20 KiB
The Ones Who Walk Towards Acre
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 4
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Created: 2014-11-30T18:29:10
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Comments:
u/None [+5] (an hour later)
One question left: Why Acre? As in, Akko, the actual city across the bay from me?
And my main objection, still mounted after all this time since reading it the first time: Gwern's lack of a model for how to run a society with zero systematic violence is not a proof that doing so is impossible. It's not even a proof that doing so is improbable, since the map is not the territory. Hell, many modern First World countries already run with very minimal systematic violence and ever-more-unobtrusive systemic violence, and I say this as a devoted socialist.
I feel a rant coming on, and it's the same one as always: pain is not Bayesian evidence, and darkness is not a probability!
u/Escapement [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (an hour later)
Interesting. A lot of that echoes Dr. Cruces and, especially, Lady T'Malia's speech from Terry Pratchett's Pyramids. I had occasion to listen to those particular speeches just earlier today watching Mark Oshiro's markreads.net videos for this week - he is currently going through Pratchett's Discworld in publication order at a rate of 5 sections of 20-30 pages each per every fortnight and he just hit the relevant section of Pyramids this week.
From Pyramids, part of a lecture given to a class of student assassins:
'And thus,' she said, 'let us consider the position before the founding of the Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large and powerful advantage cartels.
'In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules, commerce flags.
'And yet, and yet.' She clasped her hands to her bosom. There was a creak like a galleon beating against a gale.
'Clearly there was a need for an extreme yet responsible means of settling irreconcilable differences,' she went on, 'and thus was laid the groundwork for the Guild. What bliss − ' the sudden peak in her voice guiltily jerked several dozen young men out of their private reveries − 'it must have been to have been present in those early days, when men of stout moral purpose set out to forge the ultimate political tool short of warfare. How fortunate you are now, in training for a guild which demands so much in terms of manners, deportment, bearing and esoteric skills, and yet offers a power once the preserve only of the gods. Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice . . .
Dr. Cruces' speech is on essentially how pure their motives as profit-seekers are compared to others who kill for reasons of desire, belief, etc.
u/None [+6] (an hour later)
I can't help but think that if Ankh-Morpork wasn't run by Havelock Vetinari it would never work, and that no such system would ever work in real life, and that we developed things like parties and elections for genuine, relevant reasons rather than because we were too stupid to come up with government-by-assassination.
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 hours later)
It's tounge-in-cheek, certainly. Creating a Thieves' Guild to give the local mafia bosses legitimacy, but make them answerable to you? That's an insane plan with far too many points of failure.
But the Ankh-Morporkians accept it as normal, and so it works. And I think that's the point. We accept the System that we've got as normal, and so we contribute to it and reap the benefits. Incremental improvement is possible, but it has to come from within the existing framework - the only alternative is a catastrophic change from an Outside Context Problem.
At worst, elections and parties are a local maximum of history. Assassination markets might exist at a different local maximum.
Whatever people accept as normal is normal. If you ask me, there's many parts of the world today that I'd have thought "shouldn't work in real life", but they exist so there must be something to them.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (an hour later)
Sorry if I'm being dense, but how does legalizing anonymized assassinations actually disincentivize warfare? Can't you still just raise an army anyway?
u/gwern [+1] (3 hours later)
Can't you still just raise an army anyway?
You certainly could. If you didn't mind everyone with a grudge against you and your soldiers, and all rival or opposing groups, chipping in for a bounty on your head. But you may find it difficult to raise and lead an army with an arrow through your head.
u/Escapement [+5] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (4 hours later)
Scott Alexander (Yvain) linked The List of Roman Emperors in Order of How Hardcore Their Deaths Were some time ago in one of his essays (can't remember which one).
One can't help but notice that of 84 of them, there were some ambiguous maybe-murders (5 total: 60, 59, 54, 41, 18) and a lot of pretty unambiguous murders (24 total: 53, 51, 50, 49, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42, 40, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 12, 11, 10, 9, 3). Only about a quarter of them died of natural causes or incidents that might be accidents, less than the fraction assassinated, with the majority of the remainder losing wars and being executed or killed after that or dying in battle.
Assassination and murder were already a leading cause of death in the emperors in Roman times, with additional huge cause of death being likely participating in a war; that didn't seem to dissuade Emperors of Rome from war all that much. I mean, if the major enemies of Rome had offered a big cash bonus for the head of a Roman emperor whenever those emperors declared war, do you think that the emperors would have never gone to war? Just because the murder is legal in the land you are going to war against, doesn't likely mean that the emperor will necessarily be murdered. Indeed, if you know that there's a land that has a city which will pay a gigantic sum of money for you to be murdered because some people dislike you, that is also very definitely an incentive to put the city to the torch and ride off into the sunset with all it's assassin-money for all it's potential victims in a big sack if at all possible. The only way to make it work is to have every society switch to this system spontaneously and homogeneously and stay that way.
In modern times such a system might conceivably be made to work better, of course - distributed cryptocurrencies and similar wealth transfers that are independent of a specific prinicipality and are for most practical purposes unseizable and unconquerable, for example. But I don't really see it working in medieval or similarly unsophisticated society as in the story - and the problem with assassination to affect politics in a modern society, almost every major politician is a figurehead and replaceable with others representing more-or-less the exact same sets of interests, and killing civilians, even those you disagree with, isn't viewed as a deterent to war so much as a causus belli.
u/gwern [+1] (4 hours later)
Assassination and murder were already a leading cause of death in the emperors in Roman times, with additional huge cause of death being likely participating in a war; that didn't seem to dissuade Emperors of Rome from war all that much. I mean, if the major enemies of Rome had offered a big cash bonus for the head of a Roman emperor whenever those emperors declared war, do you think that the emperors would have never gone to war?
The Roman system incentivized war as a way of obtaining prestige & wealth for the leading general so they could progress along the cursus honorum, build up a following, and buy support; if the standard response to a Roman invasion by, say, the Parthians or the Sassanids was putting a huge price on the general's head and usually succeeding, ambitious young generals might think twice before sailing east to find their fortune.
If the death rate from assassination for all generals (and of course, bounties could be set on lower ranking officers too) was a third per campaign - not per lifetime in the most coveted highest office in the land - or higher, then perhaps the Roman elites would find some other ways to handle their status games.
u/Escapement [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (4 hours later)
The payout for every assassination of a Roman General might be responded to by offering a large bounty from the Romans on the paying authorities' head. And then they retaliate. And eventually the whole system catches fire and burns to the ground on both sides as nobody is willing to pay a bounty for fear of them being the next one a bounty is issued for next...
u/gwern [+0] (5 hours later)
The payout for every assassination of a Roman General might be responded to by offering a large bounty from the Romans on the paying authorities' head. And then they retaliate.
The paying authorities aren't the ones trying to organize an invasion - they simply want to maintain their decentralized status quo, not lead a fragile organization to war. (More than one army has been defeated simply by waiting.)
The paying authorities have more to lose in a regular war and less to lose in an assassination war - the situation is not symmetric in terms of offense vs defense, nor is there necessarily the same number of leaders (in a confederation of city-states, who's the 'leader' equivalent to that of the general of a invasion?). Consider just the financial aspect: the defenders aren't supplying or paying an entire army (which is extremely expensive) so pound for pound have more money to spare, and can put everything into bounties if they want to.
u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (10 hours later)
I was going to write something long and complicated responding to this argument, but I will simply note that if each city state has someone in charge of the assassin market that provides an obvious target for someone trying to destroy the tactic.
That said: There would also be major incentives not to institute such a tactic for most groups of city states in history. Pretty much all ancient city states and nations and the like had a bunch of norms against anything we'd think of as assassination and murder (such as poisoning, killing people when they're sleeping, taking pay to be a guard or servant and then killing them, etc, etc.) Pretty much all of these ancient codes of morality/fairness in war and killing basically worked to reinforce the ruling class's advantages and disempower the third estate. In medieval times, knights and trained fighters had better nutrition and food, better training, better equipment and materials, and relatively small numbers - so the ethical rules of the society were that you didn't gang up on people, poison food, slit throats while asleep, etc. This naturally served to empower the warriors and fighters and noble castes over the others. Legalizing, normalizing, and making ethical and common and a major option in all disputes the idea of assassination would naturally empower the weak against the strong, and the strong and powerful of the time would perhaps be unwise to advocate for it's use - I can't see it working out great for any existing nobility and authority to legitimize the practice of cutting monarchs' throats or shooting dukes with crossbows from whatever the medieval equivalent of a book depository is. And assuming that we have perfect coordination and smart game theoreticians as nobility in all or at least many city states to implement the assassin guild plan but that those wealthy and powerful people would not try to think through the logic of perpetuating their own wealth and power seems very optimistic.
If you had a decentralized alliance of consensusing city states commited working together for their common good and productivity and wealth-generation like they had all read relatively modern economic texts and understood the value of labour and how to grow economies by specialization and reducing overheads from unnecessary governmental costs to allow for investment in infrastructure to increase productivity even more, and they all wanted to prevent each other from raising armies and none had existing armies or indeed power structures or authority figures of any sort, the assassin solution would probably work, assuming also perfect coordination between and among the city-states, perfect legitimacy and fairness and honor among the assassin paymasters, and reliable extremely skilled assassins in plentitude willing to risk their lives for filthy lucre in perpetuity against any target no matter how protected and how unlikedly the assassin's escape alive, and finally a highly educated general populace or at least leadership in each city-state group that is comprised with a high percentage of game-theoreticians and highly intelligent people that will understand the desirable equilibrium that could result from going along with this all. I submit, however, that if you have all the elements that list of assumptions requires sorted out adequately you can probably do better than the assassin plan for peace.
u/gwern [+2] (a day later)
I will simply note that if each city state has someone in charge of the assassin market that provides an obvious target for someone trying to destroy the tactic.
Running an assassination market is simpler and easier than running an invasion. These asymmetries are what power the concept, in both the full-strength cryptoanarchist version and my simpler medieval version.
Pretty much all ancient city states and nations and the like had a bunch of norms against anything we'd think of as assassination and murder (such as poisoning, killing people when they're sleeping, taking pay to be a guard or servant and then killing them, etc, etc.)
They all tended to have small elites too. Funny how that works. See also: current USA rules on who isn't - and who is - allowed to be assassinated.
I submit, however, that if you have all the elements that list of assumptions requires sorted out adequately you can probably do better than the assassin plan for peace.
I submit that none of those assumptions are realistically what is necessary.
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (3 hours later)
But how is that different from the present situation (which also features assassination as an option)?
People on your side don't pitch a bounty on you, do on your enemies. People on enemy side pitch a bounty against you. Ordinary war commences.
u/gwern [+1] (4 hours later)
But how is that different from the present situation (which also features assassination as an option)?
Right now it's not an option. Or rather, it's an 'option' in much the same way that becoming a billionaire or sailing around the world is an 'option' for people - yes, it may be physically possible in some sense, but it's extremely difficult for most people & an all or nothing thing, and as any economist could tell you about price floors, they lead to much fewer transactions.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (8 hours later)
I still don't really get it...are you saying assassination is just too expensive? Why can't people pitch in for assassination now?
Okay, so you're both fighting over something, right? In one case, both of you acquire soldiers (or, if one of "you" is a disorganized mob, you fight and the "wages" are collectively winning at whatever it is you are fighting about). Soldiers from both sides kill each other. It is expensive and bloody. Both sides also attempt assassination, if possible, to make it less expensive and bloody. Basically, all parties interested in harming each other try their best to harm each other.
Okay, now the fictional case: I'm a group of people in the fictional world, and I want to secede with half the land, or something. I can pitch in blood money for all members of Acre-gov who oppose allowing me to secede. They do the same for me. I hire body guards, necessitating a higher price for my death due to higher difficulty. They hire body guards, necessitating a higher price for my death. We both ramp up our "armies" via ever-more bodyguards and assassins.
But wait, are we alone? Surely we can't secede with no political support, or we'll be assassinated. Oh, that's right- all our respective political supporters are pitching in for the hiring of bodyguards and assassins, like a great game of chess. Surely, the assassins kill the bodyguards at times - perhaps there are even sub-bounties on the body-guards, corresponding to strategic importance. We can increase the number of supporters by sharing the bounty with with them in proportion to their investment, and at that point it becomes eerily like a stock market.
But even if the leader is killed, the political supporters are still there. They're still going to want to secede. So they just send someone else when the King is down to take over the government. If desire is high enough and it's strategically advantageous, it's not that hard to just ditch the "take over the government" step altogether and start attacking civilians directly, instead of sending soldiers ahem I mean assassins and bodyguards to play capture the flag with the political leader.
...and it goes on. The longer time one spends thinking about this, the more it just starts looking like regular war, with some complications thrown in, and not actually something that would cause people who stuck to the system to have an edge to people who just went in old fashioned.
u/gwern [+1] (8 hours later)
I still don't really get it...are you saying assassination is just too expensive? Why can't people pitch in for assassination now?
I'm saying assassination is a coordination problem: there are many people who would value a leader's death but at something far below the expected-value 'trying to assassinate the leader themselves, probably failing, and losing their life'. If I tried to kill Obama, I would probably fail (not being the sort of person who makes a good hitman or sniper or has the resources to properly prepare), and I do not want a small chance of him dead more than I want to not throw away my life. I might, however, value his death at $10k, which is something I can spend, and along with all the other people who want him, put up a big enough pot so that some deadeye ex-special-forces can spend a year preparing and whack him and retire on it.
(I can climb a mountain, step by step; I cannot leap it in a single bound.)
But even if the leader is killed, the political supporters are still there. They're still going to want to secede. So they just send someone else when the King is down to take over the government.
Think carefully about what you're claiming in your little story here: that leaders literally do not matter at all, 0%, have no power at all, and that the masses decide and execute everything. Does that sound like reality to you? Think about why the Mongols didn't conquer Europe too.