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Notes -
Inspired by this tweet, a thought experiment:
Imagine a a country with a two-faction democratic political system. Faction A is anti-free speech. Faction B is (currently and historically) pro-free speech. In the current environment, both factions are approximately equally matched, with majorities in government seesawing between either faction much like in our own government.
Question: Should Faction B also become anti-free speech?
I am interested in both, “would this be good for the country?” and “would this be good for the party?”
Some arguments I would imagine to hear as part of Faction B’s internal debate over the subject:
“We’re suckers for letting Faction A speak when we control the government. They don’t let us speak when they are in charge, so why should we let them speak when we are in charge?”
“We already get half the vote letting Faction A speak openly in favor of their policies. Imagine how much better we could do in the next election if we didn’t let them speak!”
“When people aren’t worried about consequences for their speech it makes them feel more free. We get more votes when voters think we will make them feel more free than Faction A will.”
“It is important for us to have honest feedback on our policies and the state of the country. If we didn’t let Faction A speak we would be flying half-blind.”
In case you need me to spell-out the subtext: a lot of discussion has been treating the free speech issue as a bargaining chip, rather than a straightforwardly good policy. I’m not sure how much I buy that argument. It sounds a little convenient, like people are looking for excuses to descend into an orgy of vengeance.
This is a version of the Prisoner’s dilemma where if one side allows free speech, but the other doesn’t, the side that opposes free speech will win. So, if one side starts opposing free speech, that forces the other side to also oppose free speech, or they will lose.
Eh, kinda, but mostly not. To me the “hole” in OP’s setup is we aren’t really told how effective the intrinsic presumed bias towards free speech the government itself has. I think that plays a major role in how it all games out: does party A actually and factually use their time in power to effectively muzzle free speech? Is it an attempt but one that usually fails? How complete is their control, and how effectively does it get reversed if party B shows up?
So you can’t really escape some degree of fact and truth that affects the answer. (Also, point 4 is actually a good one that potentially puts a big thumb on the scale, despite the timeframes required for the benefits to mature and deliver)
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The canonical solution to the prisoners dilemma is tit for tat with forgiveness.
I think we’ve got the tit for tat part. I’m not sure if we’re down with forgiveness yet.
Against defectbot, plain Tit for Tat beats Tit For Tat with Forgiveness. Actually the best strategy against defectbot is to be defectbot; you can do no better.
But human beings are almost never actually literally defectbot. A defectbot is not intelligent, it does not adapt or respond, it cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, it cannot change its behavior. It is an automaton, it always defects. A defectbot in real life is a killing machine, and I agree that the only response is to kill it before it kills you. If your opponents are humans, they are not pure defect bots. And if they were close enough to round off the difference then we would already be in a civil war killing each other. If they start marching the streets gunning down every conservative they can identify, then I agree we shouldn't sit there and let it happen. But we're not there yet, we're not very close all things considered. Maximum defect-defect leaves us with 170 million corpses minimum, likely more. Tit for Tat with forgiveness is likely to lead to far fewer.
The machine the progressive left has built has humans as parts, but it is not human. It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear. And it only talks about tit-for-tat with forgiveness when the 'tat' to all its 'tits' finally comes around.
Except, because it is not a literal machine but is actually humans implementing complicated emergent behavior, it does not fully embody any of those. It can be bargained with, because the humans that compose it can be bargained with: both individually and collectively. It can feel pity and remorse and fear, because the humans that compose it can feel pity and remorse and fear.
It is currently engaged in a strategy of encroachment: defecting more and more often and more severely in order to exploit the forgiveness of its opponents and see what it can get away with. But this is NOT what a defect bot does. A defect bot defects: always. A defect bot cannot pretend to be anything other than a defect bot, because it has no degrees of freedom with which to signal anything. It does not pretend to cooperate or tit for tat in an attempt to fool its opponents, it just defects.
Again, look at the world around us. Are we currently in the middle of a civil war gunning down each other in the streets? No. That's what maximum defection looks like. We're not there yet. I hope we never get there. And strategic, proportional punishment to defections without escalating maximally is a good way to fight off the encroachment without immediately getting to that state. Even if your opponents are engaged in bad-faith behavior and you need to stop them, deceiving yourself into thinking they're something other than what they are is not strategic. Exaggerations don't help you learn or prepare effective strategy. Maybe you think the appropriate punishments need to be much harsher than they currently are in order to more strongly disincentivize future defections, but this only works because the opponents are not actual defect bots (who ignore punishment and can't stop defecting ever, and can only be solved with death).
It's a machine. However, it's not entirely defectbot, and it's not politically inclined either way. Currently it leans left.
It's not literally defectbots. It's worse.
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So are you picking a strategy to deal with "the machine the progressive left has built", or the humans it has as parts?
The machine. The humans have added their biological distinctiveness to the machine's own.
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The point isn't about the best strategy knowing your opponent's strategy. If you knew your opponents strategy then just copying their move is the best.
The usual metric for rating success is one that works against the success-weighted average set of other strategies.
In US politics, there's essentially only two players at any given time. Which means only one opposing strategy out there to consider.
I think the cast of characters is a bit wider than that. Trump certainly isn't the same player as Cruz or Rubio.
Rubio is part of Team Trump at the moment, and Cruz isn't in play.
Just picking primary contenders.
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Iterated prisoners dilemma absolutely involves knowing your opponent's strategy -- you need to figure it out first is all.
I suspect if you ask Nybbler he will be inclined to frame the American Left (collectively) as playing defectbot; personally I'm not sure that P.D. problems map well to national politics at all.
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