Luckily, we can make a credible story that we were following international law...
Credible, to whom? Implausible deniability is an interesting phenomenon. Everyone knows it’s a lie, but we all say the lie to each other, and pretend it is not.
It seems more true (lesswrong?) that laws are for those without power, while those with power act according to interest, making up implausible denials when they want to pretend that laws are for everyone. The need for implausible denials places some small pressure on the powerful to act consistently, but not much.
If the powerful don’t feel it is in their interests to protect West Examplestan, they won’t. East Examplestan will tailor it’s action to allow some implausible excuse, those with power will take it, and the lie of law lives on.
For the Peyote example, the powerful don’t really care if a limited number of people can take drugs, while the religious certainly do care to protect religious exemptions. If there were only 10 religious people in the country, probably Peyote gets banned and we’re done with it.
“Existing a long time” is just an excuse, one of many possible, and again, one that literally privileges vested interests—those who have had the interest for a long time. But if 100 million people are willing to bomb and kill for a week old religion that wanted to use Peyote as a sacrament, “existing a long time” would no longer be a part of the magic formula granting exemption from drug laws.
Follow the money. Follow the guns. Follow the violence.
I find a lot of game theory suspect. The right action will always depend on your prior for the behavior of the other players, and for any prior P that recommends X over Y, you can find a prior P’ that recommends Y over X. Treating Game Theory as if it provides “the right” answer, without explicitly identifying the priors on the other players is hugely dangerous. I didn’t see any priors established in this article. I saw rationalizations that would hold for some unidentified priors, and not hold for others.
Credible, to whom? Implausible deniability is an interesting phenomenon. Everyone knows it’s a lie, but we all say the lie to each other, and pretend it is not.
It seems more true (lesswrong?) that laws are for those without power, while those with power act according to interest, making up implausible denials when they want to pretend that laws are for everyone. The need for implausible denials places some small pressure on the powerful to act consistently, but not much.
If the powerful don’t feel it is in their interests to protect West Examplestan, they won’t. East Examplestan will tailor it’s action to allow some implausible excuse, those with power will take it, and the lie of law lives on.
For the Peyote example, the powerful don’t really care if a limited number of people can take drugs, while the religious certainly do care to protect religious exemptions. If there were only 10 religious people in the country, probably Peyote gets banned and we’re done with it.
“Existing a long time” is just an excuse, one of many possible, and again, one that literally privileges vested interests—those who have had the interest for a long time. But if 100 million people are willing to bomb and kill for a week old religion that wanted to use Peyote as a sacrament, “existing a long time” would no longer be a part of the magic formula granting exemption from drug laws.
Follow the money. Follow the guns. Follow the violence.
I find a lot of game theory suspect. The right action will always depend on your prior for the behavior of the other players, and for any prior P that recommends X over Y, you can find a prior P’ that recommends Y over X. Treating Game Theory as if it provides “the right” answer, without explicitly identifying the priors on the other players is hugely dangerous. I didn’t see any priors established in this article. I saw rationalizations that would hold for some unidentified priors, and not hold for others.