I’m interested in what Bayes Factor you associated with each of the missile counts. It seems like a hard problem, given that the actual missile counts were retrieved from an array of indeterminate size with indeterminate values, and given that you did not know the missile capabilities of the opposing side, nor did you know the sensor error rate. Petrov knew that the US would not launch only five missiles, but nobody knows how many missiles were fielded by East Wrong, including the generals of East Wrong.
We don’t even know if the missile counts were generated by some plausible non-deterministic model or just the game-makers throwing some numbers in a file. Maybe even deliberately including a large number or two in the no-missile array to try to fake out the Petrov players. All we know is that the numbers are “weighted to the higher end if nuclear war has actually begun”. All these things make me think that the missile counts should be a small probability update.
Partly as a result, for gaining karma, I think the optimal strategy is to always report All Clear. There will be 1-7 occasions to report, and at most only one occasion can have Incoming Missiles. Each hour we start with a low base rate of Incoming Missiles and the “random” number generator can’t overcome this to >40% because of the issues above. Also, wrongly reporting Incoming Missiles reduces the expected duration of the game, so it has a higher effective penalty. So always report All Clear.
I actually think we should have made “all clears” worth something like 50 or −50 karma (if you get it right or wrong), and “NUKES INCOMING!” worth 300 or −300, partly for the reasons you mention, partly because you’d generally expect LWers to avoid nuking most of the time, partly because doesn’t really feel worth 1000 karma to correctly guess “all clear” 5 times, but does feel worth a few hundred karma to correctly guess the one incoming nuke.
I’m interested in what Bayes Factor you associated with each of the missile counts. It seems like a hard problem, given that the actual missile counts were retrieved from an array of indeterminate size with indeterminate values, and given that you did not know the missile capabilities of the opposing side, nor did you know the sensor error rate. Petrov knew that the US would not launch only five missiles, but nobody knows how many missiles were fielded by East Wrong, including the generals of East Wrong.
We don’t even know if the missile counts were generated by some plausible non-deterministic model or just the game-makers throwing some numbers in a file. Maybe even deliberately including a large number or two in the no-missile array to try to fake out the Petrov players. All we know is that the numbers are “weighted to the higher end if nuclear war has actually begun”. All these things make me think that the missile counts should be a small probability update.
Partly as a result, for gaining karma, I think the optimal strategy is to always report All Clear. There will be 1-7 occasions to report, and at most only one occasion can have Incoming Missiles. Each hour we start with a low base rate of Incoming Missiles and the “random” number generator can’t overcome this to >40% because of the issues above. Also, wrongly reporting Incoming Missiles reduces the expected duration of the game, so it has a higher effective penalty. So always report All Clear.
I actually think we should have made “all clears” worth something like 50 or −50 karma (if you get it right or wrong), and “NUKES INCOMING!” worth 300 or −300, partly for the reasons you mention, partly because you’d generally expect LWers to avoid nuking most of the time, partly because doesn’t really feel worth 1000 karma to correctly guess “all clear” 5 times, but does feel worth a few hundred karma to correctly guess the one incoming nuke.