Unpacking the Concept of "Blackmail"

I wonder if this question is related to the revulsion many people feel against certain kinds of price discrimination tactics. I mean things like how in the 19th century, train companies would put intentionally uncomfortable benches in the 3rd class carriages in order to encourage people to buy 2nd class tickets, or nowadays software that comes with arbitrary, programmed-in restrictions that can be removed by paying for the "professional" version.

People really don't like that! It seems like there is some folk-ethics norm that "if you can make me better off with no effort on your part, then you have an obligation to do so", which seems like part of a "no blackmail" condition.

It seems that we cry blackmail when a shelling point already exists, and the other agent is threatening to force us below it. The moral outrage functions as a precommittment to punish the clear defection.

In normal human life, 'do nothing' is the schelling point, because most people don't interact with most people. But sometimes the schelling point does move, and it seems what constitutes blackmail does too: if a child's drowning in a pond, and I tell you I'll only fish him out if you give me $1,000, it seems like I'm blackmailing you.

Sometimes both sides feel like they're being blackmailed though; like when firefighters go on strike, and both city hall and the union accuse the other of endangering people. Could this be put down to coordination problems?

I know this isn't quite rigorous, but if I can calculate the counterfactual "what would the other player's strategy be if ze did not model me as an agent capable of responding to incentives," blackmail seems easy to identify by comparison to this.

Perhaps this can be what we mean by 'default'?

I think this ties into Larks' point -- if Larks didn't think I responded to incentives, I think ze'd just help the child, so asking me $1,000 would be blackmail. Clippy would not help the child, and so asking me $1,000 is trade.

To first order, this means that folks playing decision-theoretic games against me actually have an incentive to self-modify to be all-else-equal sadistic, so that their threats can look like offers. But then I can assume that they would not have so modified in the first place if they hadn't modelled me as responding to incentives, etc. etc.

This is a clever idea, but I don't think it works: you need to unpack the question of why a decision algorithm would deem cooperation non-optimal, and see if it coincides with a special class of problems where cooperation is generally non-optimal.

So I think what gets an offer labeled as blackmail is the recognition that cooperation would lead the other party to repeatedly use their discretion to force my next remaining options to be even worse. So blackmail and trade differ in that:

• If I cooperate wth a blackmailer, they are more likely to spend resources "digging up dirt" on me, kidnapping my loved ones, etc. I don't want to be in that position, regardless of what I decide to do then.
• If I trade with a trade-offerer, they are more likely to spend resources acquiring goods that I may want to trade for. I do want to be in the position where others make things available to me that I want (except for where I'd be competing with them in that process.)

And yes, these two situations are equivalent, except for what I want the offerer to do, which I think is what yields the distinction, not the concept of a baseline in the initial offer.

You can phrase blackmail as a sort of addiction situation where dynamic inconsistency potentially leaves me vulnerable to exploitation. My preferences at any time t are:

1) Not have an addiction.
2) Have an addiction, and take some more of the drug.
3) Have an addiction, and not take the drug.

where I'm addicted at time t, and taking the drug will make me addicted in time t+1 (and i otherwise won't be addicted in t+1).

In this light, one can view the classification of something as blackmail, as being any feeling or mechanism that makes me choose 3) over 2). "2 looks appealing, but I feel a strong compulsion to do 3." Agents with such a mechanism gain a resistance to dynamic inconsistency.

In contrast, if "addiction" were good, and the item in 1) were moved below 3) in my preference ranking, then I wouldn't benefit from a mechanism that makes me choose 3 over 2. That would feel like trade.

I really wish "blackmail" were not used to mean extortion.

The default is special because it costs the other person time/money/effort to do anything other than the default.

Hence, not blowing up your car is the default, but so is not giving you food.

It seems to me the relevant difference is that in blackmail one or both parties end up worse off. So a group of individuals who blackmail each other tend to get poorer over time, compared to a group that successfully deters blackmail.

Current guess.

Blackmailing is a class of situations similar to Counterfactual Mugging, where you are willing to sacrifice utility in the actual world, in order to control its probability into being lower, so that the counterfactual worlds (that have higher utility) will gain as much probability as possible, and will thus improve the overall expected utility, even as utility of the actual world becomes lower.

Or, simply, you are being blackmailed when you wish this wouldn't be happening, and the correct actions are those that make the reality as improbable as possible.

(In Counterfactual Mugging, you are sacrificing utility in the actual world in order to improve utility of the counterfactual world, while in blackmailing, you are doing the same in order to improve its probability.)

Suppose that Blackmail is

merely an affective category, a class of situations activating a certain psychological adaptation

-- then we should ask what features of the ancestral environment caused us to evolve it. We might understand it better in that case.

I suspect that the ancestral environment came with a very strong notion of a default outcome for a given human, in the absence of there being any particular negotiation, and also came with a clear notion of negative interaction (stabbing, hitting, kicking) versus positive interaction (giving fish, teaching how to hunt better, etc).

My take: what we call "extortion" or "blackmail" is where agent A1 offers A2 a choice between X and Y, both of which are harmful to A2, and where A1 has selected X to be less harmful to A2 than Y with the intention of causing A2 to choose X.

"Not responding to blackmail" comprises A2 choosing Y over X whenever A2 suspects this is going on.

A1 can still get A2 to choose X over Y, even if A2 has a policy of not responding to blackmail, by not appearing to have selected X... that is, by not appearing to be blackmailing A2.

For example, if instead of "I will hurt you if you don't give me money" A1 says "I've just discovered that A3 is planning to hurt you! I can prevent it by taking certain steps on your behalf, but those steps are expensive, and I have other commitments for my money that are more important to me than averting your pain. But if you give me the money, I can take those steps, and you won't get hurt," A2 may not recognize this as blackmail, in which case A1 can finesse A2's policy.

Of course, any reasonably sophisticated human will recognize that as likely blackmail, so a kind of social arms race ensues. Real-world blackmail attempts can be very subtle. (ETA: That extortion is illegal also contributes to this, of course... subtle extortion attempts can reduce A1's legal liability, even when they don't actually fool anyone.)

(Indeed, in some cases A1 can fool themselves, which brings into question whether it's still blackmail. IMHO, the best way to think about cases like that is to stop treating people fooling themselves as unified agents, but that's way off-topic.)

Agent 1 negotiates with agent 2. Agent 1 can take option A or B, while agent 2 can take option C or D. Agent 1 communicates that they will take option A if agent 2 takes option C and will take option B if agent 2 takes option D.

If utilities are such that for

• agent 1: A > B, C < D, A+C < B + D

and for

• agent 2: A < B, C > D, A+C < B + D

or

• agent 1: A < B, C > D, A+C > B + D
• agent 2: A > B, C < D, A+C > B + D

this is an offer.

If

• agent 1: A < B, C < D, A+C < B + D
• agent 2: A < B, C > D, A+C < B + D

or

• agent 1: A > B, C > D, A+C > B + D
• agent 2: A > B, C < D, A+C > B + D

this is blackmail by agent 1.

If

• agent 1: A > B, C < D, A+C < B + D
• agent 2: A < B, C < D, A+C < B + D

or

• agent 1: A < B, C > D, A+C > B + D
• agent 2: A > B, C > D, A+C > B + D

this is agent 1 giving in to agent 2's blackmail.

I don't think I mentioned anything about any "default" anywhere?

(Unless I overlooked something in the other cases there is either no reason to negotiate, no prospect of success in negotiating or at least one party acting irrationally. It is implicitly assumed that preferences between combinations of the options only depend on the preferences between the individual options. )

Isn't it because you want to incentivize people to bargain with you but incentivize them not to blackmail you?

Why is the "default" special here?

Because in a blackmail, I do not wish the trade to happen at all. Let the "default" outcome for a trade T be one where the trade doesn't happen. Assume that my partner (the Baron) gets to decide whether T happens or not.

If T is a blackmail, then every option is worse than not-T. So, if I can commit to ensuring that T is also negative for the Baron, then the Baron won't let T happen. This gives a definition for blackmail: a trade T where every option is worse than not-T, but where I can commit to actions that ensure that T is negative for the person that decides whether T happens or not.

Let's contrast this with another trade T, with no blackmail elements to it, where I am a monopolist or monopsonist. It is still to my advantage to credibly commit to rejecting everything if I don't get 99% of the profit. However, I am limited by the fact that I want the trade to happen; I can't commit to any option that is actually harmful to the Baron. He will trade with me as long as he doesn't lose; his 'default' ensures that I have to give him something.

Finally, most trades are not monopolist or monopsonist. In this case, it is not to my advantage to precommit to taking more than "my fair (market) share" of the profit, as that will cause the trade to fail; the Baron's default is higher (he can trade with others) so I have to offer him at least that.

Now, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of dueling pre-commitments, or the proper decision-theoretic way of resolving the issue (blackmailing someone or precommiting to avoid blackmail are very similar processes). But it does show why you would want to precommit to a particular action in blackmail situations, but not in others: you do not control if the trade happens, and blackmails are trades that you do not want to see happen. You can call not-trading the 'default' if you wish, but the salient fact is that it is better for you, not that it is default.

It's an interesting question. My thoughts follow a similar path and I like the way you described it here:

My hypothesis is that "blackmail" is what the suggestion of your mind to not cooperate feels like from the inside, the answer to a difficult problem computed by cognitive algorithms you don't understand, and not a simple property of the decision problem itself.

Taking a step back from the internal viewpoint we can also give a workable description in social terms. Which way people will tend to think of the decision offered is primarily determined by social dominance. Apart from the relative status of the actors themselves the status of the threatened negative action makes a difference on whether someone thinks 'extortion'. Given an approximately equivalent payoff matrix in terms of utility two different scenarios could be categorised differently with respect to extortion because the decision maker instinctively associates various different levels of 'legitimacy'.

It seems that if we could explain what we mean by a "default" action, the explanation of blackmail in terms of the "default" action would work.

Hmm. Bear with me.

Consider this decision tree

The decision that maximises your gain, as Red, is for Blue to pick 5, -10. The decision that minimises your loss, as Blue, is to pick 5, -10. And so it is that extortionism is rediscovered by all agents like Red. But Blues sometimes pick -1, -20, more often than ‘some people are purely irrational’ would predict.

In a society that deeply understood game theory, they could recognise that this extortion scenario would be iterated. In an iterated series of extortion games, if a lunatic Blue completely ignored their own disutility to punish Red for extorting them, they could reduce Red’s utility below 0. At this point, Red would prefer not to have extorted the lunatic. If a Blue can convincingly signal their lunacy to potential extorter Reds, Reds will predictably leave said lunatic Blues alone. Therefore, the true decision tree, for both agents, looks like this.

Note that this is restricted to the long view of an iterated extortion game; understanding that precommitting to lunacy would have stopped Red will not magically undo the current situation, so if Blue knew that this case was unlikely to be part of an iterated series, they would simply capitulate. (Incidentally, this is why I do not extort people. Anyone worth extorting would be smart enough to figure out this line of reasoning, capitulate to me, and then expend some effort ensuring I was unable to iterate the series. Such as having me arrested or murdered.)

Whence the moral condemnation of extortion, then? Our morals and intuitions don’t exactly suggest all these options to us. Well, to a naive outsider looking in, the outcome of a game-theory society is that they usually refuse to cooperate with extortionists, they occasionally capitulate, and extortionists are hated. The naive outsider doesn’t see that extortionists are hated for trying to instantiate iterated negative-sum games, or the reasons why refusal is common and capitulation rare. All they see is that the game-theory society doesn’t have a problem with extortion. So they imitate the game-theory society’s actions, not reasons, get diminished but still impressive benefits, and expend far less energy working out these problems and far more energy copulating (a not entirely undesirable path).

There may not have been a game-theory society. In that case, producing animals that have irrationally have rough concepts of extortion and act in roughly the right way was an earlier solution than producing game-theory animals.

Extortion, then, is the label for events that roughly match the characteristics of negative-outcome trade from the perspective of the victim - that is, the victim would prefer the situation not to have taken place to either capitulating or refusing. The event only has to pattern-match this situation for people to think extortion.

If you would prefer the situation to not have happened, and you have reason to believe that there is a long enough iteration, and you can cause disutility for the agent that had a choice in causing the situation to happen, then suffering disutility to change the causal agent’s decision is the rational choice. Our intuition only shows us the individual slice, though, and some individual slices look like patently bizarre behaviour.

Of course, we would immensely prefer that this entire scenario of iterated extortion games resulting in disutility for both sides is simply a counterfactual in the mind of the potential extortionist.

Why is the "default" special here? If bargaining or blackmail did happen, we know that "default" is impossible.

This seems like you're setting up a game scenario, and then telling us at the beginning of the second turn that we should ignore what the other player did on the first turn.

Initiating negotiations is an in-game choice. The blackmailer's choice imposes a cost on me, me pre-committing makes the blackmailer's payoff 0-0.

And in most cases it takes extra work to attempt blackmail. On the other hand, You should be open to blackmail by your enemies, since it would benefit them to harm you.

Couldn't parse what FAWS's comment was saying, but the following may be similar in spirit:

Assume we have a two-player game with a unique Nash equilibrium. Now allow player 1 to make a credible threat ("if you do X then I'll do Y"), and then player 2 must react to it "optimally" without making any prior precommitments of his own. If the resulting play makes player 1 better off and player 2 worse off than they would've fared under the Nash equilibrium, then let's say player 1 is being "too pushy".

For example, take the PD and additionally give player 1 the option to trigger a nuke and kill everyone. The resulting game still has a unique Nash equilibrium (defect,defect), but player 1 can threaten to trigger the nuke unless player 2 cooperates, then defect and get higher utility. Looks legit?

No idea what to say about games with multiple equilibria (e.g. bargaining games) or about the decision-theoretic context, which is way more tricky.

Does this mean we shouldn't care about the law? Regardless of the exact definition, I'm pretty sure that building a prison and putting me in it is not the default.

It still seems like a bad idea to not follow the law, even if that'd lead to a society that doesn't have laws, so where does my thinking go wrong? My current heuristic of "don't submit to blackmail, except when done by this or this or this organization" seems very ugly, especially as it isn't clear what organizations should be in that whitelist.

I must say, I'm surprised this comment has a two-digit positive karma as a front-page post.

Now that there's a discussion section, I expected the posting of unfinished thoughts, in need of discussion, to be mostly confined to that section; with the front page kept for thoughts that had been developed to a high level, and would serve to educate/inform those reading them.

I know this isn't quite rigorous, but if I can calculate the counterfactual "what would the other player's strategy be if ze did not model me as an agent capable of responding to incentives," blackmail seems easy to identify by comparison to this.

Perhaps this can be what we mean by 'default'?

I think this ties into Larks point -- if Larks didn't think I responded to incentives, I think ze'd just help the child, and asking me $1,000 would be blackmail. Clippy would not help the child, and so asking me $1,000 is trade.

I made this comment on the thread where this question was originally raised.

I feel like what people call blackmail is largely related to intentionality. The blackmailer goes out of their way to harm you should you not cooperate.

In the trade example, whereas if someone wants to trade and you don't, and you need the object but don't trade, we don't blame that on the other person trying to harm you.

The decision to blackmail is made in the hope to gain something by you responding. If the blackmailer knows that you won't respond, their expected gain is drastically lowered, and they will probably decide to do something else instead ("something that takes less effort"). I suggest that maybe this is what we could call the "default". So if your expected utility is lower in the "default" case it's bargaining, otherwise, blackmail.

However this definition would call an offer "bargaining" if the "default" was to do something else (more) harmful to you, which I'm unsure is correct. But it does make "don't respond to blackmail" rather tautologically true.

"Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime. What are the two things? First, there is either a threat or an offer. In the former case, it is, typically, to publicise on embarrassing secret; in the latter, it is to remain silent about this infonnation. Second, there is a demand or a request for funds or other valuable considerations. When put together, there is a threat that, unless paid off, the secret will be told." -Walter Block