This is totally off-topic, but I don't get the point of the AI game at all.
The point is that Eliezer succeeds convincing a person who was formerly unconvinced, and he also helps convince other people at a ratio proportional to the level they trust Eliezer and the other participant to have told the truth about the results.
If EY and myself were playing the game, EY could just say, ""I'll pay you $X in real-world money to let me win. "
Well, sure, but having now admitted that, this means that your testimony about both this and other similar scenarios constitutes very weak evidence. Eliezer himself and the other participants in question may have more credibility than you do.
This conversation is completely private, so if we break the rules, no one will ever know, and you'll be $X richer
If the dishonesty of the participants in question is to be treated as a scenario of significant probability, then surely it would be much easier to not play the game at all, just find someone that claimed to have played it with you. Why risk playing it with someone who may simply reject doing any such cheating?
Certainly if I was playing the game, and Eliezer suggested out-of-character cheating in this fashion, I'd almost certainly consider the former agreement of confidentiality null-and-void, and I would tell everyone that he tried to bribe me into cheating. He'd probably have to bribe me with more than I make in two years to even consider cheating in this fashion; and I doubt my testimony would be nearly as highly valued as that.
Lastly I think some people here may be forgetting that after the initial 2 successes by Eliezer, he repeated the AI-Box game another 3 times with raised stakes -- and his ratio of success then was 1 victory and 2 defeats. This somewhat lowers the probability that he's just finding people willing to lie on his behalf. (unless that's what he wants to make us think)
If the dishonesty of the participants in question is to be treated as a scenario of significant probability
I don't think that dishonesty is meaningful in this context.
People playing the game believe that they cannot be convinced to report that they let Eliezer win without saying how.
The main point of the game is that people can be convinced of what they think impossible in a situation similar to a that of a person monitoring an AI, not simply that a human monitoring an AI would let it out of the box.
I recall seeing, in one of the AI-boxing discussion threads, a comment to the effect that the first step for EY to get out was to convince the other party to even play the game at all.
It has since then occurred to me that this applies to a lot of my interactions. Many people who know me IRL and know a belief of mine which they do not agree with and do not want to be convinced of often adopt the strategy of not talking with me about it at all. For me to convince one of these people of something, first I have to convince them to talk about it at all.
(Note, I don't think this is because I'm an unpleasant person to converse with. Excuses given are along the lines of "I never win an argument with you" and "you've studied it a lot more than I have, it's an unfair discussion". I don't think I'm claiming anything too outlandish here; average humans are really bad at putting rational arguments together.)
I suppose the general form is: in order to convince someone of a sufficiently alien (to them) P, first you must convince them to seriously think about P. This rule may need to be applied recursively (e.g., "seriously think about P" may require one or more LW rationality techniques).
As a practical example, my parents are very religious. I'd like to convince them to sign up for cryonics. I haven't (yet) come up with an approach that I expect to have a non-negligible chance of success. But the realization that the first goalpost along the way is to get them to seriously engage in the conversation at all simplifies the search space. (Deconversion and training in LW rationality has, of course, the best chance of success--but still a high chance of failing and I judge a failure would probably have a large negative impact on my relationship with my parents in their remaining years. That's why I'd like to convince them of just this one thing.)
I realize that this is a fairly obvious point (an application of this--raising the sanity waterline--is the point behind this entire site!), but I haven't seen this explicitly noted as being a general pattern and now that I note it, I see it everywhere--hence this post.