As a Petrov, it was quite engaging and at times, very stressful. I feel very lucky and grateful that I could take part. I was also located in a different timezone and operating on only a few hours sleep which added a lot to the experience!
“I later found out that, during this window, one of the Petrovs messaged one of the mods saying to report nukes if the number reported was over a certain threshold. From looking through the array of numbers that the code would randomly select from, this policy had a ~40% chance of causing a “Nukes Incoming” report (!). Unaware of this, Ray and I made the decision not to count that period.”
I don’t mind outing myself and saying that I was the Petrov who made the conditional “Nukes Incoming” report. This occurred during the opening hours of the game and it was unclear to me if generals could unilaterally launch nukes without their team being aware. I’m happy to take a weighted karma penalty for it, particularly as the other Petrov did not take a similar action when faced with (presumably) the same information I had.[1]
Once it was established that a unilateral first strike by any individual general still informed their teammates of their action and people staked their reputation on honest reporting, the game was essentially over. From that point, my decisions to report “All Clear” were independent of the number of detected missiles.
I recorded my timestamped thoughts and decision making process throughout the day, particularly in the hour before making the conditional report. I intend on posting a summary[2] of it, but have time commitments in the immediate future:
How much would people value seeing a summary of my hour by hour decisions in the next few days over seeing a more digestible summary posted later?
Missile counts, and a few other details, would of course be hidden to preserve the experience for future Petrovs. Please feel free to specify other things you believe should be hidden.
How much would people value seeing a summary of my hour by hour decisions in the next few days over seeing a more digestible summary posted later?
Neat! I’d encourage you to post something within 7 days, while this is still fresh in people’s minds. Whatever is more detailed / considered in that time is my preference :-)
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.
As a Petrov, it was quite engaging and at times, very stressful. I feel very lucky and grateful that I could take part. I was also located in a different timezone and operating on only a few hours sleep which added a lot to the experience!
“I later found out that, during this window, one of the Petrovs messaged one of the mods saying to report nukes if the number reported was over a certain threshold. From looking through the array of numbers that the code would randomly select from, this policy had a ~40% chance of causing a “Nukes Incoming” report (!). Unaware of this, Ray and I made the decision not to count that period.”
I don’t mind outing myself and saying that I was the Petrov who made the conditional “Nukes Incoming” report. This occurred during the opening hours of the game and it was unclear to me if generals could unilaterally launch nukes without their team being aware. I’m happy to take a weighted karma penalty for it, particularly as the other Petrov did not take a similar action when faced with (presumably) the same information I had.[1]
Once it was established that a unilateral first strike by any individual general still informed their teammates of their action and people staked their reputation on honest reporting, the game was essentially over. From that point, my decisions to report “All Clear” were independent of the number of detected missiles.
I recorded my timestamped thoughts and decision making process throughout the day, particularly in the hour before making the conditional report. I intend on posting a summary[2] of it, but have time commitments in the immediate future:
How much would people value seeing a summary of my hour by hour decisions in the next few days over seeing a more digestible summary posted later?
Prior to the game I outlined what I thought my hypothetical decision making process was going to be, and this decision was also in conflict with that.
Missile counts, and a few other details, would of course be hidden to preserve the experience for future Petrovs. Please feel free to specify other things you believe should be hidden.
Neat! I’d encourage you to post something within 7 days, while this is still fresh in people’s minds. Whatever is more detailed / considered in that time is my preference :-)
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.