But as long as you run a policy that is sensitive to your counterparty optimizing expenditures, I think this no longer holds?
What would this look like…? It doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing which it’s at all feasible to do in practice. Indeed it’s hard to see what this would even mean; if the end result is that you pay out sometimes and refuse other times, all that happens is that external observers conclude “he pays out sometimes”, and keep blackmailing you.
in-general a policy I have for stuff like this is something like “ensure the costs to my counterparty were higher than their gains”, and then take actions appropriate to the circumstances
Actions like what?
Like, let’s say that you’re MIRI and you’re being blackmailed. You don’t know how much your blackmailer is paying his lawyers (why would you, after all?). What do you do?
And for all you know, the contract your blackmailer’s got with his lawyers might be as I described—lawyers get some percent of payout, and nothing if there’s no payout. What costs do you impose on the blackmailer?
In short, I think the policy you describe is usually impossible to implement in practice.
But note that this is all tangential. It’s only relevant to the original question (about MIRI) if you claim that MIRI were attempting to implement a policy such as you describe. Do you claim this? If so, have you any evidence?
I mean, the policy here really doesn’t seem very hard. If you do know how much your opposing party is paying their lawyers, you optimize that hard. If you don’t know, you make some conservative estimate. I’ve run policies like this in lots of different circumstances, and it’s also pretty close to common sense as a response to blackmail and threats.
Do you claim this? If so, have you any evidence?
I’ve asked some MIRI people this exact question and they gave me this answer, with pretty strong confidence and relatively large error margins.
I have to admit that I still haven’t the faintest clue what concrete behavior you’re actually suggesting. I repeat my questions: “What would this look like…?” and “Actions like what?” (Indeed, since—as I understand it—you say you’ve done this sort of thing, can you give concrete examples from those experiences?)
I’ve asked some MIRI people this exact question and they gave me this answer, with pretty strong confidence and relatively large error margins.
Alright, and what has this looked like in practice for MIRI…?
It means you sit down, you make some fermi estimates of how much benefit the counterparty could be deriving from this threat/blackmail, then you figure out what you would need to do to roughly net out to zero, then you do those things. If someone asks you what your policy is, you give this summary.
In every specific instance this looks different. Sometimes this means you reach out to people they know and let them know about the blackmailing in a way that would damage their reputation. Sometimes it means you threaten to escalate to a legal battle where you are willing to burn resources to make the counterparty come out in the red.
In every specific instance this looks different. Sometimes this means you reach out to people they know and let them know about the blackmailing in a way that would damage their reputation. Sometimes it means you threaten to escalate to a legal battle where you are willing to burn resources to make the counterparty come out in the red.
Why would you condition any of this on how much they’re spending?
And how exactly would you calibrate it to impose a specific amount of cost on the blackmailer? (How do you even map some of these things to monetary cost…?)
What would this look like…? It doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing which it’s at all feasible to do in practice. Indeed it’s hard to see what this would even mean; if the end result is that you pay out sometimes and refuse other times, all that happens is that external observers conclude “he pays out sometimes”, and keep blackmailing you.
Actions like what?
Like, let’s say that you’re MIRI and you’re being blackmailed. You don’t know how much your blackmailer is paying his lawyers (why would you, after all?). What do you do?
And for all you know, the contract your blackmailer’s got with his lawyers might be as I described—lawyers get some percent of payout, and nothing if there’s no payout. What costs do you impose on the blackmailer?
In short, I think the policy you describe is usually impossible to implement in practice.
But note that this is all tangential. It’s only relevant to the original question (about MIRI) if you claim that MIRI were attempting to implement a policy such as you describe. Do you claim this? If so, have you any evidence?
I mean, the policy here really doesn’t seem very hard. If you do know how much your opposing party is paying their lawyers, you optimize that hard. If you don’t know, you make some conservative estimate. I’ve run policies like this in lots of different circumstances, and it’s also pretty close to common sense as a response to blackmail and threats.
I’ve asked some MIRI people this exact question and they gave me this answer, with pretty strong confidence and relatively large error margins.
I have to admit that I still haven’t the faintest clue what concrete behavior you’re actually suggesting. I repeat my questions: “What would this look like…?” and “Actions like what?” (Indeed, since—as I understand it—you say you’ve done this sort of thing, can you give concrete examples from those experiences?)
Alright, and what has this looked like in practice for MIRI…?
It means you sit down, you make some fermi estimates of how much benefit the counterparty could be deriving from this threat/blackmail, then you figure out what you would need to do to roughly net out to zero, then you do those things. If someone asks you what your policy is, you give this summary.
In every specific instance this looks different. Sometimes this means you reach out to people they know and let them know about the blackmailing in a way that would damage their reputation. Sometimes it means you threaten to escalate to a legal battle where you are willing to burn resources to make the counterparty come out in the red.
Why would you condition any of this on how much they’re spending?
And how exactly would you calibrate it to impose a specific amount of cost on the blackmailer? (How do you even map some of these things to monetary cost…?)