That was a poorly written post on my part. What I meant was that I was open to argument either way (“Should I press it or not?). I had decided that regardless of whether I pressed it or not I would at least wait until other people had a chance to wake up, as I thought it’d be boring for people if they woke up and the site was already nuked. So it wasn’t my only reason—I hadn’t even really thought about it too much as I was waiting for more comments.
Even though it was poorly written, I’m surprised how many people seem to have misunderstood it as I would have thought it was clear enough as I asked the question.
This seems plausible. I do want to note that your received message was timestamped 11:26 (local to you) and the button was pressed at 11:33:30 (The received message said the time limit was 30 minutes.), which doesn’t seems like an abundance of caution and hesitation to blow up the frontpage, as far as I can tell. :P
I know it wasn’t actual nukes, so fair to not put in the same effort, but I do hope if you ever do have nukes, you take full allotted time to think though it and discuss with anyone available (even if you think they’re unlikely to reply). ;)
Well, it was just a game and I had other things to do. Plus I didn’t feel a duty to take it 100% seriously since, as grateful as I was to have the chance to participate, I didn’t actually choose to play.
(Plus, adding on to this comment. I honestly had no idea people took this whole thing so seriously. Just seemed like a bit of fun to me!)
To be clear, while there is obviously some fun intended in this tradition, I don’t think describing it as “just a game” feels appropriate to me. I do actually really care about people being able to coordinate to not take the site down. It’s an actual hard thing to do that actually is trying to reinforce a bunch of the real and important values that I care about in Petrov day. Of course, I can’t force you to feel a certain way, but like, I do sure feel a pretty high level of disappointment reading this response.
Like, the email literally said you were chosen to participate because we trusted you to not actually use the codes.
So, I think it’s important that LessWrong admins do not get to unilaterally decide that You Are Now Playing a Game With Your Reputation.
However, if Chris doesn’t want to play, the action available to him is simply to not engage. I don’t think he gets to both press the button and change the rules to decide what a button press means to other players.
So, I think it’s important that LessWrong admins do not get to unilaterally decide that You Are Now Playing a Game With Your Reputation.
Dude, we’re all always playing games with our reputations. That’s, like, what reputation is.
And good for Habyka for saying he feels disappointment at the lack of thoughtfulness and reflection, it’s very much not just permitted but almost mandated by the founder of this place —
Here’s the relevant citation from Well-Kept Gardens:
I confess, for a while I didn’t even understand why communities had such trouble defending themselves—I thought it was pure naivete. It didn’t occur to me that it was an egalitarian instinct to prevent chieftains from getting too much power.
This too:
I have seen rationalist communities die because they trusted their moderators too little.
Let’s give Habryka a little more respect, eh? Disappointment is a perfectly valid thing to be experiencing and he’s certainly conveying it quite mildly and graciously. Admins here did a hell of a job resurrecting this place back from the dead, to express very mild disapproval at a lack of thoughtfulness during a community event is....… well that seems very much on-mission, at least according to Yudkowsky.
I feel confused about how you interpreted my comment, and edited it lightly. For the record, Habryka’s comment seems basically right to me; just wanted to add some nuance.
Honestly, I kind of think that would be a straightforwardly silly thing to worry about, if one were to think about it for a few moments. (And I note that it’s not Chris’ stated reasoning.)
Like, leave aside that the PM was indistinguishable from a phishing attack. Pretend that it had come through both email and PM, from Ben Pace, with the codes repeated. All the same… LW just isn’t the kind of place where we’re going to socially shame someone for
Not taking action
...within 30 minutes of an unexpected email being sent to them
Y’know, there was a post I thought about writing up, but then I was going to not bother to write it up, but I saw your comment here H and “high level of disappointment reading this response”… and so I wrote it up.
The downvotes on this comment seem ridiculous to me. If I email 270 people to tell them I’ve carefully selected them for some process, I cannot seriously presume they will give up >0 of their time to take part in it.
Any such sacrifice they make is a bonus, so if they do give up >0 time, it’s absurd to ask that they give up even more time to research the issue.
Any negative consequences are on the person who set up the game. Adding the justification that ‘I trust you’ does not suddenly make the recipient more obligated to the spammer.
It’s not like we asked 270 random people. We asked 270 people, each one of which had already invested many hundreds of hours into participating on LessWrong, many of which I knew personally and considered close friends. Like, I agree, if you message 270 random people you don’t get to expect anything from them, but the whole point of networks of trust is that you get to expect things from each other and ask things from each other.
If any of the people in that list of 270 people had asked me to spend a few minutes doing something that was important to them, I would have gladly obliged.
It doesn’t matter whether you’d have been hypothetically willing to do something for them. As I said on the Facebook thread, you did not consult with them. You merely informed them they were in a game, which, given the social criticism Chris has received, had real world consequences if they misplayed. In other words, you put them in harm’s way without their consent. That is not a good way to build trust.
Just a datapoint on variety of invitees: I was included in the 270, and I’ve invested hundreds of hours into LW. while I don’t know you personally outside the site, I hope you consider me a trusted acquaintance, if not a friend. I had no clue this was anything but a funny little game, and my expectation was that there would be dozens of button presses before I even saw the mail.
I had not read nor paid attention to the petrov day posts (including prior years). I had no prior information about the expectations of behavior, the weight put on the outcome, nor the intended lesson/demonstration of … something that’s being interpreted as “coordination” or “trust”.
I wasn’t using the mental model that indicated I was being trusted not to do something—I took it as a game to see who’d get there first, or how many would press the button, not a hope that everyone would solemnly avoid playing (by passively ignoring the mail). I think without a ritual for joining the group (opt-in), it’s hard to judge anyone or learn much about the community from the actions that occurred.
I had no clue this was anything but a funny little game, and my expectation was that there would be dozens of button presses before I even saw the mail.
And this is pretty surprising to me. Like, we ran this game last year with half of the number of people, without anyone pressing the button. We didn’t really change much about the framing, so where does this expectation come from? My current model is indeed that the shared context between the ~125 people from last year is quite a bit smaller than it was this year with ~250 people.
I don’t think that there was no change in framing. Last year:
Every Petrov Day, we practice not destroying the world. One particular way to do this is to practice the virtue of not taking unilateralist action.
It’s difficult to know who can be trusted, but today I have selected a group of LessWrong users who I think I can rely on in this way. You’ve all been given the opportunity to show yourselves capable and trustworthy.
This Petrov Day, between midnight and midnight PST, if you, ChristianKl, enter the launch codes below on LessWrong, the Frontpage will go down for 24 hours.
Personalised launch code: …
I hope to see you on the other side of this, with our honor intact.
Yours, Ben Pace & the LessWrong 2.0 Team
This year:
On Petrov Day, we celebrate and practice not destroying the world.
It’s difficult to know who can be trusted, but today I have selected a group of 270 LessWrong users who I think I can rely on in this way. You’ve all been given the opportunity to not destroy LessWrong.
This Petrov Day, if you, ChristianKl, enter the launch codes below on LessWrong, the Frontpage will go down for 24 hours, removing a resource thousands of people view every day. Each entrusted user has personalised launch codes, so that it will be clear who nuked the site.
Your personalised codes are: …
I hope to see you in the dawn of tomorrow, with our honor still intact.
–Ben Pace & the LessWrong Team
The last year was more explict about both the goal of the exercise and what it means for an individual to not use the code.
Using the phrase destroy LessWrong this year was a tell that this isn’t a serious exercise because people ususally don’t exaggerate when they are serious. Especially rationalists can usually be trusted to use clear words when they are serious.
Reading the message this time, I had the impression that it would be more likely for the website to go down then last year.
I hadn’t paid attention to the topic, and did not know it had run last year with that result (or at least hadn’t thought about it enough to update on) so that expectation was my prior.
Now that I’ve caught up on things, I realize I am confused. I suspect it was a fluke or some unanalyzed difference in setup that caused the success last year, but that explanation seems a bit facile, so I’m not sure how to actually update. I’d predict that running it again would result in the button being pressed, but I wouldn’t wager very much (in either direction).
That was a poorly written post on my part. What I meant was that I was open to argument either way (“Should I press it or not?). I had decided that regardless of whether I pressed it or not I would at least wait until other people had a chance to wake up, as I thought it’d be boring for people if they woke up and the site was already nuked. So it wasn’t my only reason—I hadn’t even really thought about it too much as I was waiting for more comments.
Even though it was poorly written, I’m surprised how many people seem to have misunderstood it as I would have thought it was clear enough as I asked the question.
This seems plausible. I do want to note that your received message was timestamped 11:26 (local to you) and the button was pressed at 11:33:30 (The received message said the time limit was 30 minutes.), which doesn’t seems like an abundance of caution and hesitation to blow up the frontpage, as far as I can tell. :P
I know it wasn’t actual nukes, so fair to not put in the same effort, but I do hope if you ever do have nukes, you take full allotted time to think though it and discuss with anyone available (even if you think they’re unlikely to reply). ;)
Well, it was just a game and I had other things to do. Plus I didn’t feel a duty to take it 100% seriously since, as grateful as I was to have the chance to participate, I didn’t actually choose to play.
(Plus, adding on to this comment. I honestly had no idea people took this whole thing so seriously. Just seemed like a bit of fun to me!)
To be clear, while there is obviously some fun intended in this tradition, I don’t think describing it as “just a game” feels appropriate to me. I do actually really care about people being able to coordinate to not take the site down. It’s an actual hard thing to do that actually is trying to reinforce a bunch of the real and important values that I care about in Petrov day. Of course, I can’t force you to feel a certain way, but like, I do sure feel a pretty high level of disappointment reading this response.
Like, the email literally said you were chosen to participate because we trusted you to not actually use the codes.
So, I think it’s important that LessWrong admins do not get to unilaterally decide that You Are Now Playing a Game With Your Reputation.
However, if Chris doesn’t want to play, the action available to him is simply to not engage. I don’t think he gets to both press the button and change the rules to decide what a button press means to other players.
Dude, we’re all always playing games with our reputations. That’s, like, what reputation is.
And good for Habyka for saying he feels disappointment at the lack of thoughtfulness and reflection, it’s very much not just permitted but almost mandated by the founder of this place —
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RcZCwxFiZzE6X7nsv/what-do-we-mean-by-rationality-1
Here’s the relevant citation from Well-Kept Gardens:
This too:
Let’s give Habryka a little more respect, eh? Disappointment is a perfectly valid thing to be experiencing and he’s certainly conveying it quite mildly and graciously. Admins here did a hell of a job resurrecting this place back from the dead, to express very mild disapproval at a lack of thoughtfulness during a community event is....… well that seems very much on-mission, at least according to Yudkowsky.
I feel confused about how you interpreted my comment, and edited it lightly. For the record, Habryka’s comment seems basically right to me; just wanted to add some nuance.
Ah, I see, I read the original version partially wrong, my mistake. We’re in agreement. Regards.
Well, I had an option not to engage until I received the message saying it would blow up if enough users didn’t press the button within half an hour.
Even after receiving that message, it still seems like the “do not engage” action is to not enter the codes?
I think “doesn’t want to ruin other people’s fun or do anything significant” feels more accurate than “do not engage” here?
And then, for all he knew, his name might have been posted in a list of users who could have prevented the apocalypse but didn’t.
Honestly, I kind of think that would be a straightforwardly silly thing to worry about, if one were to think about it for a few moments. (And I note that it’s not Chris’ stated reasoning.)
Like, leave aside that the PM was indistinguishable from a phishing attack. Pretend that it had come through both email and PM, from Ben Pace, with the codes repeated. All the same… LW just isn’t the kind of place where we’re going to socially shame someone for
Not taking action
...within 30 minutes of an unexpected email being sent to them
...whether or not they even saw the email
...in a game they didn’t agree to play.
And then maybe the site would have blown up, which was not what I was aiming for at that time.
Y’know, there was a post I thought about writing up, but then I was going to not bother to write it up, but I saw your comment here H and “high level of disappointment reading this response”… and so I wrote it up.
Here you go:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/scL68JtnSr3iakuc6/win-first-vs-chill-first
That’s an extreme-ish example, but I think the general principle holds to some extent in many places.
I’ve responded to you in the last section of this post.
The downvotes on this comment seem ridiculous to me. If I email 270 people to tell them I’ve carefully selected them for some process, I cannot seriously presume they will give up >0 of their time to take part in it.
Any such sacrifice they make is a bonus, so if they do give up >0 time, it’s absurd to ask that they give up even more time to research the issue.
Any negative consequences are on the person who set up the game. Adding the justification that ‘I trust you’ does not suddenly make the recipient more obligated to the spammer.
It’s not like we asked 270 random people. We asked 270 people, each one of which had already invested many hundreds of hours into participating on LessWrong, many of which I knew personally and considered close friends. Like, I agree, if you message 270 random people you don’t get to expect anything from them, but the whole point of networks of trust is that you get to expect things from each other and ask things from each other.
If any of the people in that list of 270 people had asked me to spend a few minutes doing something that was important to them, I would have gladly obliged.
It doesn’t matter whether you’d have been hypothetically willing to do something for them. As I said on the Facebook thread, you did not consult with them. You merely informed them they were in a game, which, given the social criticism Chris has received, had real world consequences if they misplayed. In other words, you put them in harm’s way without their consent. That is not a good way to build trust.
Just a datapoint on variety of invitees: I was included in the 270, and I’ve invested hundreds of hours into LW. while I don’t know you personally outside the site, I hope you consider me a trusted acquaintance, if not a friend. I had no clue this was anything but a funny little game, and my expectation was that there would be dozens of button presses before I even saw the mail.
I had not read nor paid attention to the petrov day posts (including prior years). I had no prior information about the expectations of behavior, the weight put on the outcome, nor the intended lesson/demonstration of … something that’s being interpreted as “coordination” or “trust”.
I wasn’t using the mental model that indicated I was being trusted not to do something—I took it as a game to see who’d get there first, or how many would press the button, not a hope that everyone would solemnly avoid playing (by passively ignoring the mail). I think without a ritual for joining the group (opt-in), it’s hard to judge anyone or learn much about the community from the actions that occurred.
And this is pretty surprising to me. Like, we ran this game last year with half of the number of people, without anyone pressing the button. We didn’t really change much about the framing, so where does this expectation come from? My current model is indeed that the shared context between the ~125 people from last year is quite a bit smaller than it was this year with ~250 people.
I don’t think that there was no change in framing. Last year:
This year:
The last year was more explict about both the goal of the exercise and what it means for an individual to not use the code.
Using the phrase destroy LessWrong this year was a tell that this isn’t a serious exercise because people ususally don’t exaggerate when they are serious. Especially rationalists can usually be trusted to use clear words when they are serious.
Reading the message this time, I had the impression that it would be more likely for the website to go down then last year.
I hadn’t paid attention to the topic, and did not know it had run last year with that result (or at least hadn’t thought about it enough to update on) so that expectation was my prior.
Now that I’ve caught up on things, I realize I am confused. I suspect it was a fluke or some unanalyzed difference in setup that caused the success last year, but that explanation seems a bit facile, so I’m not sure how to actually update. I’d predict that running it again would result in the button being pressed, but I wouldn’t wager very much (in either direction).