I don’t think that a thing you can only manufacture once is a practically usable lock; having multiple is also practically useful to facilitate picking attempts and in case of damage—imagine that a few hours into an open pick-this-lock challenge, someone bent a part such that the key no longer opens the lock. I’d suggest resolving neutral in this case as we only saw an partial attempt.
Other conditions:
I think it’s important that the design could have at least a thousand distinct keys which are non-pickable. It’s fine if the theoretical keyspace is larger so long as the verified-secure keyspace is large enough to be useful, and distinct keys/locks need not be manufactured so long as they’re clearly possible.
I expect the design to be available in advance to people attempting to pick the lock, just as the design principles and detailed schematics of current mechanical locks are widely known—security through obscurity would not demonstrate that the design is better, only that as-yet-secret designs are harder to exploit.
I nominate @raemon as our arbiter, if both he and you are willing, and the majority vote or nominee of the Lightcone team if Raemon is unavailable for some reason (and @habryka approves that).
(note: for @mentioning to work, you need to be in the LessWrong Docs editor, or in markdown you actually type out [@Raemon](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/raemon?mention=user) (the “@” in the “@Raemon” doesn’t actually do anything, the important part is that the url has mention=user. We should probably try to make this work more intuitively in markdown but it’s not quite obvious how to do it.)
I think in practice my take here would probably be something like a deferral to the Lightcone Team majority vote, since I’m not very informed on this field, but I’m happy to own the metacognition of making sure that happens and sanity checking the results.
I don’t think that a thing you can only manufacture once is a practically usable lock; having multiple is also practically useful to facilitate picking attempts and in case of damage—imagine that a few hours into an open pick-this-lock challenge, someone bent a part such that the key no longer opens the lock. I’d suggest resolving neutral in this case as we only saw an partial attempt.
Other conditions:
I think it’s important that the design could have at least a thousand distinct keys which are non-pickable. It’s fine if the theoretical keyspace is larger so long as the verified-secure keyspace is large enough to be useful, and distinct keys/locks need not be manufactured so long as they’re clearly possible.
I expect the design to be available in advance to people attempting to pick the lock, just as the design principles and detailed schematics of current mechanical locks are widely known—security through obscurity would not demonstrate that the design is better, only that as-yet-secret designs are harder to exploit.
I nominate @raemon as our arbiter, if both he and you are willing, and the majority vote or nominee of the Lightcone team if Raemon is unavailable for some reason (and @habryka approves that).
(note: for @mentioning to work, you need to be in the LessWrong Docs editor, or in markdown you actually type out
[@Raemon](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/raemon?mention=user) (the “@” in the “@Raemon” doesn’t actually do anything, the important part is that the url hasmention=user. We should probably try to make this work more intuitively in markdown but it’s not quite obvious how to do it.)I think in practice my take here would probably be something like a deferral to the Lightcone Team majority vote, since I’m not very informed on this field, but I’m happy to own the metacognition of making sure that happens and sanity checking the results.
That works for me—thanks very much for helping out!
@Raemon works for me; and I agree with the other conditions.
I think we’re agreed then, if you want to confirm the size? Then we wait for 2027!
Given your rationale I’m onboard for 3 or more consistent physical instances of the lock have been manufactured.
Lets ‘lock’ it in.
Nice! I look forward to seeing how this resolves.
Ah, by ‘size’ I meant the stakes, not the number of locks—did you want to bet the maximum $1k against my $10k, or some smaller proportional amount?
Ah gotcha, yes lets do my $1k against your $10k.
Locked in! Whichever way this goes, I expect to feel pretty good about both the process and the outcome :-)