I feel this way about animal rights. Look up footage from factory farms. Look up the statistics about how many animals are factory farmed. Look up the science on animal sentience. Look up how to eat a healthy diet without animal products. I won’t get into the arguments beyond that but we’re so terrible to animals that I think we should not do any animal agriculture at all, and I took the liberation pledge, so I don’t eat at tables where people are eating animal products.
This pledge vaguely reminds me of the GNU GPL, a license that developers put on their open-source software if they prefer their software, and all its derivatives, doesn’t “eat at tables” (get distributed) within non-open-source software. So it’s trying to spread open-source software as much as possible, which seems like a goal similar to the abolishing all IP law mentioned by @Breck Yunits in a sibling comment.
I wonder how universal and effective this “viral” approach to spreading unconventional norms is.
It’s a good question, and it reminds me of a point from a recent veritasium video, where in networks of prisoners dilemna’s you can get really good results if cooperators (tit-for-tat ish) also have a rule of “cutting contact” with defectors who defect too often. It’s been a while since I watched the video, and I haven’t really thought deeply about it’s implications, and networks of bots playing prisoners dilemna games are very different from human social networks, so take this comment with a nice helping of salt. I’ll edit this comment with the video link if I find it
edit: according to the liberation pledge site, https://www.theliberationpledge.com/, it’s also the strategy used by the campaign to end foot binding in china. Whether that’s actually true, or they made it up, or distorted the reality, or what, I have no idea. They don’t cite sources on it and I haven’t bothered to look it up.
It does seem to be a strategy that depends on you having something others want. In the prisoners dilemna case, your cooperation. In the foot binding case, a daughter or son to marry. In the gpl case, high quality software. In the liberation pledge case, good company (in my experience, I’m not a very social person anyways nor am I the life of the party, so it’s primarily had an impact on my family, who I’m pretty sure eat way more vegan food than they would if I didn’t have such a strict approach).
Probably not harmless, but: I see myself in Rae’s post.
I actually have extremely passionate and direct things to say about the style of doomerism here. I think it’s deeply destructive and harmful and keeps creating damage unnecessarily, and the refusal to hear that message is selfish and a sign of serious mental illness at a collective level. I think there’s a better way, and it’s both more pleasant and a moral imperative to go that way instead. I’ve tried to speak about all this here many times, but I keep hitting mechanisms that Rae’s post extremely reminds me of.
E.g. I’m still not sorry for having written “Here’s the exit”. I suspect my saying so will cause this comment to get downvoted, and possibly have several people insisting I’m an Alex and not an Alice. And yet, as many haters as I’ve gotten for that post and for my lack of remorse for having written it, I’ve gotten roughly as many people DMing me or talking to me in person thanking me for it, some saying that it gave them their life back. I don’t like the hate, it hurts, but I’ll gladly take it if that’s the price of standing for what’s right.
If I were more skillful, I’d navigate the norms here in a respectful way that massages the truth into visibility. And I’m occasionally that skilled. But most of the time I’m just not. I can be gentle and polite, but then my points don’t seem to make a ripple. So I have to be kind of extreme and unreasonable to get the moral point heard here. Which enacts the Alice mechanism.
I mean, maybe there’s a more moderate way of expressing the problem I see that’s actually more accurate, but because of the kind of resistance I’ve run into, the only way for me to hold onto the thing I see is to be kind of crazy and extreme about it, which increases resistance. Commence loop.
I could give other examples from my interactions with the rationalist space. I seem to be particularly prone toward Alice-ness here. But hopefully the one example helps flesh out (what I see as) Rae’s message.
Oh absolutely. It’s an unwholesome attractor for me, and is part of why I try not to focus my time/attention on LW. I’ve gotten to where, whether accurate or not, my gut-level feeling is that LW kind of hates me and is hostile toward me, and I have to watch my step to be allowed to breathe around here. I try to hold a solid spine and not care about that hostility, both because I don’t want to create it if it’s not there and also because I think it’s unjust and I don’t want to succumb to bullies. But it’s tricky because the perceived vibe grabs me at an animal level.
E.g. it’s hard for me not to make stories about the fact that the comment you’re replying to right now has 3 karma and 4 votes. Meaning some are downvoting it. Why? I don’t know. Very hard not to make stories that feed the paranoid view.
Yeah I would have to agree…. there is way too much doomerism on LW…. to an absurd degree nowadays. Some users seriously need to go outside and smell the roses, so to speak.
It seems like most of the moderates, who acknowledged risks of extinction are above zero but not some huge percentage, have left.
It was always there before too…. but somehow it didn’t seem as disturbing. Perhaps the greatly increased popularity of ai topics, societal relevance, LW popularity, etc., all contributed.
The increasingly burdensome kayfabes around an increasing number of sensitive topics also greatly suppress the once entertaining and more light hearted discussions, so there isnt even that to balance it out.
Also btw these days I hang out in a garden where ~everyone gets it/is filtered on getting it, and:
The garden is fucking rad, good shit routinely happens there that individuals tell me never happens anywhere else on Earth in their experience (which is sorta weak evidence; other similarly good gardens are probably scattered all over but still)
I’m like pretty much happy all the time/don’t have triggers on the trauma that Ray talks about in the OP/generally don’t get angry or feel gaslit. 10-100x better than prior to mostly-vanishing behind the wall.
It’s all very proof-of-concept and super hella validating/”you’re not right about everything but you were very very right about Those Dozen Things.”
It sucks. My life is suffering. You wouldn’t believe what’s been done to me the past four years. Kicked out of YCombinator? Banned from HackerNews? Bank accounts frozen and money stolen? Thrown in jail with no charges? All of those things sure, but those are pinpricks compared to the truly beyond-the-pale cruel thing they’ve done to me.
My X is ~ delete all IP laws. High bit is they weaken minds and local communities and unless you are wealthy are far worse than people understand.
I’ve been an open knowledge activist since 2004, when I was 20. Mostly participating here and there with some guerilla projects.
But the conspiring against me didn’t start until 2021.
That’s when I began to non-anonymously try and shift the system using the resources I had accumulated.
I’ll give it to Bob and Charlie—they hit me and hit me _hard_. I thoroughly underestimated their capacity for cruelty. I didn’t think people would stoop that low.
An Alice has to be patient, non-violent, believe that the truth will set them free, and after a loss willing to go back to the drawing board until they have a strategy that Bob and Charlie can’t stop.
I’m a carpenter now. Good people, honest work, and I don’t have to compromise on any principles.
But because I won’t abandon X, the conspiracy against me continues, and I endure the worst kind of suffering day in and day out.
To have allies who, even if they disagreed with me, could fight for me and say what they are doing to me is plain cruel and needs to stop, that would be nice.
Here is a relatively low-stakes one: I play Settlers of Catan with a group. It’s generally fun, but much less fun when one person shows up. Why? They routinely target me. For example, they will bribe other players to rob me or lie about other player’s best placements to hurt mine. “I know you’re better at this game than the other players, so I’ve got to preemptively target you. And Settlers of Catan is a social game, you’ve got to play with the players you have, not just with perfectly rational agents.”
It sucks to be on the receiving end of the targeting, much more than the little joy they get from targeting me. It also erodes a norm I think is important in making games fun: the ability to have honest conversations. With honest conversations you can suggest mutually beneficial moves, making the game more interesting and improving everyone’s skill level over time. Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty. However, in social manipulation games where players attempt to convince others to make suboptimal plays, this trust disappears. ‘I’m not sure I believe him; I’m just going to have to trust my own gut and maybe do an analysis at the end of the game.’
I’m the crazy Alex here. I get upset, call them a liar, and everyone looks at me like I’m overreacting. It’s just a game. Worst case scenario I can stop playing games with this group when this guy is around. But it’s hard to explain why I suddenly don’t want to play.
“I feel like he targets me, and then goes around lying, manipulating, and eroding good game-playing norms for funsies. The game is no longer fun with him around.”
“Oh c’mon, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? It’s just part of the game.”
Also, why should I be the one to stop playing when he’s the one playing negative-sum games?
Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty.
I don’t think this claim particularly matters to the thrust of your post, since I think we agree that you’re not playing with perfectly rational agents, but I’m interested in the claim as a matter of game theory.
To be clear, I’m interpreting this as saying something at least as strong as: “In a game of Catan where there is common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational, speaking a falsehood is never more advantageous for the speaker than remaining silent.”
After pondering this for about 20 minutes, I’m pretty convinced the claim is false, and I suspect you are over-generalizing from two-player games.
If Adam and Beth are playing a two-player zero-sum game, and Adam knows that Beth is perfectly rational, then:
If Beth reacts in any way to anything Adam says, then that reaction must be beneficial to Beth (since she is assumed perfectly rational), which means it must be harmful to Adam (because the game is zero-sum), which means Adam shouldn’t have said it.
By similar reasoning, if Beth says anything (that’s not required by the rules), then the fact that she said it can’t be harmful to herself, which means it can’t be beneficial to Adam, which means whatever Adam does in response won’t be (predictably) better than what he would have done anyway.
Therefore, Adam can safely adopt a policy of never saying anything and ignoring whatever Beth says, and this will be no worse than any other policy.
But Catan is played with at least 3 players. The game as a whole is zero-sum, but it’s possible for an action to benefit both Adam and Beth at the same time, provided it harms Chris.[1]
In a non-zero-sum negotiation, it is sometimes helpful to share information in order to coordinate on a mutually-beneficial action. So silence is not, in general, a global optimum.
But if there are situations where you would share some information if it were true, and the other player is aware of this, then silence becomes a tacit admission that it’s not true. So it might become necessary to lie in order to avoid passively leaking secrets.
The lie will only be believable if it’s a claim you would have made if it were true, which sharply limits what lies you can tell. But it does not, in general, limit it to the empty set.
This is not a proof, since I have not constructed an example game position where I can mathematically demonstrate that all of the relevant properties apply at the same time. It is conceivable there’s some reason that hasn’t occurred to me that they can’t all apply at the same time. But I have no candidates for what such a reason would be, and my brief Internet searches have failed to turn up any known result that matches the original claim.
I’m not sure if this is known art, but I’ve found it helpful to think of zero-sum-ness as applying to a set of players rather than to a game. In a 3-player Catan game with Adam, Beth, and Chris, the set (Adam, Beth, Chris) is zero-sum, but the set (Adam, Beth) is non-zero-sum. Note that any non-zero-sum game can be converted to a strategically-equivalent zero-sum game by adding a dummy player whose score is the negative sum of all other players’ scores (or vice versa, by adding a dummy player whose score isn’t that), so it cannot be strategically important whether “the whole game” is zero-sum if we haven’t changed the zero-sum-ness of any particular subset of players.
Consider the 2-player game where A is allowed to broadcast a public message, then B is allowed to press one of 9 buttons or pass, and then A and B receive a result. Add a dummy player C as you suggested if you wish to make the game “zero sum” among 3 players rather than non-zero-sum among 2 players.
Rules: * 10% of the time, all buttons are red, while 90% of the time, a uniform random single one of the buttons is blue while all other buttons are red. * If B presses a blue button the resulting utility for (A,B) is (1, 1). If B presses a red button the result is (0, 0). If B passes, the result is (-1, 0.5). * A has private information—only A can see the color of the buttons. B (and C, if C exists) is colorblind/blindfolded/whatever, but aside from that the rules of the game are common knowledge.
The following is a Nash equilibrium: * If one of the buttons is blue, A always says truthfully which button is blue. * If no button is blue, A picks one of the buttons uniformly at random and lies and says that button is blue. * B always trusts A and presses the button that A claims was blue.
This is a Nash equilibrium because no player can do better in expectation by unilaterally deviating from this protocol. (A is receiving the maximum possible utility they can in every scenario so A cannot improve by unilaterally deviating. B doesn’t see the button colors so it boils down to trust A and get expected utility 0.9, or pass and get utility 0.5, so B should continue to trust A even though A lies sometimes).
Does this provide the kind of example you were thinking of?
Yes, that is the sort of example I meant. Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
Based on his other reply, I expect James would want to point out that there is an equivalent equilibrium where player A, instead of saying “button N is blue”, says “either button N is blue or no button is”, which produces the same outcome without technically lying.
I’m coming to think that there should be some other distinction we can draw that rhymes with the truthful/lying distinction but that talks about consequences instead of semantics, and therefore can’t be dodged by relabeling the signals. Still thinking about it.
Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
A has 7 points, “Year of Plenty” card, 1 brick and 3 wood. A can get Longest Road either by building 4 roads or by breaking B’s road with a settlement, but to build this settlement A has to first build one road.
B has 9 points including 2 points from Longest Road and enough resources so they can build a settlement in one turn unless 7 is rolled.
C has 9 points, 1 brick and can maybe win in one turn depending on dice rolls.
A’s turn.
A: “I have Road Builder card, 3 wood, but only 1 brick. C, can you sell me brick for wood? I will build 4 roads, get Longest Road, B will not win in their turn and then we both have a chance.”
C: “I don’t really need wood, but I see that B probably wins if we don’t do it, so OK.”
A plays “Year of Plenty”, takes grain and wool, builds one road and a settlement, wins the game.
I do not have a formal proof, but here is an outline:
Consider a message one player can transmit to the group .
If it is beneficial to transmit , it must be detrimental to a subset , and at least neutral for .
The subsets and are in zero-sum conflict, so as an entity does not benefit from transmitting .
Thus, for to be beneficial to a player within , it must be at the expense of the other players, contradicting the definition.
Also, if there are several coalition-forming messages, and one of them leads to the highest payoff whether or not it is true, it is always beneficial to transmit that message, so it is cheap talk.
Therefore, the highest-payoff coalition-forming message is either true or silence.
The third step is a little tricky. What if the coalition forming itself benefits everyone in ? Well then they will form a coalition with the true message, “we should build a coalition”. The fifth step is also tricky. What if there are many possibilities for your secret, and the coalition you build with, “I am type 1″ is good when you are types 1, 2, or 3, but bad when you are type 4? Then everyone should expect you to transmit this when you are types 1, 2, or 3, so if it really does build a coalition it must be equivalent to transmitting, “I am type 1, 2, or 3, but definitely not 4”.
In that sentence, you are not arguing that the lie is no better than silence, you are arguing that it is no better than some truthful message. (This is technically still a falsification of my previously-stated interpretation of your claim.)
This argument is based on the assumption that the other players already know all circumstances under which you would transmit this message, so there’s no harm in admitting them.
I now realize that if all players have perfect knowledge of the exact conditions under which you would transmit some message, then the actual informational payload of every message is that those conditions are true. (Even with a randomized strategy, you can just interpret the RNG output as part of the conditions.) You might as well literally say “message #27”. Classifying the message itself as truth or lie becomes academic, because no one is expected or intended to pay attention to its face-value claim, and in fact there’s no reason for it to make a face-value claim at all. (Under this very strong assumption.)
So if we’re going to assume players have perfect knowledge of each others’ strategies (including what messages they send under what circumstances), I no longer think it makes sense to distinguish “true” and “false” messages.
I note that “common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational” does not (I think) logically entail perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy, since a game can have more than one Nash equilibrium. So technically neither of us stated “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” as an assumption in the first place, though I admit I sort of hand-waved towards it when I talked about what players would infer from your failure to say something.
I still think that if we don’t assume “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” then lying is potentially beneficial.
Given that clarification, I’m not sure if your numbered chain of reasoning is a crux for either of us, but for the record I found that chain extremely confusing to read, I think step 3 is invalid, and your final paragraph (after the numbered list) was the only part of the comment I found helpful.
In step 3, you seem to be trying to treat the groups and as if they were each a single player so that you can apply the conclusions from two-player games, but I don’t think that’s valid. The two-player result was based on an implicit assumption that transmitting a message from Beth to Adam cannot have any effect on the game except through Adam’s reaction, but that’s not true here because isn’t a unified agent, so transmitting can change the game (by affecting other members of ) even if refuses to react to it. does not get a veto on changing the game, like Adam does. Chris does not need to be listening in order for Adam and Beth to strike a mutually-beneficial deal at his expense.
So the inference that as a group cannot be profiting is invalid.
(Also note that your claim proves too much: If this were accepted, you haven’t proven that false messages are useless, you’ve proven that all messages are useless.)
Have you talked explicitly with them about the norms you’d like to have? I, for one, would not have assumed that “don’t try to manipulate other players to your own advantage” would be an expected norm, but would probably be willing to go along with it if the group asked me to.
You also might consider offering to play with a handicap, so that they don’t feel that they need to target you to prevent you from winning too often.
As a rule of thumb, I strongly approve of play groups mutually agreeing on whatever rules and norms work best for them. But I also think that trying to win (within the rules) is a pretty good default norm, and shouldn’t be interpreted as a defection if you haven’t agreed on something else. I don’t think “having honest conversations” is the primary value proposition that games offer to most gamers, and in fact I can think of several popular games with dynamics that preclude it.
I do notice that you seem quite confident that this is harming your enjoyment more than it’s helping anyone else’s, and this seems...plausible, but not self-evident to me, based on the information provided. Some people really like politicking in games. It’s also the sort of thing you’d be tempted to believe even if it weren’t true, which is cause for epistemic caution.
Supposing it’s true that this is more important to you than to everyone else combined, then I think they probably ought to be willing to negotiate to follow your norms, but that you should expect to give them something else in return (even if it’s just owing them one). Try to strike a deal that’s a positive for every individual, not merely positive-sum. You shouldn’t be able to demand people accommodate you just by being a utility monster. (Though you absolutely should be allowed to stop playing, if that’s your BATNA...and if they care more about having you play with them than they do about the norms, then playing with them could perhaps be the payment for changing the norms.)
I appreciate your replies. I did talk explicitly with them about this before writing my comment. I learned they were committed to social manipulation, though they did agree to target me less. I like your suggestion of a handicap, and I might bring that up next time we play.
I agree that I was underestimating how fun social manipulation is. Looking back, when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos. So, I think I’m being hypocritical and annoyingly principled. Why draw the line at in-person games?[1]
I remember them repeating something like, “it’s really fun to play the social manipulation game, it’s not all about winning.” I told them (paraphrasing), “okay, but can’t you do that after following the norm for awhile, so everyone has gotten better at the game? Then you get the enjoyment of social manipulation plus the enjoyment of an interesting game!” They said they didn’t really care for that. They didn’t elaborate. My guess is their discount rate is lower, or maybe it’s more fun to manipulate people who don’t understand the game.
I did tell them that I’m probably going to just stop playing Settler’s of Catan with them. As you said, I should seek to strike a mutually beneficial deal, and I don’t think that’s actually possible here. The game is just as fun without me—maybe more fun, because the competition is gone. What selfish rational incentive is there to play a less fun game just so I can play a more fun game?
To be more charitable, the line is when with significantly less skilled players. Online Catan? Not cool. Offline SH? Not cool. Online SH? Go for it. It’s still norm breaking since players want to win, and sewing chaos hurts your team’s chances. It’s a different norm, but maybe one people care about more, and makes me a hypocrite regardless.
In principle, IF the norms are more important to you than to everyone else combined, then there should be some amount you can pay them that is higher than how much they care about the norms but lower than how much you care about them.
(In practice, finding that amount may be hard, and treating it too much like a transaction may have friendship-corroding effects.)
I think this is much more of a culture clash than an issue of principle. My board game culture is that players should try to win, which entails both (a) treating the social environment of the game as part of the field of play and (b) understanding which players are your greatest threats and acting accordingly. So to me your opponent is doing exactly what they should. Now, “he’s targeting me and manipulating you all” may be a good strategic move within the game, but outside the game, in my culture, it’s not a valid complaint.
That we have different cultural expectations was really driven home for me when I saw your “when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos” below. In my culture taking actions that make you less likely to win because chaos is fun is absolutely not done, and is seen as making the game worse for everyone else. And doing it in a team game where people are trying to decode complex signals and solve a puzzle is beyond the pale for me.
Talking openly about this with your friends, as you discuss below, is good. But mostly my takeaway is that some people shouldn’t play board games with some other people.
Defect back. Next time you’re in a game with him, make sure he loses—pick another player at the table, and make trades with them that are wildly unfair in that other player’s favor.
I think that ordinarily, social manipulation games do not erode the norm of being able to have honest conversations. I think you are on some level aware of the norms I’m going to describe and are acting in accordance with them, I just want to describe them explicitly. As I understand them, the norms for playing social manipulation games is that there is a distinction between statements made with the game and statements made outside the game. Statements made within the game are not bound by the norms of honesty outside of the game. A player lying or misleading within a game does not impact their reputation outside the game, tho it may impact a reputation a playing is trying to maintain within the game that other players are tracking separately. There is an implicit agreement by joining a social manipulation game to suspend these rules of honesty.
A difficulty is that like all implicit agreements the details of it can be misunderstood; in particular, it can ambiguous which statements are made within the game and outside the game. Certainly not every statement within the duration of the game is within the game in this sense — if a player says “I have an important appointment so I need to stop playing soon” and is lying then that would be a genuine norm-violating dishonesty. In casual game-playing people often discuss the strategy of the game during the game and that can be considered statements outside the game. This is especially true for a game like Settlers of Catan which is not primarily a social manipulation game, tho it involves some social strategizing. If a false or misleading statement is made which some people think is within the game and others think is outside the game then that does lead to a genuine degradation of the norm of honesty.
One way to remedy this is to aim to be more explicit about the norms of the game before playing. For example, in your case, asking the other player whether they agree to not trick or target people. If they disagree, the explictness has nonetheless deescalated the dispute from a challenge to personal integrity into a disagreement on how to play games. This disagreement can still be acrimonious, for example leading the two of you not to play games together, but I think it’s an improvement.
From this community, Michael Vassar seems in my head to be a central example. In that orbit there’s also Ben Hoffman.
I’m not sure whether the timing is accidental or causal, but there’s also one older example of this community that quite recently resurfaced in a bigger discussion a week ago, where it would probably be harmful to be more explicit.
I can’t really parse this post due to the lack of examples. Is it too much trouble to give some harmless ones?
I feel this way about animal rights. Look up footage from factory farms. Look up the statistics about how many animals are factory farmed. Look up the science on animal sentience. Look up how to eat a healthy diet without animal products. I won’t get into the arguments beyond that but we’re so terrible to animals that I think we should not do any animal agriculture at all, and I took the liberation pledge, so I don’t eat at tables where people are eating animal products.
This pledge vaguely reminds me of the GNU GPL, a license that developers put on their open-source software if they prefer their software, and all its derivatives, doesn’t “eat at tables” (get distributed) within non-open-source software. So it’s trying to spread open-source software as much as possible, which seems like a goal similar to the abolishing all IP law mentioned by @Breck Yunits in a sibling comment.
I wonder how universal and effective this “viral” approach to spreading unconventional norms is.
It’s a good question, and it reminds me of a point from a recent veritasium video, where in networks of prisoners dilemna’s you can get really good results if cooperators (tit-for-tat ish) also have a rule of “cutting contact” with defectors who defect too often. It’s been a while since I watched the video, and I haven’t really thought deeply about it’s implications, and networks of bots playing prisoners dilemna games are very different from human social networks, so take this comment with a nice helping of salt. I’ll edit this comment with the video link if I find it
edit: around 24 minutes in to here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYlon2tvywA
edit: according to the liberation pledge site, https://www.theliberationpledge.com/, it’s also the strategy used by the campaign to end foot binding in china. Whether that’s actually true, or they made it up, or distorted the reality, or what, I have no idea. They don’t cite sources on it and I haven’t bothered to look it up.
It does seem to be a strategy that depends on you having something others want. In the prisoners dilemna case, your cooperation. In the foot binding case, a daughter or son to marry. In the gpl case, high quality software. In the liberation pledge case, good company (in my experience, I’m not a very social person anyways nor am I the life of the party, so it’s primarily had an impact on my family, who I’m pretty sure eat way more vegan food than they would if I didn’t have such a strict approach).
Probably not harmless, but: I see myself in Rae’s post.
I actually have extremely passionate and direct things to say about the style of doomerism here. I think it’s deeply destructive and harmful and keeps creating damage unnecessarily, and the refusal to hear that message is selfish and a sign of serious mental illness at a collective level. I think there’s a better way, and it’s both more pleasant and a moral imperative to go that way instead. I’ve tried to speak about all this here many times, but I keep hitting mechanisms that Rae’s post extremely reminds me of.
E.g. I’m still not sorry for having written “Here’s the exit”. I suspect my saying so will cause this comment to get downvoted, and possibly have several people insisting I’m an Alex and not an Alice. And yet, as many haters as I’ve gotten for that post and for my lack of remorse for having written it, I’ve gotten roughly as many people DMing me or talking to me in person thanking me for it, some saying that it gave them their life back. I don’t like the hate, it hurts, but I’ll gladly take it if that’s the price of standing for what’s right.
If I were more skillful, I’d navigate the norms here in a respectful way that massages the truth into visibility. And I’m occasionally that skilled. But most of the time I’m just not. I can be gentle and polite, but then my points don’t seem to make a ripple. So I have to be kind of extreme and unreasonable to get the moral point heard here. Which enacts the Alice mechanism.
I mean, maybe there’s a more moderate way of expressing the problem I see that’s actually more accurate, but because of the kind of resistance I’ve run into, the only way for me to hold onto the thing I see is to be kind of crazy and extreme about it, which increases resistance. Commence loop.
I could give other examples from my interactions with the rationalist space. I seem to be particularly prone toward Alice-ness here. But hopefully the one example helps flesh out (what I see as) Rae’s message.
I’m curious if you self-identify with the “getting a bit more paranoid/traumatized by people’s response” part?
Oh absolutely. It’s an unwholesome attractor for me, and is part of why I try not to focus my time/attention on LW. I’ve gotten to where, whether accurate or not, my gut-level feeling is that LW kind of hates me and is hostile toward me, and I have to watch my step to be allowed to breathe around here. I try to hold a solid spine and not care about that hostility, both because I don’t want to create it if it’s not there and also because I think it’s unjust and I don’t want to succumb to bullies. But it’s tricky because the perceived vibe grabs me at an animal level.
E.g. it’s hard for me not to make stories about the fact that the comment you’re replying to right now has 3 karma and 4 votes. Meaning some are downvoting it. Why? I don’t know. Very hard not to make stories that feed the paranoid view.
Yeah I would have to agree…. there is way too much doomerism on LW…. to an absurd degree nowadays. Some users seriously need to go outside and smell the roses, so to speak.
It seems like most of the moderates, who acknowledged risks of extinction are above zero but not some huge percentage, have left.
It was always there before too…. but somehow it didn’t seem as disturbing. Perhaps the greatly increased popularity of ai topics, societal relevance, LW popularity, etc., all contributed.
The increasingly burdensome kayfabes around an increasing number of sensitive topics also greatly suppress the once entertaining and more light hearted discussions, so there isnt even that to balance it out.
Hi, I’m an example.
I haven’t met Duncan in person, but given what I do know of him, I agree.
Also btw these days I hang out in a garden where ~everyone gets it/is filtered on getting it, and:
The garden is fucking rad, good shit routinely happens there that individuals tell me never happens anywhere else on Earth in their experience (which is sorta weak evidence; other similarly good gardens are probably scattered all over but still)
I’m like pretty much happy all the time/don’t have triggers on the trauma that Ray talks about in the OP/generally don’t get angry or feel gaslit. 10-100x better than prior to mostly-vanishing behind the wall.
It’s all very proof-of-concept and super hella validating/”you’re not right about everything but you were very very right about Those Dozen Things.”
I’m an Alice.
It sucks. My life is suffering. You wouldn’t believe what’s been done to me the past four years. Kicked out of YCombinator? Banned from HackerNews? Bank accounts frozen and money stolen? Thrown in jail with no charges? All of those things sure, but those are pinpricks compared to the truly beyond-the-pale cruel thing they’ve done to me.
My X is ~ delete all IP laws. High bit is they weaken minds and local communities and unless you are wealthy are far worse than people understand.
I’ve been an open knowledge activist since 2004, when I was 20. Mostly participating here and there with some guerilla projects.
But the conspiring against me didn’t start until 2021.
That’s when I began to non-anonymously try and shift the system using the resources I had accumulated.
I’ll give it to Bob and Charlie—they hit me and hit me _hard_. I thoroughly underestimated their capacity for cruelty. I didn’t think people would stoop that low.
An Alice has to be patient, non-violent, believe that the truth will set them free, and after a loss willing to go back to the drawing board until they have a strategy that Bob and Charlie can’t stop.
I’m a carpenter now. Good people, honest work, and I don’t have to compromise on any principles.
But because I won’t abandon X, the conspiracy against me continues, and I endure the worst kind of suffering day in and day out.
To have allies who, even if they disagreed with me, could fight for me and say what they are doing to me is plain cruel and needs to stop, that would be nice.
I don’t think there are trivially harmless ones, but, agree the lack of examples sucks. I’ll think on it.
historical/fictional ones show the mechanism well enough, without actually pointing targets at anyone (I added some here)
Here is a relatively low-stakes one: I play Settlers of Catan with a group. It’s generally fun, but much less fun when one person shows up. Why? They routinely target me. For example, they will bribe other players to rob me or lie about other player’s best placements to hurt mine. “I know you’re better at this game than the other players, so I’ve got to preemptively target you. And Settlers of Catan is a social game, you’ve got to play with the players you have, not just with perfectly rational agents.”
It sucks to be on the receiving end of the targeting, much more than the little joy they get from targeting me. It also erodes a norm I think is important in making games fun: the ability to have honest conversations. With honest conversations you can suggest mutually beneficial moves, making the game more interesting and improving everyone’s skill level over time. Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty. However, in social manipulation games where players attempt to convince others to make suboptimal plays, this trust disappears. ‘I’m not sure I believe him; I’m just going to have to trust my own gut and maybe do an analysis at the end of the game.’
I’m the crazy Alex here. I get upset, call them a liar, and everyone looks at me like I’m overreacting. It’s just a game. Worst case scenario I can stop playing games with this group when this guy is around. But it’s hard to explain why I suddenly don’t want to play.
“I feel like he targets me, and then goes around lying, manipulating, and eroding good game-playing norms for funsies. The game is no longer fun with him around.”
“Oh c’mon, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? It’s just part of the game.”
Also, why should I be the one to stop playing when he’s the one playing negative-sum games?
Been thinking more about this claim:
I don’t think this claim particularly matters to the thrust of your post, since I think we agree that you’re not playing with perfectly rational agents, but I’m interested in the claim as a matter of game theory.
To be clear, I’m interpreting this as saying something at least as strong as: “In a game of Catan where there is common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational, speaking a falsehood is never more advantageous for the speaker than remaining silent.”
After pondering this for about 20 minutes, I’m pretty convinced the claim is false, and I suspect you are over-generalizing from two-player games.
If Adam and Beth are playing a two-player zero-sum game, and Adam knows that Beth is perfectly rational, then:
If Beth reacts in any way to anything Adam says, then that reaction must be beneficial to Beth (since she is assumed perfectly rational), which means it must be harmful to Adam (because the game is zero-sum), which means Adam shouldn’t have said it.
By similar reasoning, if Beth says anything (that’s not required by the rules), then the fact that she said it can’t be harmful to herself, which means it can’t be beneficial to Adam, which means whatever Adam does in response won’t be (predictably) better than what he would have done anyway.
Therefore, Adam can safely adopt a policy of never saying anything and ignoring whatever Beth says, and this will be no worse than any other policy.
But Catan is played with at least 3 players. The game as a whole is zero-sum, but it’s possible for an action to benefit both Adam and Beth at the same time, provided it harms Chris.[1]
In a non-zero-sum negotiation, it is sometimes helpful to share information in order to coordinate on a mutually-beneficial action. So silence is not, in general, a global optimum.
But if there are situations where you would share some information if it were true, and the other player is aware of this, then silence becomes a tacit admission that it’s not true. So it might become necessary to lie in order to avoid passively leaking secrets.
The lie will only be believable if it’s a claim you would have made if it were true, which sharply limits what lies you can tell. But it does not, in general, limit it to the empty set.
This is not a proof, since I have not constructed an example game position where I can mathematically demonstrate that all of the relevant properties apply at the same time. It is conceivable there’s some reason that hasn’t occurred to me that they can’t all apply at the same time. But I have no candidates for what such a reason would be, and my brief Internet searches have failed to turn up any known result that matches the original claim.
Do you think I’ve missed something?
I’m not sure if this is known art, but I’ve found it helpful to think of zero-sum-ness as applying to a set of players rather than to a game. In a 3-player Catan game with Adam, Beth, and Chris, the set (Adam, Beth, Chris) is zero-sum, but the set (Adam, Beth) is non-zero-sum.
Note that any non-zero-sum game can be converted to a strategically-equivalent zero-sum game by adding a dummy player whose score is the negative sum of all other players’ scores (or vice versa, by adding a dummy player whose score isn’t that), so it cannot be strategically important whether “the whole game” is zero-sum if we haven’t changed the zero-sum-ness of any particular subset of players.
Consider the 2-player game where A is allowed to broadcast a public message, then B is allowed to press one of 9 buttons or pass, and then A and B receive a result. Add a dummy player C as you suggested if you wish to make the game “zero sum” among 3 players rather than non-zero-sum among 2 players.
Rules:
* 10% of the time, all buttons are red, while 90% of the time, a uniform random single one of the buttons is blue while all other buttons are red.
* If B presses a blue button the resulting utility for (A,B) is (1, 1). If B presses a red button the result is (0, 0). If B passes, the result is (-1, 0.5).
* A has private information—only A can see the color of the buttons. B (and C, if C exists) is colorblind/blindfolded/whatever, but aside from that the rules of the game are common knowledge.
The following is a Nash equilibrium:
* If one of the buttons is blue, A always says truthfully which button is blue.
* If no button is blue, A picks one of the buttons uniformly at random and lies and says that button is blue.
* B always trusts A and presses the button that A claims was blue.
This is a Nash equilibrium because no player can do better in expectation by unilaterally deviating from this protocol. (A is receiving the maximum possible utility they can in every scenario so A cannot improve by unilaterally deviating. B doesn’t see the button colors so it boils down to trust A and get expected utility 0.9, or pass and get utility 0.5, so B should continue to trust A even though A lies sometimes).
Does this provide the kind of example you were thinking of?
Yes, that is the sort of example I meant. Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
Based on his other reply, I expect James would want to point out that there is an equivalent equilibrium where player A, instead of saying “button N is blue”, says “either button N is blue or no button is”, which produces the same outcome without technically lying.
I’m coming to think that there should be some other distinction we can draw that rhymes with the truthful/lying distinction but that talks about consequences instead of semantics, and therefore can’t be dodged by relabeling the signals. Still thinking about it.
A has 7 points, “Year of Plenty” card, 1 brick and 3 wood. A can get Longest Road either by building 4 roads or by breaking B’s road with a settlement, but to build this settlement A has to first build one road.
B has 9 points including 2 points from Longest Road and enough resources so they can build a settlement in one turn unless 7 is rolled.
C has 9 points, 1 brick and can maybe win in one turn depending on dice rolls.
A’s turn.
A: “I have Road Builder card, 3 wood, but only 1 brick. C, can you sell me brick for wood? I will build 4 roads, get Longest Road, B will not win in their turn and then we both have a chance.”
C: “I don’t really need wood, but I see that B probably wins if we don’t do it, so OK.”
A plays “Year of Plenty”, takes grain and wool, builds one road and a settlement, wins the game.
I do not have a formal proof, but here is an outline:
Consider a message
If it is beneficial to transmit
The subsets
Thus, for
Also, if there are several coalition-forming messages, and one of them leads to the highest payoff whether or not it is true, it is always beneficial to transmit that message, so it is cheap talk.
Therefore, the highest-payoff coalition-forming message is either true or silence.
The third step is a little tricky. What if the coalition forming itself benefits everyone in
Your final sentence clarified some things for me:
In that sentence, you are not arguing that the lie is no better than silence, you are arguing that it is no better than some truthful message. (This is technically still a falsification of my previously-stated interpretation of your claim.)
This argument is based on the assumption that the other players already know all circumstances under which you would transmit this message, so there’s no harm in admitting them.
I now realize that if all players have perfect knowledge of the exact conditions under which you would transmit some message, then the actual informational payload of every message is that those conditions are true. (Even with a randomized strategy, you can just interpret the RNG output as part of the conditions.) You might as well literally say “message #27”. Classifying the message itself as truth or lie becomes academic, because no one is expected or intended to pay attention to its face-value claim, and in fact there’s no reason for it to make a face-value claim at all. (Under this very strong assumption.)
So if we’re going to assume players have perfect knowledge of each others’ strategies (including what messages they send under what circumstances), I no longer think it makes sense to distinguish “true” and “false” messages.
I note that “common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational” does not (I think) logically entail perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy, since a game can have more than one Nash equilibrium. So technically neither of us stated “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” as an assumption in the first place, though I admit I sort of hand-waved towards it when I talked about what players would infer from your failure to say something.
I still think that if we don’t assume “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” then lying is potentially beneficial.
Given that clarification, I’m not sure if your numbered chain of reasoning is a crux for either of us, but for the record I found that chain extremely confusing to read, I think step 3 is invalid, and your final paragraph (after the numbered list) was the only part of the comment I found helpful.
In step 3, you seem to be trying to treat the groups
So the inference that
(Also note that your claim proves too much: If this were accepted, you haven’t proven that false messages are useless, you’ve proven that all messages are useless.)
Have you talked explicitly with them about the norms you’d like to have? I, for one, would not have assumed that “don’t try to manipulate other players to your own advantage” would be an expected norm, but would probably be willing to go along with it if the group asked me to.
You also might consider offering to play with a handicap, so that they don’t feel that they need to target you to prevent you from winning too often.
As a rule of thumb, I strongly approve of play groups mutually agreeing on whatever rules and norms work best for them. But I also think that trying to win (within the rules) is a pretty good default norm, and shouldn’t be interpreted as a defection if you haven’t agreed on something else. I don’t think “having honest conversations” is the primary value proposition that games offer to most gamers, and in fact I can think of several popular games with dynamics that preclude it.
I do notice that you seem quite confident that this is harming your enjoyment more than it’s helping anyone else’s, and this seems...plausible, but not self-evident to me, based on the information provided. Some people really like politicking in games. It’s also the sort of thing you’d be tempted to believe even if it weren’t true, which is cause for epistemic caution.
Supposing it’s true that this is more important to you than to everyone else combined, then I think they probably ought to be willing to negotiate to follow your norms, but that you should expect to give them something else in return (even if it’s just owing them one). Try to strike a deal that’s a positive for every individual, not merely positive-sum. You shouldn’t be able to demand people accommodate you just by being a utility monster. (Though you absolutely should be allowed to stop playing, if that’s your BATNA...and if they care more about having you play with them than they do about the norms, then playing with them could perhaps be the payment for changing the norms.)
I appreciate your replies. I did talk explicitly with them about this before writing my comment. I learned they were committed to social manipulation, though they did agree to target me less. I like your suggestion of a handicap, and I might bring that up next time we play.
I agree that I was underestimating how fun social manipulation is. Looking back, when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos. So, I think I’m being hypocritical and annoyingly principled. Why draw the line at in-person games? [1]
I remember them repeating something like, “it’s really fun to play the social manipulation game, it’s not all about winning.” I told them (paraphrasing), “okay, but can’t you do that after following the norm for awhile, so everyone has gotten better at the game? Then you get the enjoyment of social manipulation plus the enjoyment of an interesting game!” They said they didn’t really care for that. They didn’t elaborate. My guess is their discount rate is lower, or maybe it’s more fun to manipulate people who don’t understand the game.
I did tell them that I’m probably going to just stop playing Settler’s of Catan with them. As you said, I should seek to strike a mutually beneficial deal, and I don’t think that’s actually possible here. The game is just as fun without me—maybe more fun, because the competition is gone. What selfish rational incentive is there to play a less fun game just so I can play a more fun game?
To be more charitable, the line is when with significantly less skilled players. Online Catan? Not cool. Offline SH? Not cool. Online SH? Go for it. It’s still norm breaking since players want to win, and sewing chaos hurts your team’s chances. It’s a different norm, but maybe one people care about more, and makes me a hypocrite regardless.
In principle, IF the norms are more important to you than to everyone else combined, then there should be some amount you can pay them that is higher than how much they care about the norms but lower than how much you care about them.
(In practice, finding that amount may be hard, and treating it too much like a transaction may have friendship-corroding effects.)
I think this is much more of a culture clash than an issue of principle. My board game culture is that players should try to win, which entails both (a) treating the social environment of the game as part of the field of play and (b) understanding which players are your greatest threats and acting accordingly. So to me your opponent is doing exactly what they should. Now, “he’s targeting me and manipulating you all” may be a good strategic move within the game, but outside the game, in my culture, it’s not a valid complaint.
That we have different cultural expectations was really driven home for me when I saw your “when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos” below. In my culture taking actions that make you less likely to win because chaos is fun is absolutely not done, and is seen as making the game worse for everyone else. And doing it in a team game where people are trying to decode complex signals and solve a puzzle is beyond the pale for me.
Talking openly about this with your friends, as you discuss below, is good. But mostly my takeaway is that some people shouldn’t play board games with some other people.
Defect back. Next time you’re in a game with him, make sure he loses—pick another player at the table, and make trades with them that are wildly unfair in that other player’s favor.
I think that ordinarily, social manipulation games do not erode the norm of being able to have honest conversations. I think you are on some level aware of the norms I’m going to describe and are acting in accordance with them, I just want to describe them explicitly. As I understand them, the norms for playing social manipulation games is that there is a distinction between statements made with the game and statements made outside the game. Statements made within the game are not bound by the norms of honesty outside of the game. A player lying or misleading within a game does not impact their reputation outside the game, tho it may impact a reputation a playing is trying to maintain within the game that other players are tracking separately. There is an implicit agreement by joining a social manipulation game to suspend these rules of honesty.
A difficulty is that like all implicit agreements the details of it can be misunderstood; in particular, it can ambiguous which statements are made within the game and outside the game. Certainly not every statement within the duration of the game is within the game in this sense — if a player says “I have an important appointment so I need to stop playing soon” and is lying then that would be a genuine norm-violating dishonesty. In casual game-playing people often discuss the strategy of the game during the game and that can be considered statements outside the game. This is especially true for a game like Settlers of Catan which is not primarily a social manipulation game, tho it involves some social strategizing. If a false or misleading statement is made which some people think is within the game and others think is outside the game then that does lead to a genuine degradation of the norm of honesty.
One way to remedy this is to aim to be more explicit about the norms of the game before playing. For example, in your case, asking the other player whether they agree to not trick or target people. If they disagree, the explictness has nonetheless deescalated the dispute from a challenge to personal integrity into a disagreement on how to play games. This disagreement can still be acrimonious, for example leading the two of you not to play games together, but I think it’s an improvement.
From this community, Michael Vassar seems in my head to be a central example. In that orbit there’s also Ben Hoffman.
I’m not sure whether the timing is accidental or causal, but there’s also one older example of this community that quite recently resurfaced in a bigger discussion a week ago, where it would probably be harmful to be more explicit.