I read only the initial overview at the top, did my own analysis, then read the rest to see if it’d change my mind.
Here are summaries of IMO the two most notable ideas from my analysis:
Compare blackmail to this scenario: My neighbor is having a party this weekend. I threaten to play loud music (at whatever the max loudness is that’s normally within my rights) to disrupt it unless he pays me $100. Compare to: I often play loud music and my neighbor comes and offers me $100 to be quiet all weekend. In one, I’m threatening to do something for the express purpose of harming someone, not to pursue my own values. In the other, I just enjoy music as part of my life. I think blackmail compares to the first scenario, but not the second.
We (should) prohibit initiation of force as a means to an end. The real underlying thing is enabling people to pursue their values in their life and resolve conflicts. If blackmail doesn’t initiate force, that doesn’t automatically make it OK, b/c non-initiation of force isn’t the primary.
Your point #1 misses the whole norm violation element. The reason it hurts if others are told about an affair is that others disapprove. That isn’t why loud music hurts.
Suppose it were easy to split potential blackmail scenarios into whistleblower scenarios (where the value of the information to society is quite positive) and embarrassing-but-useless scenarios (where it is not).
Would you support legalizing blackmail in both classes, or just the first class?
EDIT: I ask because, I think (at least part of) your argument is that if we legalize paying off whistleblowers, then that’s okay, because would-be-whistleblowers still have an incentive to find wrongdoing, and the perpetrators still have an incentive to avoid that wrongdoing (or at least hide it, but hiding has costs, so on the margin it should mean doing less). (This reminds me a bit of white hat hackers claiming bug bounties.)
Meanwhile, the anti-blackmail people argue that you don’t want people to be incentivized to find ways to harm each other.
So, if you could cleanly separate out the public benefit from the harm, on a case-by-case basis (rather than having to go with simple heuristics like “gossip is usually net beneficially”), it seems like you might be able to get to a synthesis of the two views.
Neither blackmailers not blackmailees have an incentive to disclose information per se. There is a thing where there is an incentive to disclose information that is in the public interest, and that is journalism.
They need a credible threat, but they also maximise their income by never disclosing, while the blackmailee pays them off for the rest of their life. Whereas journalists are always motivated to disclose.
I wrote a reply at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5ffPhqaLdrSajFe37/analyzing-blackmail-being-illegal-hanson-and-mowshowitz
I read only the initial overview at the top, did my own analysis, then read the rest to see if it’d change my mind.
Here are summaries of IMO the two most notable ideas from my analysis:
Compare blackmail to this scenario: My neighbor is having a party this weekend. I threaten to play loud music (at whatever the max loudness is that’s normally within my rights) to disrupt it unless he pays me $100. Compare to: I often play loud music and my neighbor comes and offers me $100 to be quiet all weekend. In one, I’m threatening to do something for the express purpose of harming someone, not to pursue my own values. In the other, I just enjoy music as part of my life. I think blackmail compares to the first scenario, but not the second.
We (should) prohibit initiation of force as a means to an end. The real underlying thing is enabling people to pursue their values in their life and resolve conflicts. If blackmail doesn’t initiate force, that doesn’t automatically make it OK, b/c non-initiation of force isn’t the primary.
Your point #1 misses the whole norm violation element. The reason it hurts if others are told about an affair is that others disapprove. That isn’t why loud music hurts.
Suppose it were easy to split potential blackmail scenarios into whistleblower scenarios (where the value of the information to society is quite positive) and embarrassing-but-useless scenarios (where it is not).
Would you support legalizing blackmail in both classes, or just the first class?
EDIT: I ask because, I think (at least part of) your argument is that if we legalize paying off whistleblowers, then that’s okay, because would-be-whistleblowers still have an incentive to find wrongdoing, and the perpetrators still have an incentive to avoid that wrongdoing (or at least hide it, but hiding has costs, so on the margin it should mean doing less). (This reminds me a bit of white hat hackers claiming bug bounties.)
Meanwhile, the anti-blackmail people argue that you don’t want people to be incentivized to find ways to harm each other.
So, if you could cleanly separate out the public benefit from the harm, on a case-by-case basis (rather than having to go with simple heuristics like “gossip is usually net beneficially”), it seems like you might be able to get to a synthesis of the two views.
Neither blackmailers not blackmailees have an incentive to disclose information per se. There is a thing where there is an incentive to disclose information that is in the public interest, and that is journalism.
The blackmailers need to end up sometimes disclosing in order for their threats to be credible, no?
They need a credible threat, but they also maximise their income by never disclosing, while the blackmailee pays them off for the rest of their life. Whereas journalists are always motivated to disclose.