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Viliam_Bur comments on Calibrating your probability estimates of world events: Russia vs Ukraine, 6 months later. - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: shminux 28 August 2014 11:37PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 29 August 2014 12:48:15PM *  15 points [-]

Probably because you're in the midst of a media driven two-minutes hate.

This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps. Each small step is not enough to evoke a military response from the West. Then there is a pause, until media stop paying attention and find something else to care about. Then another small step.

(Remember the first step? Russian soldiers without uniforms in Ukraine territory, not yet openly fighting anyone, just carrying weapons and looking intimidating. So, what are you going to do about it? First, there is no war yet, and second, they even deny being Russian. Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing to see here. -- A few steps later it's obvious there are Russian troops there, but we already kinda knew it for months, so why the sudden overreaction today? Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing new is happening here.)

This is how you overcome the Schelling point -- by doing a calculated very small step, and then calling your opponent irrational if he wants to react.

Comment author: James_Miller 29 August 2014 01:46:05PM 4 points [-]

This is how you overcome the Schelling point -- by doing a calculated very small step, and then calling your opponent irrational if he wants to react.

This Yes, Prime Minster video is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 August 2014 06:01:16PM 3 points [-]

This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps.

Dividing something in many incremental steps that each are newsworthy generally means that the whole things gets more media attention than if you do everything at once.

Wikileaks for example didn't release all the cables at once but purposefully spread them out over a time to give them more media attention.