I remember reading that if you want to win a game of chicken with a bunch of cars while crossing a busy street, the best way to do it is to wear blindfolds and earmuffs. The cars know you won't jump out of the way so they'll be forced to swerve around you. I have never tried this personally, though.
Surely the threatening agent's intelligence, competence, and belief system have roles to play? Surely these are paths by which actual, not calculated, irrationality get in?
On a related note to Carry-On, Rory Miller (a corrections officer who's written a bunch of books about violent situations) says that if a loved one is being threatened by a criminal who wants you to surrender/tie yourself up or something similar, you should absolutely run and call the police. Even a psychopath, if they have a sense of self-preservation, should know that committing a murder at that point only wastes time when backup is on the way. It'd be difficult to make that decision in real life, though.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah. What were some of your main points of disagreement with Thomas Schelling?
Jeffrey Lewis: Oh, there’s one that I particularly cherish. When Tom thought about the risk of nuclear war, the thing he always compared it to — at least in our conversations, and he did it once in a published paper — is when he’s driving, he’s confident a pedestrian isn’t going to step out in front of him, and that’s deterrence. He’s very comfortable with deterrence.
I was like, “Tom, people get hit by cars all the time. What are you talking about?” And I think that goes to that fundamental difference. He was confident that he was never going to hit a pedestrian, and that a significant portion of that was the deterrence of driving, and a small part of that was him thinking he was a pretty good driver.
I’ll never forget, I threw a dinner and Mort Halperin was there, and Tom and Mort had had a couple of glasses of wine, maybe more than a couple. And Tom, who at that point is in his late 80s, says to Mort, “I’ll drive you home.” And I’m like, “Oh my God. No. This is not how I want to win the argument about pedestrian fatalities.”
Rob Wiblin: Interesting.
Jeffrey Lewis: He was just, at some level, very confident that people were deeply sensible and rational, and I don’t share that sense. I actually looked up statistically, what are the percentage of serious accidents involving pedestrians and cars? I wanted to find it for Massachusetts in the early ’80s when he wrote this, just to get a sense of what was his reference risk. It turns out, and you have to look at licenced drivers, from a driver’s perspective, about one in 1,000 drivers every year would hit a pedestrian.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah, so not that low a number.
Jeffrey Lewis: A 1-in-1,000 risk of a nuclear war. “Tom, that seems high to me.”
Anja Shortland's excellent book Kidnap notes that terrorists, pirates, and gangsters are in a repeated game with governments and insurance companies. The implication is they typically only kill hostages under two circumstances:
1) when the SWAT team starts raiding the safe house, you kill the hostages to deter raids next time
2) when you have multiple hostages and some have stakeholders who won't pay (usually Americans) but others have stakeholders who might (usually Europeans), you make a bad faith demand (eg, $200 million and empty Gitmo in the next hour) and then release a video of you gruseomely killing the hostages whose stakeholders are certain not to pay in order to scare the stakeholders who are likely to pay into paying more and doing so faster.
The flip side to number 2 is the Captain Phillips scenario where the US Navy kills the pirates to deter them from seizing Americans. This is something of a tradition for the US Navy, which had punitive raids against Barbary pirates as one of its first missions.
"If you are a rational Mr. Spock, I can exploit you in all sorts of ways, confident that any retaliation you carry out will be reasonable and proportional. But, if I know you have a temper and will respond disproportionately, I must treat you with more respect."
Yeah, this is what I was thinking when you said the mercenary wouldn't be compelled to kill Nora: "Dude, he's gonna be mad. Of course he's gonna kill her."
We all fear the raving crazy person. I've never thought about how that's evolutionarily adaptive before, but that explains a lot. Bill Eddy of the High-Conflict Institute also talks about how Cluster B personality disorders evolved for a reason, as have others who have looked at psychopaths.
We didn't just determine that evil is evolutionarily advantageous, did we? That's so incredibly depressing.
In the last paragraph, you made the point I was expecting all along. If a few decades of marriage to an exceptionally strong-willed person have taught me anything, it’s that there are few spurs to anger more potent than defying such a person’s will. To me, there is nothing alien in this psychological process: “You think you can cross me? People who cross me get f*cked up.” And then you cross this person and their honest-to-God volcanic rage leads pretty directly to the promised f*cking-up. (Happily, in my experience this always stops well short of killing or even physical violence!)
Perhaps relatedly, I have a hard time with the idea that the President doesn’t launch on Moscow after the Soviets launch on New York. “It doesn’t bring back the dead” is not an objection that is going to register under those circumstances. You just don’t let that kind of attack go unanswered. Call it revenge if you want, but reprisal is a psychological imperative. Maybe irrational to homo economicus, but not irrational to human beings who have experienced human passions. As Hume or someone said, it is not contrary to reason that I should prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger!
I think empty threats are really interesting because they put you in timely and emotional pressure and make it as seem you're making the right choice by giving what they want, ultimately forcing you to outweigh your rationality. Because of that, I found this article to be a helpful guide not only for making effective threats (which hopefully we all will not), but also for responding to perceived threats in our lives. Of course, if I actually face an irrational person than it is best to swerve past them without topping my life with an additional hassle, but now that I've read the article I would better be able to tell apart between people who are pretending to be irrational and the ones who actually are. And if they are apparently 'rational', then at least I can now be the other player across their chessboard, instead of resorting to be their own pawns.
I remember reading that if you want to win a game of chicken with a bunch of cars while crossing a busy street, the best way to do it is to wear blindfolds and earmuffs. The cars know you won't jump out of the way so they'll be forced to swerve around you. I have never tried this personally, though.
Surely the threatening agent's intelligence, competence, and belief system have roles to play? Surely these are paths by which actual, not calculated, irrationality get in?
On a related note to Carry-On, Rory Miller (a corrections officer who's written a bunch of books about violent situations) says that if a loved one is being threatened by a criminal who wants you to surrender/tie yourself up or something similar, you should absolutely run and call the police. Even a psychopath, if they have a sense of self-preservation, should know that committing a murder at that point only wastes time when backup is on the way. It'd be difficult to make that decision in real life, though.
Mercenaries have a reputation to uphold. By sparingly your girlfriend, they face immense economic harm.
I had some fun writing about M.A.D. and calculating our chances of avoiding nuclear armageddon here. They’re not good. https://gnug315.substack.com/p/fun-with-fractions
Reminds me of this fun anecdote from Jeffrey Lewis on Tom Schilling
Huh, the screenshot didn't paste. Attempt again:
Rob Wiblin: Yeah. What were some of your main points of disagreement with Thomas Schelling?
Jeffrey Lewis: Oh, there’s one that I particularly cherish. When Tom thought about the risk of nuclear war, the thing he always compared it to — at least in our conversations, and he did it once in a published paper — is when he’s driving, he’s confident a pedestrian isn’t going to step out in front of him, and that’s deterrence. He’s very comfortable with deterrence.
I was like, “Tom, people get hit by cars all the time. What are you talking about?” And I think that goes to that fundamental difference. He was confident that he was never going to hit a pedestrian, and that a significant portion of that was the deterrence of driving, and a small part of that was him thinking he was a pretty good driver.
I’ll never forget, I threw a dinner and Mort Halperin was there, and Tom and Mort had had a couple of glasses of wine, maybe more than a couple. And Tom, who at that point is in his late 80s, says to Mort, “I’ll drive you home.” And I’m like, “Oh my God. No. This is not how I want to win the argument about pedestrian fatalities.”
Rob Wiblin: Interesting.
Jeffrey Lewis: He was just, at some level, very confident that people were deeply sensible and rational, and I don’t share that sense. I actually looked up statistically, what are the percentage of serious accidents involving pedestrians and cars? I wanted to find it for Massachusetts in the early ’80s when he wrote this, just to get a sense of what was his reference risk. It turns out, and you have to look at licenced drivers, from a driver’s perspective, about one in 1,000 drivers every year would hit a pedestrian.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah, so not that low a number.
Jeffrey Lewis: A 1-in-1,000 risk of a nuclear war. “Tom, that seems high to me.”
Anja Shortland's excellent book Kidnap notes that terrorists, pirates, and gangsters are in a repeated game with governments and insurance companies. The implication is they typically only kill hostages under two circumstances:
1) when the SWAT team starts raiding the safe house, you kill the hostages to deter raids next time
2) when you have multiple hostages and some have stakeholders who won't pay (usually Americans) but others have stakeholders who might (usually Europeans), you make a bad faith demand (eg, $200 million and empty Gitmo in the next hour) and then release a video of you gruseomely killing the hostages whose stakeholders are certain not to pay in order to scare the stakeholders who are likely to pay into paying more and doing so faster.
The flip side to number 2 is the Captain Phillips scenario where the US Navy kills the pirates to deter them from seizing Americans. This is something of a tradition for the US Navy, which had punitive raids against Barbary pirates as one of its first missions.
"If you are a rational Mr. Spock, I can exploit you in all sorts of ways, confident that any retaliation you carry out will be reasonable and proportional. But, if I know you have a temper and will respond disproportionately, I must treat you with more respect."
Yeah, this is what I was thinking when you said the mercenary wouldn't be compelled to kill Nora: "Dude, he's gonna be mad. Of course he's gonna kill her."
We all fear the raving crazy person. I've never thought about how that's evolutionarily adaptive before, but that explains a lot. Bill Eddy of the High-Conflict Institute also talks about how Cluster B personality disorders evolved for a reason, as have others who have looked at psychopaths.
We didn't just determine that evil is evolutionarily advantageous, did we? That's so incredibly depressing.
In the last paragraph, you made the point I was expecting all along. If a few decades of marriage to an exceptionally strong-willed person have taught me anything, it’s that there are few spurs to anger more potent than defying such a person’s will. To me, there is nothing alien in this psychological process: “You think you can cross me? People who cross me get f*cked up.” And then you cross this person and their honest-to-God volcanic rage leads pretty directly to the promised f*cking-up. (Happily, in my experience this always stops well short of killing or even physical violence!)
Perhaps relatedly, I have a hard time with the idea that the President doesn’t launch on Moscow after the Soviets launch on New York. “It doesn’t bring back the dead” is not an objection that is going to register under those circumstances. You just don’t let that kind of attack go unanswered. Call it revenge if you want, but reprisal is a psychological imperative. Maybe irrational to homo economicus, but not irrational to human beings who have experienced human passions. As Hume or someone said, it is not contrary to reason that I should prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger!
I think empty threats are really interesting because they put you in timely and emotional pressure and make it as seem you're making the right choice by giving what they want, ultimately forcing you to outweigh your rationality. Because of that, I found this article to be a helpful guide not only for making effective threats (which hopefully we all will not), but also for responding to perceived threats in our lives. Of course, if I actually face an irrational person than it is best to swerve past them without topping my life with an additional hassle, but now that I've read the article I would better be able to tell apart between people who are pretending to be irrational and the ones who actually are. And if they are apparently 'rational', then at least I can now be the other player across their chessboard, instead of resorting to be their own pawns.
Yes. Anger is selected for by evolution just as much as rationality!