To a degree, arguing about extortion is arguing about definitions. In the context of the heuristic “don’t give in to extortion”, we would like to know exactly what the heuristic shouldn’t give in to, though, and why.
In my opinion, the main problem is that the extortionist is making a no-downside trade: the thing it is trading is “not torturing simulated humans” or “not killing hostages” or whatever, which probably wasn’t worth anything to the extortionist anyway.
A lot of no-downside trades are obviously unfair, so a useful heuristic is not to agree to no-downside trades in general. In fact, extremely unfair trades in general are metaphorically labeled “extortion” (for instance, I’m sure I’ve heard the term applied to the price of a diamond ring).
We can see cases besides straightforward extortion where people apply the no-downside heuristic. For instance, buying music from iTunes is a no-downside trade for iTunes at first glance: iTunes doesn’t lose anything and gains 99 cents. In fact, iTunes has already spent money buying the rights to the music in expectation you’ll download it, so this is something of an acausal trade: much like Omega, iTunes is very good at predicting what people will want, and if enough people aren’t going to download a track, iTunes won’t offer it. Acausal trades are counterintuitive, though, so it makes sense that some people are repelled by this offer and torrent the music instead.
To a degree, arguing about extortion is arguing about definitions. In the context of the heuristic “don’t give in to extortion”, we would like to know exactly what the heuristic shouldn’t give in to, though, and why.
In my opinion, the main problem is that the extortionist is making a no-downside trade: the thing it is trading is “not torturing simulated humans” or “not killing hostages” or whatever, which probably wasn’t worth anything to the extortionist anyway.
A lot of no-downside trades are obviously unfair, so a useful heuristic is not to agree to no-downside trades in general. In fact, extremely unfair trades in general are metaphorically labeled “extortion” (for instance, I’m sure I’ve heard the term applied to the price of a diamond ring).
We can see cases besides straightforward extortion where people apply the no-downside heuristic. For instance, buying music from iTunes is a no-downside trade for iTunes at first glance: iTunes doesn’t lose anything and gains 99 cents. In fact, iTunes has already spent money buying the rights to the music in expectation you’ll download it, so this is something of an acausal trade: much like Omega, iTunes is very good at predicting what people will want, and if enough people aren’t going to download a track, iTunes won’t offer it. Acausal trades are counterintuitive, though, so it makes sense that some people are repelled by this offer and torrent the music instead.