Note that a lawyer who participated in that would be committing a crime. In the case of LH, there was (by my unreliable secondhand understanding) an employment-contract dispute and a blackmail scheme happening concurrently. The lawyers would have been involved only in the employment-contract dispute, not in the blackmail, and any settlement reached would have nominally been only for dropping the employment-contract-related claims. An ordinary employment dispute is a common-enough thing that each side’s lawyers would have experience estimating the other side’s costs at each stage of litigation, and using those estimates as part of a settlement negotiation.
(Filing lawsuits without merit is sometimes analogized to blackmail, but US law defines blackmail much more narrowly, in such a way that asking for payment to not allege statutory rape on a website is blackmail, but asking for payment to not allege unfair dismissal in a civil court is not.)
Then it sounds like the blackmailer in question spent $0 on perpetrating the blackmail, which is even more of an incentive for others to blackmail MIRI in the future.
Then it sounds like the blackmailer in question spent $0 on perpetrating the blackmail
No, that’s not what I said (and is false). To estimate the cost you have to compare the outcome of the legal case to the counterfactual baseline in which there was no blackmail happening on the side (that baseline is not zero), and you have to include other costs besides lawyers.
To estimate the cost you have to compare the outcome of the legal case to the counterfactual baseline in which there was no blackmail happening on the side (that baseline is not zero)
Seems wrong to me. Opportunity cost is not the same as expenditures.
and you have to include other costs besides lawyers.
Note that a lawyer who participated in that would be committing a crime. In the case of LH, there was (by my unreliable secondhand understanding) an employment-contract dispute and a blackmail scheme happening concurrently. The lawyers would have been involved only in the employment-contract dispute, not in the blackmail, and any settlement reached would have nominally been only for dropping the employment-contract-related claims. An ordinary employment dispute is a common-enough thing that each side’s lawyers would have experience estimating the other side’s costs at each stage of litigation, and using those estimates as part of a settlement negotiation.
(Filing lawsuits without merit is sometimes analogized to blackmail, but US law defines blackmail much more narrowly, in such a way that asking for payment to not allege statutory rape on a website is blackmail, but asking for payment to not allege unfair dismissal in a civil court is not.)
Then it sounds like the blackmailer in question spent $0 on perpetrating the blackmail, which is even more of an incentive for others to blackmail MIRI in the future.
No, that’s not what I said (and is false). To estimate the cost you have to compare the outcome of the legal case to the counterfactual baseline in which there was no blackmail happening on the side (that baseline is not zero), and you have to include other costs besides lawyers.
Seems wrong to me. Opportunity cost is not the same as expenditures.
Alright, and what costs were there?
Sorry, this isn’t a topic where I want to discuss with someone who’s being thick in the way that you’re being thick right now. Tapping out.