[Completed] The 2024 Petrov Day Scenario

CITIZENS!  YOU ARE BETRAYED!

Your foolish 'leaders' have given your generals an incentive scheme that encourages them [LW · GW] to risk you being nuked for their glory.

I call on all citizens of EastWrong and WestWrong to commit to pursuing vengeance against their generals^[1] if and only if your side ends up being nuked.  Only thus can we align incentives among those who bear the power of life and death!

For freedom!  For prosperity!  And for not being nuked!

1. ^{^}

   By mass-downvoting all their posts once their identities are revealed.

↑ comment by philh · 2024-09-26T14:57:27.522Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Launching nukes is one thing, but downvoting posts that don't deserve it? I'm not sure I want to retaliate that strongly.

Replies from: TsviBT, aphyer, Daphne_W

↑ comment by TsviBT · 2024-09-26T16:20:29.247Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

↑ comment by aphyer · 2024-09-26T15:03:04.778Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Do we fight for the right

To a night at the opera now?

Have you asked of yourselves

What's the price you might pay?

Is it simply a game

For rich young boys to play?

↑ comment by Daphne_W · 2024-09-26T19:21:10.208Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Just check their profile for posts that do deserve it that you were previously unaware of. You can even throw a few upvotes at their well-written comments. It's not brigading, it's just a little systemic bias in your duties as a user with upvote-downvote authority.

Why is the benefit of nuking to generals larger than the cost of nuking to the other side's generals?

It is possible with precommitments under the current scheme for the two sides' generals to agree to flip a coin, have the winning side nuke the losing side, and have the losing side not retaliate.  In expectation, this gives the generals each (1000-300)/2 = +350 karma.

I don't think that's a realistic payoff matrix.

What happens if nukes are launched at 5:59 pm? Is the game extended for another 90 minutes?

I looked for a manifold market on whether anyone gets nuked, and considered making one when I didn't find it. But:

• If the implied probability is high, generals might be more likely to push the button. So someone who wants someone to get nuked can buy YES.
• If the implied probability is low, generals can get mana by buying YES and pushing the button. I... don't think any of the generals will be very motivated by that? But not great.

So I decided not to.

I appreciate that you set up this game in such a way that lesswrong will stay perfectly functional as a general blogging platform / forum, for those who don’t have accounts or who don’t opt in. Thank you :)

As a concerned citizen, I would urge the generals to consider a non-obvious downside risk: A nuclear war may be much worse than you expect, if you only consider immediate first-order expected value.

Others [LW(p) · GW(p)] have calculated the presented payoff matrix to imply that you have actually been instructed that nuclear war is good. It is very possible that the facts you have been presented with are incomplete, or misleading in some other way.

Consider Nuclear Winter: Policy-makers have an interest in preventing you Generals from learning about this possibility, for game-theoretic reasons. It follows that you should be open to the possibility of other downsides that have succesfully been hidden from you.

Triggering nuclear war is very bad for your karma in expectation, and you should be very skeptical of information to the contrary.

—and with that, our annual Petrov Day ceremony is over! The Generals and Duty Officers have no more powers, and it is looking like the citizens of East Wrong and West Wrong continue on with their lives. Hurrah!

There will be a post-mortem published tomorrow detailing the events of today. My great thanks to all 12 players who showed up and argued and made commitments and also some poetry and art — "Proud to present to EastWrong: WestWrong Cultural Exchange" was a message from General Carter to East Wrong. And also my thanks to all those who joined in the comment section, I really enjoyed waking up to this comment section and tracking it through the day.

This has been a fun day of starting a train on some tracks and scurrying after it to lay the next tracks before it got there. We'll recap it tomorow and think about next year :-)

To wise choices—Happy Petrov Day!

Wise man once said:

"The only thing necessary [...] is for good men to do nothing."

East wrong is least wrong. Nuke ‘em dead generals!

Rule change! All citizens and Petrov/Peterson will be able to read the Diplomatic Channel, neither will have access to The War Room channel.

I will update the post momentarily.

I'm a citizen. is there a way I can know which side I'm on? (EastWrong vs WestWrong)

The Diplomatic Channel dialogue is linked here [? · GW], and can be read.

Edit: Removed because this link was getting overloaded and causing bugs.

Edit2: The link is now back to working!

Some true observations are infohazards, making destruction more likely. Please think carefully before posting observations. Even if you feel clever. You can post hashes here instead to later reveal how clever you were, if you need.

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS

I take this as a fun occasion to lose some of my karma in a silly way to remind myself lesswrong karma is not important.

I surveyed some participants about their preferences. I believe this is nine generals plus a petrov (second from bottom).

9 people prefer peace; 1 deranged person says "peace = mutual destruction" and "I was kinda hoping the other side would launch the nukes"; fortunately we survived them.

If one side had admitted to launching nukes, it looks like at least one person on the other side would have favored retaliating; unclear whether they'd get a majority (and unclear whether they'd launch without a majority).

I agree with the long note. I think anonymity is ~necessary to get decent P(defection) from a small group of high-karma users. But there are issues with that and the ritual is fine with low P(destruction).

↑ comment by Zach Stein-Perlman · 2024-09-27T18:30:59.210Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Update with two new responses:

I think this is 10 generals, 1 petrov, and one other person (either the other petrov or a citizen, not sure, wasn't super rigorous)

Congrats everyone!

Kudos to "GeneralAnderson" for the suggestion that generals report if their own side launches to help mitigate the unreliable report channel.

A side-effect of Rationalists welcoming criticism is that this site has a number of high-karma users with a dislike of Rationalism and Rationalists.

There's also a fair number of trolls/anti-socials on LessWrong, and if a single one of them was offered the chance to be a general, I expect they would gleefully launch their nukes irrespective of the payoff structure and the rest of the scenario.

I predict the underlying variable is: Will any of the 10 generals afterwards be found to have previously posted substantial in-group criticism on LessWrong? Conditional on YES, I assign 70% chance of a nuclear war. Conditional on NO, I assign 10% chance of a nuclear war.

The game was very fun! I played General Carter.

Some reflections:

• I looked at the citizens' comments, and while some of them were notable (@Jesse Hoogland [LW · GW] calling for the other side to nuke us <3), I didn't find anything important after the game started- I considered the overall change in their karma if one or two sides get nuked, but comments from the citizens were not relevant to decision-making (including threats around reputation or post downvotes).
• It was great to see the other side sharing my post [LW · GW] internally to calculate the probability of retaliation if we nuke them
• It was a good idea to ask whether looking at the source code is ok and then share it, which made it clear Petrovs won't necessarily have much information on whether the missiles they see are real.
• The incentives (+350..1000 LW karma) weren't strong enough to make the generals try to win by making moves instead of winning by not playing, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.
• It's awesome to be able to have transparent and legible decision-making processes and trust each other's commitments.
• One of the Petrovs preferred defeat to mutual destruction- I'm curious whether they'd report nukes if they were sure the nukes were real.
• In real life, diplomatic channels would not be visible to the public. I think with stronger incentives, the privacy of diplomatic channels could've made the outcomes more interesting (though for everyone else, there'd be less entertainment throughout the game).
• It was a good idea to ask the organizers if it's ok to look at the source code and then post the link in the comments. Transparency into the fact that a side knows if they launched nukes meant we were able to complete the game peacefully.

I'd claim that we kinda won the soft power competition:

• we proposed commitments to not first-strike;

  

• we bribed everyone (and then the whole website went down, but funnily enough, that didn't affect our war room and diplomatic channel- deep in our bunkers, we were somehow protected from the LW downtime);

  

• we proposed commitments to report through the diplomatic channel if someone on our side made a launch, which disincentivized individual generals from unilaterally launching the nukes, allowed Petrovs to ignore scary incoming missiles, and possibly was necessary to win the game;

  

• finally, after a general on their side said they'll triumph economically and culturally, General Brooks wrote a poem, and I generated a cultural gift, which made generals on the other side feel inspired. That was very wholesome and was highlighted in Ben Paces's comment [LW(p) · GW(p)] and the subsequent post with a retrospective [LW · GW] after the game ended. I think our side triumphed here!

  

Thanks everyone for the experience!

The game will end randomly between 6pm and 6:30pm. Here is the message players recieved.

Voice of LessWrong: Here are the rules for the final section of the game. The game will end at a random time between 6:00PM and 6:30PM PT. During this period, Petrov and Peterson can make as many reports as they like, and their dashboard will update live with any new missile activity (as always, with errors). Nukes can be launched until the game ends (Petrov and Peterson will get a karma reward/penalty only once for this section, based on the admins' gut judgement of whether they "got it right")

Do we know what side we're on? Because I opted in and don't know whether I'm East or West, it just feels Wrong. I guess I stand a non-trivial chance of losing 50 karma ahem please think of the daisy girl and also my precious internet points.

I am a Citizen in the game, and I'm writing a post doing a detailed analysis of what we can do to significantly decrease the chance of an unaligned AI killing us if it takes over. I plan to finish and post it today evening, so dear Generals, if you want to read the post today, please be cautious with the nukes.

This is extremely cool! good job! Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds, which will unfortunately happen mostly as I sleep (and as a citizen I hope to come out at the end of this with no change to my Karma)

Here's the feedback form for today's Petrov Day games! Please let me know how it was for you (be you a General, Civilian, Petrov, or just non-participating LWer reading along).

Fill out the form and I'll include the data in tomorrow's recap post. I'm grateful to all who fill it out, your data feeds my decision making :-)

What about the Citizens? [...] You can comment here where your Generals can read, you can send them DMs, [...]

how can the citizens dm their general? will there be link to their lw profiles posted somewhere?

Where is the Diplomatic Channels dialogue located?

I would like to take this opportunity to express my undying loyalty to my nation and its human instruments. 

Petrov Day retro is mostly done, have a bit more coding to do before we publish it, so it's looking like we'll publish it tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The text referred to this as a "social deception game". Where is the deception?

My guesses:

1. The actual messages sent to the Petrovs and Generals will significantly differ from the ones shown here.
2. It's Amongus, and there are players who get very high payoffs if they trick the sides into nuclear war
3. It's just a reference to expected weird game theory stuff. But why not call it a "game theory exercise"?
4. The actual rules of the game will differ drastically from the ones described here. Maybe no positive payoffs for one-sided nuking?
5. The sensor readings are actually tied to comments on this post. Maybe an AI is somehow involved?

I think making an opt-in link as a big red button and posting it before the rules were published caused a pre-selection of players in favor of those who would press the big red button. Which is... kinda realistic for generals, I think, but not realistic for citizens.

I wonder how the consequences to reputation will play out after the fact.

• If there is a first launch, will the general who triggered it be downvoted to oblivion whenever they post afterward for a period of time?
• What if it looks like they were ultimately deceived by a sensor error, and believed themselves to be retaliating?
• If there is mutual destruction, will the general who triggered the retaliatory launch also be heavily downvoted?
• Less than, more than, or about the same as the first strike general?
• Would citizens who gained karma in a successful first strike condemn their 'victorious' generals at the same rate as everyone else?
• Should we call this pattern of behavior, however it turns out, the Judgment of History?

This is fun! I don't know which place I'm a citizen of, though, it just says "hello citizen"... I feel John Rawls would be pleased...

Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure playing with you tonight

My prediction is that this becomes a commitment race. A general is going to post something like "I am going to log off until the game begins, at which point I will immediately nuke without reading any messages.", at which point the generals on the other side get to decide if 2 days of access to LessWrong for everyone is worth the reputational cost of being known as someone who doesn't retaliate. Given what I know about LessWrong and how this entire game is framed, you'll likely get more social capital from not retaliating, meaning the commitment works and everyone keeps access.

The real question is how committing to nuking affects your reputation. My guess is that it's bad? I clearly made a mistake opting-in to this game, so maybe the civilians will be grateful that you didn't destroy their access to LessWrong, but committing looks pretty bad to all the bystanders, many of whom make decisions at places like Manifund and may incorporate this information into if your next project gets funded.

Also note that we will be starting 10-15 mins late due to technical difficulties.

The incentives are very unrealistic though. "Winning" a nuclear world war with strategic weapons is still quite bad for you overall. Not as bad as losing but still very bad. So flipping the sign of the karma reward for the winner would make the game way more realistic. And much more likely to yield the real outcome.

(I asked permission from the LW team before posting.)

The source code is currently available at https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum/compare/master...petrovSocialDeception.

const petrovFalseAlarmMissileCount = new DatabaseServerSetting<number[]>('petrovFalseAlarmMissileCount', [])
const petrovRealAttackMissileCount = new DatabaseServerSetting<number[]>('petrovRealAttackMissileCount', [])

const getIncomingCount = (incoming: boolean, role: 'eastPetrov' | 'westPetrov') => {
  const currentHour = new Date().getHours();
  const roleSeed = role === 'eastPetrov' ? 0 : 13;
  const seed = currentHour + roleSeed + (incoming ? 17 : 0); // Different seed for each hour, role, and incoming state

  const missileCountArray = incoming ? petrovRealAttackMissileCount.get() : petrovFalseAlarmMissileCount.get();

  const result = seed % missileCountArray.length
  console.log({currentHour, roleSeed, incoming, seed, result})
  return missileCountArray[result];
}

Ideas for next year:

1. One General from each side is a defector. He wants the other side to win. If he is figured out, he will become a civilian.
   1. Possible additions:
      1. Once this happens, a random civilian will be chosen as the next general (if they agree).
      2. Once this happens, a random civilian will be chosen as next general (if they agree) AND a random general will be chosen as the next defector.
2. One General from each side has to actively STOP nukes from getting launched (possible explanation: his overzealous men are pro-nuke, and he must send hourly (?) commands to NOT launch nukes, with the code 111111). This General must send this code in a five-minute radius of the xx:00 mark.
   1. Addition: the General cannot send nukes normally (with the 000000 code)
3. The Generals/Petrovs must be people who have had an account on Less wrong for less than a year.
4. The East and West Petrovs cannot read every other message on the Diplomatic Channel (until after the game)