It seems that we cry blackmail when a shelling point already exists, and the other agent is threatening to force us below it. The moral outrage functions as a precommittment to punish the clear defection.
In normal human life, ‘do nothing’ is the schelling point, because most people don’t interact with most people. But sometimes the schelling point does move, and it seems what constitutes blackmail does too: if a child’s drowning in a pond, and I tell you I’ll only fish him out if you give me $1,000, it seems like I’m blackmailing you.
Sometimes both sides feel like they’re being blackmailed though; like when firefighters go on strike, and both city hall and the union accuse the other of endangering people. Could this be put down to coordination problems?
if a child’s drowning in a pond, and I tell you I’ll only fish him out if you give me $1,000, it seems like I’m blackmailing you.
Perhaps a borderline case like this is most helpful. Is this extortion? Even though the default case in this case isn’t ‘doing nothing’. The default is saving the child. Because that is what someone should do.
So maybe the word is difficult to unpack because it has morality behind it. A person shouldn’t bomb your car, and shouldn’t expose your private secrets. On the other hand, they needn’t give you food, so it’s OK to ask for money for that.
If I demand money for being faithful to my husband, than that is extortion because I’m supposed to be faithful. If, however, I want a divorce and would divorce him, I’m allowed to let him pay me for faithfulness. Such gray areas indicate to me that it is indeed about some notion of expected/moral behavior.
Selling food to starving families—when they become so poor that you ought to give them food for free—then that is extortion.
So: demanding more compensation when you should do it for less (or demanding any when you should do it for free).
Don’t even get me started on how ill-defined and far from being formally understood the concept of “Schelling point” is. It’s very useful in informal game theory of course.
Yeah, I’m reading Strategy of Conflict at the moment. Still, it seems that working out Schelling points would give us blackmail, whilst understanding blackmail some other way wouldn’t give us schelling points (as the latter can be without communication, etc.)
A Schelling point is a kind of Nash equilbrium, right? It’s the kind of equilibrium that an understanding of human psychology and the details of the situation says you should expect.
The union-firefighter looks like a variant on the hawk-dove/chicken game. If default is (Dove,Dove), which isn’t an equilibrium, Hawk can be seen as a black mail action as it makes you worse of than default. So at (Hawk,Hawk) everyone is, in fact, being blackmailed, and this is, essentially, a coordination problem.
It seems that we cry blackmail when a shelling point already exists, and the other agent is threatening to force us below it. The moral outrage functions as a precommittment to punish the clear defection.
In normal human life, ‘do nothing’ is the schelling point, because most people don’t interact with most people. But sometimes the schelling point does move, and it seems what constitutes blackmail does too: if a child’s drowning in a pond, and I tell you I’ll only fish him out if you give me $1,000, it seems like I’m blackmailing you.
Sometimes both sides feel like they’re being blackmailed though; like when firefighters go on strike, and both city hall and the union accuse the other of endangering people. Could this be put down to coordination problems?
Perhaps a borderline case like this is most helpful. Is this extortion? Even though the default case in this case isn’t ‘doing nothing’. The default is saving the child. Because that is what someone should do.
So maybe the word is difficult to unpack because it has morality behind it. A person shouldn’t bomb your car, and shouldn’t expose your private secrets. On the other hand, they needn’t give you food, so it’s OK to ask for money for that.
If I demand money for being faithful to my husband, than that is extortion because I’m supposed to be faithful. If, however, I want a divorce and would divorce him, I’m allowed to let him pay me for faithfulness. Such gray areas indicate to me that it is indeed about some notion of expected/moral behavior.
Selling food to starving families—when they become so poor that you ought to give them food for free—then that is extortion.
So: demanding more compensation when you should do it for less (or demanding any when you should do it for free).
Don’t even get me started on how ill-defined and far from being formally understood the concept of “Schelling point” is. It’s very useful in informal game theory of course.
Yeah, I’m reading Strategy of Conflict at the moment. Still, it seems that working out Schelling points would give us blackmail, whilst understanding blackmail some other way wouldn’t give us schelling points (as the latter can be without communication, etc.)
Schelling.
fixed, cheers
A Schelling point is a kind of Nash equilbrium, right? It’s the kind of equilibrium that an understanding of human psychology and the details of the situation says you should expect.
The union-firefighter looks like a variant on the hawk-dove/chicken game. If default is (Dove,Dove), which isn’t an equilibrium, Hawk can be seen as a black mail action as it makes you worse of than default. So at (Hawk,Hawk) everyone is, in fact, being blackmailed, and this is, essentially, a coordination problem.