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Vaniver comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong
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Comments (164)
The Nobel Prize is generally for longevity; Gandhi died only a few years after independence. They essentially awarded him the prize posthumously, which is an honor I believe only given to him.
Keep your identity small!
It's my understanding that the Peace Prize is the one case where that doesn't hold, because it's often given to grant support to a nascent, positive movement:
(And there was certainly no wait for longevity in the 2009 award to the recently-elected Obama, even if he did deserve it.)
This is true; the explanation you posted in another part of this thread was a superior explanation of why he wasn't going to get it until 1948. People dying before they receive any Nobel prize is common, however, though you are right that it is less so for the Peace prize.
People killing before they receive Nobels other than the Nobel Peace prize is less common, however, so it balances out.
Is that a typographical error of some kind? Gandhi never got the prize.
Excuse me? Apart from being an instance of bullshit in its own right, a farcical peace prize awarded for the wrong reasons can be expected to have an instrumentally negative influence on the world. Resolving such an institution to negative emotional association is an entirely appropriate extrapolation from the core of my identity. Including an exception for farcical peace prizes would introduce complexity to my identity that I don't desire.
Please refrain from telling me what my identity should be. It's, um, mine.
The prize was not awarded in 1948 because "there was no suitable living candidate." It was not clear whether or not the committee was allowed to award prizes posthumously and they decided they were unable to, but would do it symbolically.
Ok. Instead of advice, I'll give you a statement: being offended about something you insufficiently researched makes you look bad. Being offended on the behalf of Gandhi makes little sense- why would he want more conflict because of him?- and being offended on the behalf of your species makes less sense. The Nobel Prize committee is beholden to Alfred Nobel and none other.
There are good reasons to consider the Nobel Peace Prize farcical, but their treatment of Gandhi is not a good one.
You are certainly trying hard to make me look bad but regardless of whether you are successful in persuading your audience I reject your claim. I have more than enough evidence to conclude that I would prefer a peace prize that is awarded to Stanislav Petrov and Gandhi than one awarded to Yasser Arafat and Al Gore. Or Barack Obama for that matter. That's like awarding little Johnny US the Encouragement Award because he punched and stole the lunch money of slightly fewer of his classmates this week.
Is there anything I have ever said or done on lesswrong that gives the impression that I have anything like Ghandi's philosophy for dealing with conflict? Gandhi's tactics are highly situational and work only for those particularly adept at judging and manipulating public opinion and for those who are too helpless to do anything to improve their circumstances. No, my advice for the most practical and ethical way of dealing with oppressors is to not protest at all, not let them know that you oppose them and systematically assassinate all their leaders until they leave.
I further suggest that if you don't think Gandhi's example would be consistent with getting offended by things then you totally missed the point of what he did. The guy did hunger strikes and silly walks to fetch salt as a way to broadcast how offensive things are. He wasn't nice, he just wielded offense and public opinion as his weapons.
Again, you miss the point. The Nobel Prize committee is beholden to Alfred Nobel. The rest of the world, including myself, are not. The rest of the world are free to make it, as wikipedia puts it, "a highly regarded award, recognised internationally" or to marginalise it as a bad joke by a meaningless institution. We as individuals can then evaluate the aesthetic appeal and expected consequences of the 'Peace' prize awarded as it is. We can also consider how public opinion of the prize as a respected institution reflects on human psychology.
The Peace Prize has a very poorly defined mission.
Some third world activist who leads a social movement earns a lot of warm fuzzies, but probably doesn't affect the world very much (let's say Maathai).
Someone who pursues a naturally partisan and controversial goal peacefully probably produces a lot of conflict, but less conflict than they would have if they were violent about it. (Gandhi)
Some dictator or lunatic who mellows out and murders less than usual probably has a very large beneficial effect on the world, compared to his usual murder rate (Arafat and the Israelis).
The leader of a very large country, like the United States or the Soviet Union, can have a greater positive influence on the world just by being a fraction of a percent nicer than the average person, than the leader of a small country, or a private individual, can have by being an amazing saint (Obama).
And some random person in the right place at the right time may have a very large effect in terms of sheer scale, but be questionable in terms of genuine virtue (Petrov).
If about 60% of people, in Petrov's situation, would have done what he did, is it better to give the prize to him, or to some activist who has spent her whole life tirelessly struggling for freedom despite adversity?
I'm not a big fan of the Nobel committee's decisions, but given the pressures they face and the confusion of their task I don't think they've done a ridiculously inadequate job.
Hypothetically, if Nobel had been a sociopath and instituted a "Nobel War Prize" or "Nobel Deadly Conflict Prize" with an equally poorly defined mission, how inadequately would you judge their work had they given the award to exactly the same recipients as were actually awarded the Peace Prize?
I don't imagine China thinks much of last year's prize either. That guy is a current Chinese political prisoner!
WHAT? It's an OUTRAGE that they passed over both Hitler and Stalin! An OUTRAGE! Who do these people think they are?
More seriously, I don't see this as a deal-breaker. If I asked a bunch of people for the people with the greatest positive effect on human history, and the people with the greatest negative effect on human history, the same names would probably appear on both lists several times (Mohammed, for example). Certainly he'd be higher up than Bob Q. Random.
If a list of people is indistinguishable from a shoddily done list of worst person of the year and a shoddily done list of best person of the year, it's mostly of psychological interest for telling us about the award givers, rather than anything about the recipients.
Perhaps we could calculate what a list of people would look like relative to the Nobel Peace Prize recipient list if the only criteria was influence. We could then compare the lists.
You forgot my favorite case!
Digressing somewhat...
I suspect you mean "...a fraction of a percent nicer than the average candidate for that leadership position."
Though perhaps it should be "...a fraction of a percent nicer than whoever would have otherwise held the position."
Or perhaps not? Perhaps the right comparison is actually between the results of what they did do (take the position and act as nicely as they did) and what they could have done (act more nicely, or less nicely, or abdicate in favor of someone better qualified, or whatever).
I'm genuinely uncertain, here. It's difficult, when comparing actualities to counterfactuals, to establish clear criteria for what counterfactuals to use.
Additionally, it seems unclear whether the Peace Prize is primarily meant to reward or to encourage efforts toward global... let's say "altruism", since "peace" seems too narrow. There have been controversial awards falling into both categories (Kissinger's was unambiguously the former), but controversy over the latter seems to make the news more consistently.
Perhaps the peace prize is primarily meant to maximise the use of the word 'Nobel'. Ambiguous wording is perfect for achieving that goal. It allows the prize to maintain the credibility it borrows from the Nobel science awards while also promoting controversy. An ideal execution of posthumous PR strategy (assuming getting crucified while founding a religion is out of the question).
Getting crucified a few centuries before founding a religion works pretty well, also.
On the other hand Robin Hanson will vote against Obama even in a simple election because he, in Hanson's judgement, started a war unjustifiably.
The "slightly less of a warmonger than you used to be" prize? I don't think the mission is quite that poorly defined! That said, he shared that year's prize with some Israeli folks so it was more a bipartisan honor for a specific act than in honor of the person. That is perhaps justifiable.
I used to think that, but I no longer find it plausible. The premise seems to be that leaders are detachable pieces.
In fact, assassination has a risk of making leaders more frightened and forceful. Additionally, a good many people may be loyal to a leader, so that assassination registers as an outside threat rather than a favor.
A sequence of assassinations is hard. Are you expecting enough of your group to survive and continue? Other groups to take up the project?
Not having a significant power base is rather a limiting factor when it comes to just about any political campaign. I suggest that it takes less surviving members to arrange assassinations than it requires to perform a rebellion via conventional tactics.
Has the sequence of assassinations tactic ever worked?
The Center for Economic Policy Research says yes.
Full text: http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/papers/working/150.pdf
Thanks for the links, but what it actually says is that while successful assassination can significantly increase the chance of a move from autocracy to democracy, the odds of a successful assassination are sufficiently low that the net effect of trying to change things with an assassination attempt is close to zero.
Assassination has some effect on wars, though.
Please, don't write "Ghandi" instead of Gandhi.
Ick. I wonder why chrome didn't pick that up for me!
I am not out to get you. I am out to correct your view of historical fact. I apologize for acting such that the latter was mistaken for the former.
I agree with you.
I do not think Gandhi would have organized a fast, walk, or strike over not receiving a prize.
That sounds likely to fail disastrously.
It has worked once: the Ismailis managed to win freedom from Persia using this method. I do not know how often it has been tried.
I would bet against you heavily in most relevant counterfactual scenarios.
It requires quite a lot of things to go right. If your group is generally opposed, you need some authority that they'll respond to that will stop them from protesting, either keeping the message secret from the authorities you're trying to oppose, or without telling them the real reason in the first place. The assassinations have to be successful, without the assassins being caught, and present day assassinations frequently fail or are so difficult that they are not attempted in the first place. The authorities have to realize that pulling out would put an end to the deaths, but not decide to retaliate by further victimizing locals with an ultimatum that they'll continue until the assassinations stop.
Successful obviously. Failing to assassinate people is a terrible strategy. But the 'without being caught' is by no means required. In fact for that group that gave the role it's name getting away was not even a high priority. It was far more important to make the killing public and visible so as to best demoralize the enemy leaders.
Which of course moves things along to guerrilla warfare against an occupying force with terrible morale and weakened leadership. If your people are not in a position to overthrow the occupying force when they have that much motivation then you are pretty much screwed. My only advice is "don't be you".
It's one thing for the assassins to die executing their missions like the Hashishin, another for them to be captured, at which point they become liabilities. Besides, if your group is revealed to be associated with assassinations, your opposition won't stay secret.
The occupying force has a strong motive not to back down against weaker foes who show willingness to target their leaders, otherwise they give everyone else they might occupy the incentive to do the same. Besides pulling off repeated assassinations is hard. The Hashishin installed sleeper agents years, sometimes decades in advance, and improved documentation in the present day makes this even more difficult to do without getting caught.
The Ismailis (assassins) would often wait around, explicitly to be captured and tortured. If you are expecting to lose the asset, it isn't a significant liability.
This is the more significant concern, especially since most conflicts today are inter-ethnic rather than inter-religious. Convincing a Persian Muslim to join a different sect of Islam and then assassinate another Persian is very different from getting a Palestinian suicide-bomber within range of an Israeli politician.
Yes, monolithic entities obviously have a strong motive to not submit to power moves by other monolithic entities. This applies to peasants going on hunger strikes, silly walks and fighting conventional battles just as well.
But occupying forces are not monolithic entities. If a general has 1,000 of his soldiers killed in a battle with resistance then he has a strong personal incentive to send another 2,000 so that he does not look weak to his superiors. If a general and his household is killed then the replacement has a personal incentive to let the other general in the occupying force be the one who orders the next massacre. Or, better yet, he has an incentive to not vie so hard for the promotion and instead pull whatever strings he can to be reassigned as a lieutenant general back in a different province. (Downgrade the respective ranks as appropriate to the extent of the occupying force.)
Point is: If it comes a time to resist an enemy with violence target leaders with extreme prejudice. Don't play by unwritten rules of polite warfare. Those favor the oppressor.
Modern examples of a similar strategy- terrorists- seem to not be terribly effective at enacting their political goals. That may be because targeting leaders is more effective than targeting civilians or symbols, but it's not clear to me that that is the case.
That's far from the truth. Leaders seem to give them exactly what they want and the terrorists have success beyond anything they could have hoped for. At the rationalist boot camp we had some fun calculating the amount of economic damage caused by one attempted act of terrorism with a shoe bomb that failed. The extra time spent every day by Americans at airports waiting in lines to take off their shoes is hilarious (to anyone for whom costs measured in dollars do not have the instinctive salience that costs in pain and death do when multiplied out). Then there are the effects that 9/11 had on instilling fear (overt goal!), undermining legal rights and causing about a billion dollars worth of expenditure on war per 9/11 victim.
You obviously consider terrorism to not be successful and so we have a significant disagreement there but probably not one that we need to get into. Because 'terrorism works' is so incredibly political and it isn't something I am trying to claim here. I would concede the point for the sake of the argument because I am not advocating terrorism (of the kind you describe).
Blowing up the oppressor's civilians is terribly impractical. It just costs far too much in terms of lives of your people. Reserve blowing up the enemy's civilians unless you have a way to make it look like it was the doing of a rival of your enemy - then it is just about perfect! No, you kill whichever enemy leader is the most hostile to your people. If the situation has escalated such that the enemy is making reprisals against civilians then you probably should expand the assassination to "leaders who ordered civilians killed plus their family if convenient". Whatever it takes to make the replacement figure of power desperate to make the other guy be the one to take the initiative on the tyranny front.
It's not always going to work - some fights can't be won no matter what you do. Some fights aren't worth fighting at all. And most of the time it is better to let some other guy do the fighting and dying for you if you can manage it.
By "political goals" I meant things like "remove American soldiers from Saudi Arabia" not "divert American effort towards protection," as we were originally discussing independence efforts rather than destructive efforts. I agree with you that terrorism is very effective at getting people to spend money on defense. What I am looking for, and do not see, is many terrorist groups that make the transition from oppressed minority to political leadership. The Tamil Tigers were crushed after 9/11 made funding terrorism passe, the IRA managed to get a truce with Britain but then turned on itself in a civil war. Palestine doesn't seem much of a success story, given the dominance of Israel.
To the best of my knowledge, no contemporary group has tried the Ismaili strategy you advocate. I don't know enough to say why.
Not sure if intentional.
I'm not sure whether it would have helped or not but I'm sure that if Gandhi's followers used silly walks while fetching salt they would have had a whole lot more fun!