Terrible article in many ways—this is a very silly thing to say:
Schelling and McNaughton pondered the problem for more than an hour. In the end, they failed to come up with a single plausible answer to these most basic questions. So assured when writing about sending signals with force and inflicting pain to make an opponent behave, Tom Schelling, when faced with a real-life war, was stumped.
BTW, after a conversation with Eliezer at the weekend, I have just asked my employers to buy this book.
I don’t really think this is a stupid thing to say. It’s true that many of these conflict-escalation-flavoured strategies work when you are in certain kinds of situations (e.g. when you know your “opponent” well, or they are tied to you in some way, or norms and procedures bind their hands). Some of the quotes in the original post describe various forms of behaviour that would be called abusive or antisocial in particular contexts (the one about repeated escalation by abusing vague boundaries and the unwillingness of the other party to enforce said boundaries due to mutual unpleasantness is a classic). It’s also true that, absent such kinds of deep knowledge of opponent psychology or other forms of psychological leverage, fog of war makes lots of signals and seemingly coherent plans completely warped and distorted.
BTW, after a conversation with Eliezer at the weekend, I have just asked my employers to buy this book.
What do your employers do, that the book is relevant there? What they (assuming the CV on your web site is up to date) say about themselves on their web site is curiously unspecific.
I work for a computer consultancy; we do all sorts of things. The book is relevant because while we generally enjoy excellent relations with all our clients, it can sometimes happen that they muck us about, for example on rates.
Terrible article in many ways—this is a very silly thing to say:
BTW, after a conversation with Eliezer at the weekend, I have just asked my employers to buy this book.
I don’t really think this is a stupid thing to say. It’s true that many of these conflict-escalation-flavoured strategies work when you are in certain kinds of situations (e.g. when you know your “opponent” well, or they are tied to you in some way, or norms and procedures bind their hands). Some of the quotes in the original post describe various forms of behaviour that would be called abusive or antisocial in particular contexts (the one about repeated escalation by abusing vague boundaries and the unwillingness of the other party to enforce said boundaries due to mutual unpleasantness is a classic). It’s also true that, absent such kinds of deep knowledge of opponent psychology or other forms of psychological leverage, fog of war makes lots of signals and seemingly coherent plans completely warped and distorted.
What do your employers do, that the book is relevant there? What they (assuming the CV on your web site is up to date) say about themselves on their web site is curiously unspecific.
I work for a computer consultancy; we do all sorts of things. The book is relevant because while we generally enjoy excellent relations with all our clients, it can sometimes happen that they muck us about, for example on rates.