This is a follow-up post to the last section of Ukraine Post #2 on the need for Better Decision Theory. In particular I want to think more about the following result and some resulting logic and examples. If that’s not relevant to your interests and/or you’re fine with it being hand-waved later when I build upon it, you can skip or skim this one. It is definitely the first-draft longer version of something shorter that I have not yet had time to write.
When it comes to picking 1, 2 or 3 of the traits, it does seem that having all three is possible. In reading "Churchill and Orwell" by Ricks, it does seem that Churchill was willing and able to escalate indefinitely in the face of a mafioso type personality without himself being a mafioso, wanting good things, and not making dumb decisions (mostly; some of his tactical ideas in the war were questionable.) It seems that the trick is to have a long view that understands letting lower scale evils go to avoid escalation simply leads to future escalation, and a set of principles and preferences that place long run ethical goals (anti-mafioso type) above personal safety. In a sense the hero personality who stands up for what is right because it is right and views costs accrued in the pursuit virtuous, and possibly desirable. (If it gets too desirable you drift towards martyr complexes, but many people take pride in e.g. scars they got fighting for a good cause.)
Anyway, that might be a bit nit-picky, but I do think most game theoretic work misses out on why people might be willing to take one for the team, as it were, breaking people into predators and prey, Hawks vs Doves, instead of adequately examining the different types of people. Too much focus on the more concrete costs and benefits, to my mind.
The impossible trifecta you describe is a case of something that can be served well by Hanson's governance-by-prediction-markets. What to do next when dealing with the mafioso, A or B? Easy, just look at which decision is supported by your pet conditional prediction market forecasting on A and B.
> 3. Benefits from the belief you have the mafioso nature, or otherwise might limitlessly escalate or do something disproportional if provoked.
I think this needs a lot of refinement. We don't actually need "limitless" or "disproportionate" response. We just need a response that makes our opponent's expected costs outweigh their benefits. You don't need to be a mafioso, you just need to not be a simpering, weakling pacifist.
To analogize who's primary target of a mafioso? Sure, they sometimes fight other mafiosos, but they prefer to target weak communities with no real means of fighting back. This is why they prey on marginalized people and communities. What they really don't want to fight is someone who's strong. Predators attack the weak. A well policed, economically connected neighborhood, however, is about the last place the mob wants to attack.
Democracies sometimes appear weak because of the nature of internal dissent and discourse, but I'd argue that democracies actually do deterrence fairly well and without even thinking about it. First, we're just that much stronger. Second, we can pretty easily make credible signals like deploying "tripwire" levels of forces to places we wouldn't really care about fighting over in other circumstances.
When a predatory country attacks another, it's usually based on this calculation. When it goes bad (Ukraine, Iraq->Kuwait, Germany -> USSR) it seems to come from dramatic misjudgment about the will and ability of the opponent to fight back.
I think the magic word in the Biden question is not "decisions", it's "approve". If I hate Biden then I might be forced to grudgingly agree that he was right on some specific issue, but I'll be damned if I'm going to contribute to something that sounds like an approval rating.
On the "pick two out of three" characteristics, I think you're counting Trump out too quickly from having all three. At the very least he's aware of the strategy and consciously attempting to have all three -- he's admitted to it quite a few times. You say he doesn't count because he's made _some_ poor decisions, which is true, but infallibility is a tough standard; I think he makes good decisions more often than bad ones (and no less often than most people who simply attempt 1 and 2), which is why he's a billionaire President and the rest of us aren't.
The biggest obstacle is democracy. It's easy to play the madman when you're a businessman staking his own money, it's much harder when you need the support of others. You need to signal "Hey look, I'm crazy" to your enemies while signalling "Wink wink, it's okay, I know what I'm doing" to the people on whom you rely. Putin can do this because he has private channels of communication to the only people who can actually depose him, but Trump can't, because he's dependant on actual voters and can only communicate through public channels.
"Note that he didn’t say that Biden should say that. He said he would have said it." --> Huh? Yes he did, three times, at 0:18, 0:30 and 0:41 in that video, "he should say".
When it comes to picking 1, 2 or 3 of the traits, it does seem that having all three is possible. In reading "Churchill and Orwell" by Ricks, it does seem that Churchill was willing and able to escalate indefinitely in the face of a mafioso type personality without himself being a mafioso, wanting good things, and not making dumb decisions (mostly; some of his tactical ideas in the war were questionable.) It seems that the trick is to have a long view that understands letting lower scale evils go to avoid escalation simply leads to future escalation, and a set of principles and preferences that place long run ethical goals (anti-mafioso type) above personal safety. In a sense the hero personality who stands up for what is right because it is right and views costs accrued in the pursuit virtuous, and possibly desirable. (If it gets too desirable you drift towards martyr complexes, but many people take pride in e.g. scars they got fighting for a good cause.)
Anyway, that might be a bit nit-picky, but I do think most game theoretic work misses out on why people might be willing to take one for the team, as it were, breaking people into predators and prey, Hawks vs Doves, instead of adequately examining the different types of people. Too much focus on the more concrete costs and benefits, to my mind.
The impossible trifecta you describe is a case of something that can be served well by Hanson's governance-by-prediction-markets. What to do next when dealing with the mafioso, A or B? Easy, just look at which decision is supported by your pet conditional prediction market forecasting on A and B.
> 3. Benefits from the belief you have the mafioso nature, or otherwise might limitlessly escalate or do something disproportional if provoked.
I think this needs a lot of refinement. We don't actually need "limitless" or "disproportionate" response. We just need a response that makes our opponent's expected costs outweigh their benefits. You don't need to be a mafioso, you just need to not be a simpering, weakling pacifist.
To analogize who's primary target of a mafioso? Sure, they sometimes fight other mafiosos, but they prefer to target weak communities with no real means of fighting back. This is why they prey on marginalized people and communities. What they really don't want to fight is someone who's strong. Predators attack the weak. A well policed, economically connected neighborhood, however, is about the last place the mob wants to attack.
Democracies sometimes appear weak because of the nature of internal dissent and discourse, but I'd argue that democracies actually do deterrence fairly well and without even thinking about it. First, we're just that much stronger. Second, we can pretty easily make credible signals like deploying "tripwire" levels of forces to places we wouldn't really care about fighting over in other circumstances.
When a predatory country attacks another, it's usually based on this calculation. When it goes bad (Ukraine, Iraq->Kuwait, Germany -> USSR) it seems to come from dramatic misjudgment about the will and ability of the opponent to fight back.
I think the magic word in the Biden question is not "decisions", it's "approve". If I hate Biden then I might be forced to grudgingly agree that he was right on some specific issue, but I'll be damned if I'm going to contribute to something that sounds like an approval rating.
On the "pick two out of three" characteristics, I think you're counting Trump out too quickly from having all three. At the very least he's aware of the strategy and consciously attempting to have all three -- he's admitted to it quite a few times. You say he doesn't count because he's made _some_ poor decisions, which is true, but infallibility is a tough standard; I think he makes good decisions more often than bad ones (and no less often than most people who simply attempt 1 and 2), which is why he's a billionaire President and the rest of us aren't.
The biggest obstacle is democracy. It's easy to play the madman when you're a businessman staking his own money, it's much harder when you need the support of others. You need to signal "Hey look, I'm crazy" to your enemies while signalling "Wink wink, it's okay, I know what I'm doing" to the people on whom you rely. Putin can do this because he has private channels of communication to the only people who can actually depose him, but Trump can't, because he's dependant on actual voters and can only communicate through public channels.
"Note that he didn’t say that Biden should say that. He said he would have said it." --> Huh? Yes he did, three times, at 0:18, 0:30 and 0:41 in that video, "he should say".