Your foolish ‘leaders’ have given your generals an incentive scheme that encourages them to risk you being nuked for their glory.
I call on all citizens of EastWrong and WestWrong to commit to pursuing vengeance against their generals[1] if and only if your side ends up being nuked. Only thus can we align incentives among those who bear the power of life and death!
For freedom! For prosperity! And for not being nuked!
Just check their profile for posts that do deserve it that you were previously unaware of. You can even throw a few upvotes at their well-written comments. It’s not brigading, it’s just a little systemic bias in your duties as a user with upvote-downvote authority.
Lol, I mean, kind of fair, but mass-downvoting is still against the rules and we’ll take moderation action against people who do (though writing angry comments isn’t).
If the designers of Petrov Day are allowed to offer arbitrary 1k-karma incentives to generals to nuke people, but the citizens are not allowed to impose their own incentives, that creates an obvious power issue. Surely ‘you randomly get +1k karma for nuking people’ is a larger moderation problem than ‘you get −1k karma for angering large numbers of other users’.
Such is life under a government. We have the monopoly on violence.This does unfortunately often imply power issues, but probably still better than anarchy and karma wars in the streets.
Accepting a governmental monopoly on violence for the sake of avoiding anarchy is valuable to the extent that the government is performing better than anarchy. This is usually true, but stops being true when the government starts trying to start a nuclear war.
Have you watched Les Miserables? Watching it completely changed the vibe of this song for me, such that it pretty much makes the opposite point now than it did before.
I have. I think that overall Les Mis is rather more favorable to revolutionaries than I am. For one thing, it wants us to ignore the fact that we know what will happen when Enjolras’s ideological successors eventually succeed, and that it will not be good.
(The fact that you’re using the word ‘watched’ makes me suspect that you may have seen the movie, which is honestly a large downgrade from the musical.)
Ahem, as one of LW’s few resident Frenchmen, I must interpose to say that yes, this was not the Big Famous Guillotine French revolution everyone talks about, but one of the ~ 2,456^2 other revolutions that went on in our otherwise very calm history.
Specifically, we refer to the Les Mis revolution as “Les barricades” mostly because the people of Paris stuck barricades everywhere and fought against authority because they didn’t like the king the other powers of Europe put into place after Napoleon’s defeat. They failed that time, but succeeded 15 years later with another revolution (to put a different king in place).
Victor Hugo loved Napoleon with a passion, and was definitely on the side of the revolutionaries here (though he was but a wee boy when this happened, about the age of Gavroche).
Later, in the 1850s (I’m skipping over a few revolutions, including the one that got rid of kings again), when Haussmann was busy bringing 90% of medieval Paris to rubble to replace it with the homogenous architecture we so admire in Ratatouille today, Napoleon the IIIrd had the great idea to demolish whole blocks and replace them with wide streets (like the Champs Elisées) to make barricade revolutions harder to do.
Final note: THANK YOU LW TEAM for making àccénts like thìs possible with the typeface. They used to look bloated.
That’s not quite true. Les Mis starts in 1815, but the book spans decades and the revolution is in 1832, a short-lived uprising against the king who got in power two years before, in the 1830 revolution against the dynasty the other European powers restored after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
Ah right, the decades part—I had written about the 1930 revolution, commune, and bourbon destitution, then checked the dates online and stupidly thought “ah, it must be just 1815 then” and only talked about that. Thanks
This is a leak, so keep it between you and me, but the big twist to this years Petrov Day event is that Generals who are nuked will be forced to watch the 2012 film on repeat.
It doesn’t have to be mass-downvoting in the sense of one user downvoting a mass of post/comments. Rather a mass of users downvoting a few comments each. 150 citizens * 10 downvotes each more than wipes out the 1000 karma victory bonus.
I can assure you that past LessWrong users have explored a large fraction of the space of possible ways to coordinate and facilitate mass-downvoting. I can also assure you that we have plenty of experience nevertheless identifying those patterns and moderating people in response.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to suggest that citizens could break the rules without getting caught. I was suggesting that they could disincentivize nuking without breaking the rules. If coordinated, distributed, mass downvoting is also disallowed, then we would have to come up with some other incentive.
Anti-moderative action will be taken in response if you stand in the way of justice, perhaps by contacting those hackers and giving them creative ideas. Be forewarned.
Are you trying to prime people to harass the generals?
Besides, it’s not mass downvoting, it’s just that the increased attention to their accounts revealed a bunch of poorly written comments that people genuinely disagree with and happen to independently decide are worthy of a downvote :)
Are you trying to prime people to harass the generals?
Genuinely not sure what you are referring to. I think it’s reasonable to be a bit annoyed at generals who get you nuked, but I mean, if someone starts going overboard we will also moderate that.
Besides, it’s not mass downvoting, it’s just that the increased attention to their accounts revealed a bunch of poorly written comments that people genuinely disagree with and happen to independently decide are worthy of a downvote :)
Well, in that case, it’s not moderation for downvoting, it’s just increased attention from the moderators re-evaluating the degree to which someone is genuinely contributing positively to the site, and happen to independently decide someone is worthy of some moderation warnings :P
You’re suggesting angry comments as an alternative for mass retributive downvoting. That easily implies mass retributive angry comments.
As for policing against systemic bias in policing, that’s a difficult problem that society struggles with in many different areas because people can be good at excusing their biases. What if one of the generals genuinely makes a comment people disagree with? How can you determine to what extent people’s choice to downvote was due to an unauthorized motivation?
It seems hard to police without acting draconically.
We could instead pre-commit to not engage with any nuker’s future posts/comments (and at worse comment to encourage others to not engage) until end-of-year.
During WWII, the CIA produced and distributed an entire manual (well worth reading) about how workers could conduct deniable sabotage in the German-occupied territories.
(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production
(a) Organizations and Conferences
Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
Make speeches, talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate patriotic comments.
When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
It’d be important to cache the karma of all users > 1000 atm, in order to credibly signal you know which generals were part of the nuking/nuked side. Would anyone be willing to do that in the next 2 & 1⁄2 hours? (ie the earliest we could be nuked)
Oops, someone left a comment deanonymizing them early. Seems like a mistake on our part that it was able to be learned.
I’ve removed the comment for now, I’d make a request to not post it until the game is over (e.g. in an hour, or tomorrow). I won’t remove the comment again if it’s posted, but as I say I think it’d be better if they’re announced tomorrow in the wrap-up post.
CITIZENS! YOU ARE BETRAYED!
Your foolish ‘leaders’ have given your generals an incentive scheme that encourages them to risk you being nuked for their glory.
I call on all citizens of EastWrong and WestWrong to commit to pursuing vengeance against their generals[1] if and only if your side ends up being nuked. Only thus can we align incentives among those who bear the power of life and death!
For freedom! For prosperity! And for not being nuked!
By mass-downvoting all their posts once their identities are revealed.
Launching nukes is one thing, but downvoting posts that don’t deserve it? I’m not sure I want to retaliate that strongly.
Do we fight for the right
To a night at the opera now?
Have you asked of yourselves
What’s the price you might pay?
Is it simply a game
For rich young boys to play?
Just check their profile for posts that do deserve it that you were previously unaware of. You can even throw a few upvotes at their well-written comments. It’s not brigading, it’s just a little systemic bias in your duties as a user with upvote-downvote authority.
Lol, I mean, kind of fair, but mass-downvoting is still against the rules and we’ll take moderation action against people who do (though writing angry comments isn’t).
If the designers of Petrov Day are allowed to offer arbitrary 1k-karma incentives to generals to nuke people, but the citizens are not allowed to impose their own incentives, that creates an obvious power issue. Surely ‘you randomly get +1k karma for nuking people’ is a larger moderation problem than ‘you get −1k karma for angering large numbers of other users’.
No, wait, that was the wrong way to put it...
Such is life under a government. We have the monopoly on violence.This does unfortunately often imply power issues, but probably still better than anarchy and karma wars in the streets.
Accepting a governmental monopoly on violence for the sake of avoiding anarchy is valuable to the extent that the government is performing better than anarchy. This is usually true, but stops being true when the government starts trying to start a nuclear war.
Have you watched Les Miserables? Watching it completely changed the vibe of this song for me, such that it pretty much makes the opposite point now than it did before.
I have. I think that overall Les Mis is rather more favorable to revolutionaries than I am. For one thing, it wants us to ignore the fact that we know what will happen when Enjolras’s ideological successors eventually succeed, and that it will not be good.
(The fact that you’re using the word ‘watched’ makes me suspect that you may have seen the movie, which is honestly a large downgrade from the musical.)
Isn’t Les Mis set in the second French Revolution (1815 according to wikipedia) not the one that led to the Reign of Terror (which was in the 1790s)?
Ahem, as one of LW’s few resident Frenchmen, I must interpose to say that yes, this was not the Big Famous Guillotine French revolution everyone talks about, but one of the ~ 2,456^2 other revolutions that went on in our otherwise very calm history.
Specifically, we refer to the Les Mis revolution as “Les barricades” mostly because the people of Paris stuck barricades everywhere and fought against authority because they didn’t like the king the other powers of Europe put into place after Napoleon’s defeat. They failed that time, but succeeded 15 years later with another revolution (to put a different king in place).
Victor Hugo loved Napoleon with a passion, and was definitely on the side of the revolutionaries here (though he was but a wee boy when this happened, about the age of Gavroche).
Later, in the 1850s (I’m skipping over a few revolutions, including the one that got rid of kings again), when Haussmann was busy bringing 90% of medieval Paris to rubble to replace it with the homogenous architecture we so admire in Ratatouille today, Napoleon the IIIrd had the great idea to demolish whole blocks and replace them with wide streets (like the Champs Elisées) to make barricade revolutions harder to do.
Final note: THANK YOU LW TEAM for making àccénts like thìs possible with the typeface. They used to look bloated.
That’s not quite true. Les Mis starts in 1815, but the book spans decades and the revolution is in 1832, a short-lived uprising against the king who got in power two years before, in the 1830 revolution against the dynasty the other European powers restored after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
Ah right, the decades part—I had written about the 1930 revolution, commune, and bourbon destitution, then checked the dates online and stupidly thought “ah, it must be just 1815 then” and only talked about that. Thanks
“second” laughcries in french
This is a leak, so keep it between you and me, but the big twist to this years Petrov Day event is that Generals who are nuked will be forced to watch the 2012 film on repeat.
Eeeesh. I know I’ve been calling for a reign of terror with heads on spikes and all that, but I think that seems like going a bit too far.
It doesn’t have to be mass-downvoting in the sense of one user downvoting a mass of post/comments. Rather a mass of users downvoting a few comments each. 150 citizens * 10 downvotes each more than wipes out the 1000 karma victory bonus.
I can assure you that past LessWrong users have explored a large fraction of the space of possible ways to coordinate and facilitate mass-downvoting. I can also assure you that we have plenty of experience nevertheless identifying those patterns and moderating people in response.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to suggest that citizens could break the rules without getting caught. I was suggesting that they could disincentivize nuking without breaking the rules. If coordinated, distributed, mass downvoting is also disallowed, then we would have to come up with some other incentive.
Anti-moderative action will be taken in response if you stand in the way of justice, perhaps by contacting those hackers and giving them creative ideas. Be forewarned.
Are you trying to prime people to harass the generals?
Besides, it’s not mass downvoting, it’s just that the increased attention to their accounts revealed a bunch of poorly written comments that people genuinely disagree with and happen to independently decide are worthy of a downvote :)
Genuinely not sure what you are referring to. I think it’s reasonable to be a bit annoyed at generals who get you nuked, but I mean, if someone starts going overboard we will also moderate that.
Well, in that case, it’s not moderation for downvoting, it’s just increased attention from the moderators re-evaluating the degree to which someone is genuinely contributing positively to the site, and happen to independently decide someone is worthy of some moderation warnings :P
You’re suggesting angry comments as an alternative for mass retributive downvoting. That easily implies mass retributive angry comments.
As for policing against systemic bias in policing, that’s a difficult problem that society struggles with in many different areas because people can be good at excusing their biases. What if one of the generals genuinely makes a comment people disagree with? How can you determine to what extent people’s choice to downvote was due to an unauthorized motivation?
It seems hard to police without acting draconically.
We could instead pre-commit to not engage with any nuker’s future posts/comments (and at worse comment to encourage others to not engage) until end-of-year.
Or only include nit-picking comments.
During WWII, the CIA produced and distributed an entire manual (well worth reading) about how workers could conduct deniable sabotage in the German-occupied territories.
Wow, this is an awsome document.
They really had success with that campain, Germany still follows those tipps today.
It’d be important to cache the karma of all users > 1000 atm, in order to credibly signal you know which generals were part of the nuking/nuked side. Would anyone be willing to do that in the next 2 & 1⁄2 hours? (ie the earliest we could be nuked)
The post says generals’ names will be published tomorrow.
Oops, someone left a comment deanonymizing them early. Seems like a mistake on our part that it was able to be learned.
I’ve removed the comment for now, I’d make a request to not post it until the game is over (e.g. in an hour, or tomorrow). I won’t remove the comment again if it’s posted, but as I say I think it’d be better if they’re announced tomorrow in the wrap-up post.
I think it’s better to be angry at the team that launched the nukes?