You’re safeguarding against the wrong thing. If I needed to fake a prediction that badly, I’d find a security hole in Less Wrong with which to edit all your comments. I wouldn’t waste time establishing karma for sockpuppets to post editable hashes to deter others from posting hashes themselves, that would be silly. But as it happens, I’m not planning to edit this hash, and doing that wouldn’t have been a viable strategy in the first place.
Edited comments have an asterisk after the date, the lack of this asterisk indicates the comment has not been edited. Though this does not work for top level posts.
Maybe they are all someone else’s sockpuppets. At a given date, they will coordinatedly change some whitespace in their comments (but not the hash itself), thus framing Quirrell. Fortunately, now that I unmasked the plan, it is not really viable anymore.
Having said that, it’s not clear to me we want to do all this. Sometimes we could be at a game-theoretic advantage by not knowing something. E.g. I don’t want to be able to be told that someone’s kidnapped my daughter, because then they have no incentive to do so (TDT aside). Maybe Quirrell is actually planning on us being able to verify his honesty.
E.g. I don’t want to be able to be told that someone’s kidnapped my daughter, because then they have no incentive to do so (TDT aside)
Unless they just want your daughter, instead of wanting whatever behavior they could use her to coerce you into. So really what you don’t want is a way to receive ransom demands.
I’ve also done this ‘reply to someone else’s hashed prediction so they can’t edit it’ thing before. There were some other suggestions of how to verify hashed predictions in that discussion, if our asterisk-free comments seem insufficiently secure for dealing with User!Quirinus_Quirrell.
Right now, we have no grounds for considering being able to confirm a deception in this matter more dangerous than being unable to. If at some point in the future such grounds arise, Unnamed (and everyone else) can delete or edit their comments, thereby eliminating the more dangerous option.
Here is the sha1sum of Quirinus_Quirrell’s prediction where he can’t edit it: 9805a0c7bf3690db25e5753e128085c4191f0114.
And another one as backup, because this is Professor Quirrell we’re talking about here:
9805a0c7bf3690db25e5753e128085c4191f0114
Obviously, though, this is all misdirection from his real scheme.
Of course, he would have two sockpuppets, to quell suspicion of the first one.
9805a0c7bf3690db25e5753e128085c4191f0114
Constant vigilance!
You’re safeguarding against the wrong thing. If I needed to fake a prediction that badly, I’d find a security hole in Less Wrong with which to edit all your comments. I wouldn’t waste time establishing karma for sockpuppets to post editable hashes to deter others from posting hashes themselves, that would be silly. But as it happens, I’m not planning to edit this hash, and doing that wouldn’t have been a viable strategy in the first place.
“Clearly, the way to make our safeguards super-secure is to make yet another comment with the hash.”
“Clearly, the way to make my safeguards super-secure is to make yet another Horcrux.”
Somehow, you could only see through one of these strategies.
9805a0c7bf3690db25e5753e128085c4191f0114
How do I know you’re not all sock puppets of him? Clearly, the only solution is for everyone to keep a copy of it themselves.
Edited comments have an asterisk after the date, the lack of this asterisk indicates the comment has not been edited. Though this does not work for top level posts.
Maybe they are all someone else’s sockpuppets. At a given date, they will coordinatedly change some whitespace in their comments (but not the hash itself), thus framing Quirrell. Fortunately, now that I unmasked the plan, it is not really viable anymore.
I never noticed that before.
Here is the sha512sum of his sha1sum:
efd2fe6c5defd19d396a8504fd4a300de88dbd4ae64f934464da34644b03fb4c805a76fd208b417c837c0f4861f3fe0999e99fc085d48a86cfd3d4317ec48993
It’s worth noting, people, that Unnamed joined Less Wrong before Eliezer started writing Methods.
Having said that, it’s not clear to me we want to do all this. Sometimes we could be at a game-theoretic advantage by not knowing something. E.g. I don’t want to be able to be told that someone’s kidnapped my daughter, because then they have no incentive to do so (TDT aside). Maybe Quirrell is actually planning on us being able to verify his honesty.
Unless they just want your daughter, instead of wanting whatever behavior they could use her to coerce you into. So really what you don’t want is a way to receive ransom demands.
I’ve also done this ‘reply to someone else’s hashed prediction so they can’t edit it’ thing before. There were some other suggestions of how to verify hashed predictions in that discussion, if our asterisk-free comments seem insufficiently secure for dealing with User!Quirinus_Quirrell.
Right now, we have no grounds for considering being able to confirm a deception in this matter more dangerous than being unable to. If at some point in the future such grounds arise, Unnamed (and everyone else) can delete or edit their comments, thereby eliminating the more dangerous option.