Of course it damaged our reputation! How could it not have? Being able to coordinate on this is a pretty substantial achievement, and failing on this is a pretty straightforwardly sad thing to happen.
I think this is only true conditional on the Petrov Day LW Button being a Serious Thing. But the whole question is whether or not we should consider it a Serious Thing in the first place. Outsiders likely won’t, they’ll just see it as a game.
More generally, the Schelling choice is rabbit not stag—where Rabbit is “don’t take this seriously” and Stag is “do take this seriously”. By putting this thing online and expecting everyone to take it seriously, but without providing a really solid justification for why they should, you’re choosing Stag without prior coordination, which is generally a bad strategy.
I think this is only true conditional on the Petrov Day LW Button being a Serious Thing. But the whole question is whether or not we should consider it a Serious Thing in the first place.
Hmm, I do think this is right. But I do think the payoff matrix here is pretty asymmetric. Like, I think it’s obvious that on-net, given reasonable levels of ambiguity, you will lose some reputation. There is a question of how much, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that you will lose some good amount, because at least some fraction of people will take it seriously.
Like, I do think that it’s fine to push back and say that it should just be a game, and that the people who are taking it seriously are wrong, but as a statement about social reality, predicting that it will not cost you reputation just seems like a wrong prediction.
Like, I am fine with the statement that it shouldn’t cost you reputation. But saying that it won’t cost you reputation, feels pretty wrong.
I think we lose some reputation if people think that we are unable to choose Stag even in Serious Situations. But the main thing that signals to outsiders that this is a Serious Situation instead of a fun game is the disappointed reactions after someone chooses Rabbit. (By default outsiders are much less likely than insiders to think of this sort of thing as serious, and it was already ambiguous enough that many insiders didn’t think of it as serious). If the community reaction was more like “What a great learning experience” and “This is a super interesting outcome” then I doubt there’d be a significant reputational cost. I’d estimate that the cost in weirdness points of running this event in the first place is about an order of magnitude higher.
An analogy: suppose the military practises a war game and sometimes fails to achieve its goal. I don’t think this means they lose reputation. In fact, for certain classes of games, you lose more reputation by always succeeding in your goal, because that means that the goals are rigged. Same here: maybe the LW team sent out the invitations in such a way that they were very confident someone would push the button, or maybe in a way where they were very confident nobody would; I can’t tell from the outside.
Yeah, to be clear, I do think it is actually a valuable signal to have failed at the Petrov Day goal at least once, because it signals pretty credibly that things are not rigged, and failure is possible.
I do also think that if you want your war game to be taken seriously as a sign of your competence, it’s important that both you and the people you were war-gaming against were playing seriously. This doesn’t mean that the war-game had to be a “Serious situation”, but it does mean that your soldiers shouldn’t have just gone “lol, it’s just a game” and started playing cards or something because they got bored.
Like, sure, we could make this just a fun game, which would cause us to also not have to be worried about reputational risks, but I don’t see much value in the version of this that is just a fun game, with no serious component. I am not super confident about the right balance of seriousness and fun, but I am pretty confident that a world where nobody took this seriously just doesn’t seem very interesting to me. It doesn’t allow me to build any real trust with anyone else, and feels like it deteroriates the real and important lessons we can learn from Petrov Day.
I think this is only true conditional on the Petrov Day LW Button being a Serious Thing. But the whole question is whether or not we should consider it a Serious Thing in the first place. Outsiders likely won’t, they’ll just see it as a game.
More generally, the Schelling choice is rabbit not stag—where Rabbit is “don’t take this seriously” and Stag is “do take this seriously”. By putting this thing online and expecting everyone to take it seriously, but without providing a really solid justification for why they should, you’re choosing Stag without prior coordination, which is generally a bad strategy.
(I also endorse Kaj and Neel’s comments below).
Hmm, I do think this is right. But I do think the payoff matrix here is pretty asymmetric. Like, I think it’s obvious that on-net, given reasonable levels of ambiguity, you will lose some reputation. There is a question of how much, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that you will lose some good amount, because at least some fraction of people will take it seriously.
Like, I do think that it’s fine to push back and say that it should just be a game, and that the people who are taking it seriously are wrong, but as a statement about social reality, predicting that it will not cost you reputation just seems like a wrong prediction.
Like, I am fine with the statement that it shouldn’t cost you reputation. But saying that it won’t cost you reputation, feels pretty wrong.
I think we lose some reputation if people think that we are unable to choose Stag even in Serious Situations. But the main thing that signals to outsiders that this is a Serious Situation instead of a fun game is the disappointed reactions after someone chooses Rabbit. (By default outsiders are much less likely than insiders to think of this sort of thing as serious, and it was already ambiguous enough that many insiders didn’t think of it as serious). If the community reaction was more like “What a great learning experience” and “This is a super interesting outcome” then I doubt there’d be a significant reputational cost. I’d estimate that the cost in weirdness points of running this event in the first place is about an order of magnitude higher.
An analogy: suppose the military practises a war game and sometimes fails to achieve its goal. I don’t think this means they lose reputation. In fact, for certain classes of games, you lose more reputation by always succeeding in your goal, because that means that the goals are rigged. Same here: maybe the LW team sent out the invitations in such a way that they were very confident someone would push the button, or maybe in a way where they were very confident nobody would; I can’t tell from the outside.
Yeah, to be clear, I do think it is actually a valuable signal to have failed at the Petrov Day goal at least once, because it signals pretty credibly that things are not rigged, and failure is possible.
I do also think that if you want your war game to be taken seriously as a sign of your competence, it’s important that both you and the people you were war-gaming against were playing seriously. This doesn’t mean that the war-game had to be a “Serious situation”, but it does mean that your soldiers shouldn’t have just gone “lol, it’s just a game” and started playing cards or something because they got bored.
Like, sure, we could make this just a fun game, which would cause us to also not have to be worried about reputational risks, but I don’t see much value in the version of this that is just a fun game, with no serious component. I am not super confident about the right balance of seriousness and fun, but I am pretty confident that a world where nobody took this seriously just doesn’t seem very interesting to me. It doesn’t allow me to build any real trust with anyone else, and feels like it deteroriates the real and important lessons we can learn from Petrov Day.