= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on A Story of Kings and Spies - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (33)
That would be breaking the terms of the agreement: Orin pays 1000 coins on the installment plan if he's wrong, end of story. If the king casually breaks his agreements with informants, well, now he has another problem...
Not quite. If Orin turns out to be wrong but had no malicious intent, then yes, he just pays 1000 coins. On the other hand, if Orin deliberately mislead the king, I don't recall the terms of the agreement including immunity against charges of treason.
If you can prove malicious intent, then why the need for the bet in the first place...?
You can't prove it now, you may be able to prove it (or its absence) in a few days. If there is none, Orin just pays his 1000 coins.
The point of the bet was to properly incentivize Orin in the present.
How do you prove it in a few days? 'Oh, no army appeared' said Orin. 'My friend must have been wrong or the date was pushed back. Still, as an honest man, I stand by our deal though it beggar me.'
Are you asking me how the plot can play out in a fictional story? :-D
Here's one possibility -- the king's large and effective network of spies and informants will send the word that the Northern Kingdom executed a disinformation campaign against the king using a fellow named Orin...
Possibility is not good enough. And in any case, my proposed defeater can be implemented by exactly two people: a volunteer and a rich benefactor, and so it is vastly more likely to be undiscovered by spies & informants than an actual attack. The king is unsure his spy network will uncover every attack, so a fortiori, he is very unsure that my proposed scheme would be detected.
Not good enough for what?
Frankly, I don't see towards which point are you driving. This is a fable about, basically, an exercise in game theory. You don't like the story? You think it misleads? If you were king you would have behaved differently?
I pointed out, I thought clearly, my problems in my original comment: this is not isomorphic to existential risk (as the author clearly intended it to be) and solves an easier problem badly.
Maybe you should read it as a fable and not as a blueprint for dealing with the UFAI problem.