correction to be made here, and it refers to my wrong reading of the message after clicking the link. The lesson is: if I make a split-second decision, I need to carefully reexamine it after the fact, in order to understand its true consequences, and beware of anchoring on my split-second reasoning: this anchoring is probably motivated by wanting to justify myself later.]
Second, I think that going with the majority in this case is not honoring your word. You explicitly said “the first to do so out of any minority group”. If you break your word and go with the majority, I won’t completely lose my trust in you: but that’s mostly because this is a game. In a situation with more serious stakes, I expect you to take the precise meaning of your promises way more seriously, and I would be extremely disappointed if you don’t.
Third, I think this was a cool way to celebrate Petrov’s Day (modulo the issue with breaking your word, which is really bad and must not be repeated). Kudos!
My choice in the first poll was “accurately reporting your epistemic state”.
The actual Petrov had more time to make his decision, and also if I got Petrov’s job I would train my fast-judgement on Petrov-like situations in advance.
You make a very good point! I think I should update here. I too have been acting in haste. While in past years we spent quite significant number of person-days on Petrov Day, this year we’ve been focused elsewhere so this post was quickly written too. Fortunately, it gets feedback. Thanks, and I’ll update the OP to at least say I’ll need to review the decision here.
How can you honour your word at all if the premise of the link was false for more than half the respondents? There is no action that is consistent with your words.
It seems quite easy to me. Imagine me stating “The sky is purple, if you come to the party I’ll introduce you to Alice.” If you come to the party then me performing the promised introduction honours a commitment I made, even though I also lied to you.
A closer analogy is “You are an interesting person, and I will introduce the first interesting person who comes to the party to Alice”. You come to the party, you’re told that you’re the first there, but you’re not introduced to Alice because you’re not an interesting person after all. Instead they introduce the first interesting person to Alice (who for some reason only has time to meet one person).Ah never mind, I now see what you meant. Yes in general you can narrowly honour your commitment by carrying out the action, but I mean more by “honouring your word” than just that. As I see it, someone who deliberately lies has not honoured their word, regardless of any subsequent actions that they might perform.
They’ve made two statements, one vouching that something is true, and one vouching that something will be true. Ensuring that the latter will be true does nothing to restore their loss of honour from the deliberate falsity of the former. In this case they can’t even honour the latter part, since they made a mutually exclusive promise to two different people.
Seems to me that in this case, the two are connected. If I falsely believed my group was in the minority, I might refrain from clicking the button out of a sense of fairness or deference to the majority group.
Consequently, the lie not only influenced people who clicked the button, it perhaps also influenced people who did not. So due to the false premise on which the second survey was based, it should be disregarded altogether. To not disregard would be to have obtained by fraud or trickery a result that is disadvantageous to all the majority group members who chose not to click, falsely believing their view was a minority.
I think, morally speaking, avoiding disadvantaging participants through fraud is more important than honoring your word to their competitors.
The key difference between this and the example is that there’s a connection between the lie and the promise.
I really like this takeaway, and generally like how “rationality test self-assessment” process here.