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Comment by SynthrilMetagon on Knowledge, manipulation, and free will · 2020-10-16T23:17:52.442Z · LW · GW

Scenario 7: The standard Petrov incident, except Petrov fancies himself a nihilist and would rather as many people as possible died, but a clairvoyant who respects Petrov's agency suspects Petrov is wrong about his own values and sits him down for a respectful, open-ended conversation where some forms of manipulation (e.g. appeal to how they feel about hypothetical scenarios) are fair and others (appeal to shame from insults) are not fair, not only to help Petrov live more in accordance with his deeper values, but also to ensure Petrov will not pass on the report. The clairvoyant follows the rules of the conversation by only performing the manipulations agreed upon as fair, and thereby the clairvoyant succeeds in persuading Petrov.

Scenario 8: The same as 7, except Petrov doesn't listen to anyone's advice, and conditional only on Petrov being so unreasonable, the clairvoyant plays tit-for-tat in Petrov's decision to live by the rules of the jungle, and with similar unreasonability substitutes Petrov's breakfast with porridge, changing his decision

Scenario 9: same as 8 except the clairvoyant fully respects Petrov's agency even when he exercises it unreasonably, and Petrov issues the message to higher command, causing nuclear war.