I feel like I rolled “hard mode” the first time I loaded the page: 50% are snipers, 60% sniper hit rate, 40% regular hit rate (so no difference on priors and not much to tell the difference between them), and then they only deigned to take two shots at my helmet (one hit, one miss) before catching on to the ruse.
I guess “sometimes the world doesn’t provide convenient data” is a valid part of the lesson. But if I were tweaking the variables I might patch in a higher minimum number of shots against the helmet (I did see it become willing to take many more on subsequent re-rolls)
Might also be more satisfying if the air strike option revealed whether it really was a sniper—even when I’m confident they were, I find myself repeating the scenario and choosing “attack” to check.
Do you recall what the probability of a fellow soldier dying due to calling in air strike was? In my tests so far it was never greater than 20%, so you should definitely call in an air strike in your scenario since the false positive outcome is not as costly as the false negative.
Edit: It looks like it sometimes goes up to 30%, but the conclusion still holds.
Edit2: If you have a sufficiently “selfish” utility function, it would be short-term rational to always click the airstrike button. The scenario doesn’t outline any larger picture in terms of consequences for you personally.
Ah, apparently I rolled maximum hard mode that time, as it was indeed 30% chance of fellow soldier death
I reasoned similarly that the cost of a FP was less than for a FN and called in the air strike; it told me some other guy died. I reloaded the same scenario and tried a direct attack; I got shot by a sniper.
I feel like I rolled “hard mode” the first time I loaded the page: 50% are snipers, 60% sniper hit rate, 40% regular hit rate (so no difference on priors and not much to tell the difference between them), and then they only deigned to take two shots at my helmet (one hit, one miss) before catching on to the ruse.
I guess “sometimes the world doesn’t provide convenient data” is a valid part of the lesson. But if I were tweaking the variables I might patch in a higher minimum number of shots against the helmet (I did see it become willing to take many more on subsequent re-rolls)
Might also be more satisfying if the air strike option revealed whether it really was a sniper—even when I’m confident they were, I find myself repeating the scenario and choosing “attack” to check.
Do you recall what the probability of a fellow soldier dying due to calling in air strike was? In my tests so far it was never greater than 20%, so you should definitely call in an air strike in your scenario since the false positive outcome is not as costly as the false negative.
Edit: It looks like it sometimes goes up to 30%, but the conclusion still holds.
Edit2: If you have a sufficiently “selfish” utility function, it would be short-term rational to always click the airstrike button. The scenario doesn’t outline any larger picture in terms of consequences for you personally.
Ah, apparently I rolled maximum hard mode that time, as it was indeed 30% chance of fellow soldier death
I reasoned similarly that the cost of a FP was less than for a FN and called in the air strike; it told me some other guy died. I reloaded the same scenario and tried a direct attack; I got shot by a sniper.