I think you’re mostly right. This suggests that a better policy than ‘don’t respond to blackmail’ is ‘don’t respond to blackmail if and only if you believe the blackmailer to be someone who is capable of accurately modelling you’.
Unfortunately this only works if you have perfect knowledge of blackmailers and cannot be fooled by one who pretends to be less intelligent than they actually are.
This also suggests a possible meta-strategy for blackmailers, namely “don’t allow considerations of whether someone will pay to affect your decision of whether to blackmail them”, since if blackmailers were known to do this then “don’t pay blackmailers” would no longer work.
I would also suggest that while blackmail works with some agents and not others, it isn’t human-specific. For example, poison arrow frogs seem like a good example of evolution using a similar strategy, having an adaptation that is in no way directly beneficial (and presumably is at least a little costly) that exists purely to minimize the utility of animals which do not do what it wants.
Unfortunately this only works if you have perfect knowledge of blackmailers and cannot be fooled by one who pretends to be less intelligent than they actually are.
Not perfect knowledge, just some knowledge together with awareness that you can’t reason from it in certain otherwise applicable heuristic ways because of the incentives to deceive.
Can I take it that since you criticized a criticism of this hypothesis without offering a criticism of your own, that you believe that this hypothesis is correct?
My comment was entirely local, targeting a popular argument that demands perfect knowledge where any knowledge would suffice, similarly to the rhetoric device of demanding absolute certainty where you were already presented with plenty of evidence.
It’s evidence that you have seen the comment that he’s replying to, in which I lay out my hypothesis for the answer to your original question. (You’ve provided an answer which seems incomplete.)
I think you’re mostly right. This suggests that a better policy than ‘don’t respond to blackmail’ is ‘don’t respond to blackmail if and only if you believe the blackmailer to be someone who is capable of accurately modelling you’.
Unfortunately this only works if you have perfect knowledge of blackmailers and cannot be fooled by one who pretends to be less intelligent than they actually are.
This also suggests a possible meta-strategy for blackmailers, namely “don’t allow considerations of whether someone will pay to affect your decision of whether to blackmail them”, since if blackmailers were known to do this then “don’t pay blackmailers” would no longer work.
I would also suggest that while blackmail works with some agents and not others, it isn’t human-specific. For example, poison arrow frogs seem like a good example of evolution using a similar strategy, having an adaptation that is in no way directly beneficial (and presumably is at least a little costly) that exists purely to minimize the utility of animals which do not do what it wants.
Not perfect knowledge, just some knowledge together with awareness that you can’t reason from it in certain otherwise applicable heuristic ways because of the incentives to deceive.
Yes, that’s what I meant. I have a bad habit of saying ‘perfect knowledge’ where I mean ‘enough knowledge’.
Can I take it that since you criticized a criticism of this hypothesis without offering a criticism of your own, that you believe that this hypothesis is correct?
What hypothesis?
My comment was entirely local, targeting a popular argument that demands perfect knowledge where any knowledge would suffice, similarly to the rhetoric device of demanding absolute certainty where you were already presented with plenty of evidence.
It’s evidence that you have seen the comment that he’s replying to, in which I lay out my hypothesis for the answer to your original question. (You’ve provided an answer which seems incomplete.)