As someone who was very unhappy with last year’s implementation and said so (though not in the public thread), I think this is an improvement and I’m happy to see it. In previous years, I didn’t get a code, but if I’d had one I would have very seriously considered using it; this year, I see no reason to do that.
I do think that, if real value gets destroyed as a result of this, then the ethical responsibility for that loss of value lies primarily with the LW team, and only secondarily with whoever actually pushed the button. So if the button got pushed and some other person were to say “whoever pushed the button destroyed a bunch of real value” then I wouldn’t necessarily quibble with that, but if the LW team said the same thing then I’d be annoyed.
I’m not sure I’d say primarily/secondarily, probably I’d guess more at 50-50 (that might be the Shapley attribution?) between LessWrong and the pusher, if someone pushes the button. But overall agree LW gets a bunch of culpability.
The LW staff are necessary to take down the site. If we assume that there are multiple users that are willing to press the button, then the (shapely-attributed) blame for taking the site down mostly falls on the LW staff, rather than whoever happens to press the button first.
According to http://shapleyvalue.com/?example=8 if there were 6 people who were willing to push the button, the LW team would deserve 85% of the blame. (Here I am considering the people who take actions that act to facilitate bringing down the site as part of the coalition.)
I am not quite sure how to take into account all the people who choose not to take down the website and thus delay, and there is some value in running the Petrov day event, so the above does not take everything into account.
Tweaking some values in the website to model this, where value = 7 if either LW and/or all the other users refuse to shut down the site, and 7-i where i is the highest numbered player that shuts down the site (higher meaning they shut things down sooner), I get these values:
The Shapley value of player 1(Low Karma button pusher) is: −0.023809523809524 The Shapley value of player 2 is: −0.057142857142857 The Shapley value of player 3 is: −0.10714285714286 The Shapley value of player 4 is: −0.19047619047619 The Shapley value of player 5 is: −0.35714285714286 The Shapley value of player 6(High karma button pusher) is: −0.85714285714286 The Shapley value of player 7(LW team) is: −4.4071428571429
(All the values are negative, since this assigns no value to running the experiment or to keeping the site online despite running the experiment and for simplicity’s sake measures things in site uptime, and not shutting down the site achieves that.)
As someone who was very unhappy with last year’s implementation and said so (though not in the public thread), I think this is an improvement and I’m happy to see it. In previous years, I didn’t get a code, but if I’d had one I would have very seriously considered using it; this year, I see no reason to do that.
I do think that, if real value gets destroyed as a result of this, then the ethical responsibility for that loss of value lies primarily with the LW team, and only secondarily with whoever actually pushed the button. So if the button got pushed and some other person were to say “whoever pushed the button destroyed a bunch of real value” then I wouldn’t necessarily quibble with that, but if the LW team said the same thing then I’d be annoyed.
I’m glad you’re happier with this year’s version!
I’m not sure I’d say primarily/secondarily, probably I’d guess more at 50-50 (that might be the Shapley attribution?) between LessWrong and the pusher, if someone pushes the button. But overall agree LW gets a bunch of culpability.
The LW staff are necessary to take down the site. If we assume that there are multiple users that are willing to press the button, then the (shapely-attributed) blame for taking the site down mostly falls on the LW staff, rather than whoever happens to press the button first.
According to http://shapleyvalue.com/?example=8 if there were 6 people who were willing to push the button, the LW team would deserve 85% of the blame. (Here I am considering the people who take actions that act to facilitate bringing down the site as part of the coalition.)
I am not quite sure how to take into account all the people who choose not to take down the website and thus delay, and there is some value in running the Petrov day event, so the above does not take everything into account.
Tweaking some values in the website to model this, where value = 7 if either LW and/or all the other users refuse to shut down the site, and 7-i where i is the highest numbered player that shuts down the site (higher meaning they shut things down sooner), I get these values:
The Shapley value of player 1(Low Karma button pusher) is: −0.023809523809524
The Shapley value of player 2 is: −0.057142857142857
The Shapley value of player 3 is: −0.10714285714286
The Shapley value of player 4 is: −0.19047619047619
The Shapley value of player 5 is: −0.35714285714286
The Shapley value of player 6(High karma button pusher) is: −0.85714285714286
The Shapley value of player 7(LW team) is: −4.4071428571429
(All the values are negative, since this assigns no value to running the experiment or to keeping the site online despite running the experiment and for simplicity’s sake measures things in site uptime, and not shutting down the site achieves that.)
Oh, you’re totally right that you need to account for number of users willing to press the button, of course.