take it as a game | as a serious ritual | as a serious experiment
cooperate or defect on the implicit rule allowing play behaviour ~ “you are allowed to play and experiment in games and this is safe. it is understood actions you take within the game will not be used as an evidence of intent outside of the game”. (imagine I play a game of chess with someone and interpret my opponent taking my pieces as literarily trying to harm me)
the meta-game of making the game interesting; cf munchkin
the meta-game of making the experiment valuable for learning
coordination about which of these games we are playing
Overall for me one take-away is LW community should get better at game #6.
While “use of LW for 24h” is at stake at game #1, I would argue there are actually higher stakes at some of the other games.
For example, if most people take it as a serious ritual at game #2, the warning text attached to the button should maybe state also “apart from blowing up the site, you will also blow up some part of your social credit, opportunities and trust”. Coordination failure at game #2 can also lead to a situation where someone understands the situation as a game, decides for some reason it better to press the button, and faces social repercussions from people who choose “serious ritual” or “serious experiment” in #2. I can imagine this has somewhat large tail-risk, including for example someone leaving the community entirely, or causing more drama and psychological pain than the payoff in game #1.
For some people failures at game #6 can touch things like “thou should not make people participate in serious and potentially harmful psychological experiments without clear consent”.
Ultimately game #5 is maybe the most important where this community learning wrong intuitions about xrisk on S1 level could be at stake.
Below the account by Chris, I listed multiple meta-games stacked on top of the Petrov button, namely
press the button or not
take it as a game | as a serious ritual | as a serious experiment
cooperate or defect on the implicit rule allowing play behaviour ~ “you are allowed to play and experiment in games and this is safe. it is understood actions you take within the game will not be used as an evidence of intent outside of the game”. (imagine I play a game of chess with someone and interpret my opponent taking my pieces as literarily trying to harm me)
the meta-game of making the game interesting; cf munchkin
the meta-game of making the experiment valuable for learning
coordination about which of these games we are playing
Overall for me one take-away is LW community should get better at game #6.
While “use of LW for 24h” is at stake at game #1, I would argue there are actually higher stakes at some of the other games.
For example, if most people take it as a serious ritual at game #2, the warning text attached to the button should maybe state also “apart from blowing up the site, you will also blow up some part of your social credit, opportunities and trust”. Coordination failure at game #2 can also lead to a situation where someone understands the situation as a game, decides for some reason it better to press the button, and faces social repercussions from people who choose “serious ritual” or “serious experiment” in #2. I can imagine this has somewhat large tail-risk, including for example someone leaving the community entirely, or causing more drama and psychological pain than the payoff in game #1.
For some people failures at game #6 can touch things like “thou should not make people participate in serious and potentially harmful psychological experiments without clear consent”.
Ultimately game #5 is maybe the most important where this community learning wrong intuitions about xrisk on S1 level could be at stake.