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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Unpacking the Concept of "Blackmail" - Less Wrong
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It seems that we cry blackmail when a shelling point already exists, and the other agent is threatening to force us below it. The moral outrage functions as a precommittment to punish the clear defection.
In normal human life, 'do nothing' is the schelling point, because most people don't interact with most people. But sometimes the schelling point does move, and it seems what constitutes blackmail does too: if a child's drowning in a pond, and I tell you I'll only fish him out if you give me $1,000, it seems like I'm blackmailing you.
Sometimes both sides feel like they're being blackmailed though; like when firefighters go on strike, and both city hall and the union accuse the other of endangering people. Could this be put down to coordination problems?
Don't even get me started on how ill-defined and far from being formally understood the concept of "Schelling point" is. It's very useful in informal game theory of course.
Yeah, I'm reading Strategy of Conflict at the moment. Still, it seems that working out Schelling points would give us blackmail, whilst understanding blackmail some other way wouldn't give us schelling points (as the latter can be without communication, etc.)
Schelling.
fixed, cheers
A Schelling point is a kind of Nash equilbrium, right? It's the kind of equilibrium that an understanding of human psychology and the details of the situation says you should expect.
The union-firefighter looks like a variant on the hawk-dove/chicken game. If default is (Dove,Dove), which isn't an equilibrium, Hawk can be seen as a black mail action as it makes you worse of than default. So at (Hawk,Hawk) everyone is, in fact, being blackmailed, and this is, essentially, a coordination problem.