+.claude/
.venv/
output/
__pycache__/
Date: 2026-03-25 19:54
Status: published
Category: social science
+Tags: court reporting
-Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of _Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al._ in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.)
+Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of _Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al._ in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.)
For some dumb reason, recording court proceedings is banned and the official transcript won't be available online for three months, so I'm relying on my handwritten live notes to tell you what happened. I'd say that any errors are my responsibility, but actually, it's kind of the government's fault for not letting me just take a recording.
The previous day, Judge Lin had [assigned homework questions](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.118.0_2.pdf) for the lawyers to answer during the hearing, which she proceeded to read.
-The first question concerned [Secretary Hegseth's 27 February Tweet](https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070?s=46) declaring that "Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic", and that "This decision is final." Judge Lin asked the defendant's counsel if they agreed that Secretary Hegseth lacked the authority to issue such a broad directive.
+The first question concerned [Secretary Hegseth's 27 February Tweet](https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070) declaring that "Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic", and that "This decision is final." Judge Lin asked the defendant's counsel if they agreed that Secretary Hegseth lacked the authority to issue such a broad directive.
Hamilton replied that the language needed to be read in the context of the previous sentence, that the Secretary was "directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk". A social media post announcing the process of making the supply chain risk designation was not itself legally binding, and that's how the post was understood by the Department.
--- /dev/null
+Title: Accidentally Misleading People Should Be Embarrassing
+Date: 2026-07-28
+Status: draft
+Category: philosophy
+Tags: honesty
+
+Sometimes we say things that we think are true—perhaps even things that _are_ true—which end up causing others to conclude something false. It's tempting to relate to such a situation primarily in terms of maintaining the innocence of one's soul—to say, fine, my readers became more wrong, but I'm not to be [judged](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2025/Oct/the-relationship-between-social-punishment-and-shared-maps/) for it because I believed what I was saying; I wasn't _being misleading_ just because the people who believed me were thereby led into falsehood.
+
+The temptation reflects a confusion as to the nature of the judgment. Mostly, people don't care about judging the innocence of your soul; they care about whether they'll be led into falsehood the next time they take the risk of believing what you say—if there is a next time. If you want there to be a next time and you're going to have social emotions about it, the most productive emotion is _embarrassment_ rather than defensiveness. Visibly embarrassed people can be counted on to work hard to make sure that people won't regret believing them next time. Defensive people won't, because, well, why would they? They didn't do anything wrong.
+
+-----
+
+Once, I suspected an ideological rival of misrepresenting a citation: they had linked to a webpage featuring an embedded PDF of an essay, but when I used my web browser's "Ctrl-F" search functionality with appropriate search terms to see what in the essay justified their claim, I came up empty. When considering whether to escalate to complaining more loudly about my rival over this (after the rival didn't respond to a blog comment and DM), I mentioned the matter to a third party—who pointed out that the essay _did_ contain my search term! On further testing, it appeared that my web browser's Ctrl-F behavior depended on which page element had focus: if the user had last clicked inside the embedded PDF viewer, the search returned results inside the PDF, but not if the user had last clicked elsewhere on the page.
+
+I was _so embarrassed_.
+
+To be clear, I knew I was innocent in my soul: the browser UX bug wasn't my fault, and if the browser hadn't been buggy, then my initial search would have succeeded and I never would have complained. I [certainly didn't _lie_](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/Dec/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly-useful-than-one-might-initially-think/). (I didn't say that I read the essay and verified that it didn't support the claim, which was false; I said the Ctrl-F search came up empty, which was true.)
+
+But the innocence of my soul didn't matter. I knew that raising a suspicion that turned out to be false _looked bad for me_, even if there was ultimately a perfectly reasonable explanation for my actions. If I didn't want to look bad, I couldn't count on everyone hanging around to listen to my perfectly reasonable explanation for why it was all the Firefox developers' fault. I would need to make some sort of generalizable change to my policy—perhaps, reading the entire PDF myself next time before raising the suspicion that an ideological rival was misrepresenting it.
+
+(Recounting this seven years later, I went back and downloaded the PDF. Excluding the title page and the endnotes, it was six pages.)
+
+-----
+
+Another time, a journalist wrote an article paraphrasing a source as saying that it "could be unfair" for journalists to discuss "both critics and supporters" of some controversial public figure and that they should instead "somehow prove statistically which side was right." I was familiar with the source's work, and the paraphrase didn't sound like something she would say. When I had occasion to talk to the same journalist three years later, I remembered that line from the article and asked the source about it. She told me that she recalled telling the journalist that she "wasn't a huge fan of 'both sides' journalism, where you just find someone with one opinion and someone with the other opinion" rather than trying to figure out the truth; she had gone on to give suggestions for data sources that might bear on claims about the public figure.
+
+In light of that statement, I thought the paraphrase in the article was misleading. "[S]omehow prove statistically which side was right" leads readers who aren't familiar with the source's work to imagine that she has an unreasonable faith in the power of statistics to resolve all questions, whereas voicing skepticism of [false balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance) is eminently reasonable. "Somehow" implies vagueness, but pointing out data sources that bear on some question is supplying a specific "how."
+
+[When I complained about this to the journalist](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P8GuwYdy6foSzyZog/conversations-with-cade-metz-on-the-rationalists#24_June_2025), he didn't seem embarrassed. "I had to boil down what she said to plain English," he said. I said that it hadn't worked. He said it did. He recounted that the source had objected when he said his coverage would represent both views of the public figure. When I continued to insist that it seemed like a bad paraphrase when compared to what the source had told me later, he said, "Is that necessarily what she said to me?"
+
+And in absolute fairness, maybe it wasn't, _necessarily_. I of course was not present for the conversation between the journalist and the source; I don't have the recording, if there was one. Even if the source can be assumed to be an authority about what she _meant_ to say, I cannot with absolute certainty rule out the scenario where the "somehow prove statistically which side was right" line was a reasonable paraphrase of the words she had literally said at the time and that her reconstruction three years later of what she remembered saying was unintentionally injecting more nuance after the fact. The source hadn't objected during the fact check call. If the journalist had reasonably paraphrased the words that were said to him at the time, then he was innocent in his soul. Even if his readers walked away with a distorted impression of what the source privately believed (but did not manage to successfully communicate in the interview), the miscommunication wasn't his fault.
+
+I still think this episode _looks bad for him_ and that he should have been _embarrassed_, because there should have been generalizable policy changes that could have prevented this class of error—perhaps, thinking more carefully about whether a paraphrase that makes a subject look unreasonable is truly a fair paraphrase before going to print with it. Potential sources deciding whether they should talk to the journalist are mostly worried about the risk that their views will end up being miscommunicated, not whose fault a miscommunication would be if it happened. Unlucky accidents do not impinge upon the innocence of one's soul under the moral law, but the moral law is unmercifully permissive about everyone else's right to _avoid unlucky people_.
+
+-----
+
+And that's why accidentally misleading people should be embarrassing: because the desire to avoid such embarrassment motivates a counterfactual reduction in such incidents of people being misled, notwithstanding that it was an accident and totally unintentional.
+++ /dev/null
-Title: Accidentally Misleading People Should Be Embarrassing
-Date: 2026-07-28
-Status: draft
-Category: philosophy
-Tags: honesty
-
-Sometimes we say things that we think are true—perhaps even things that _are_ true—which end up causing others to conclude something false. It's tempting to relate to such a situation primarily in terms of maintaining the innocence of one's soul—to say, fine, my readers became more wrong, but I'm not to be [judged](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2025/Oct/the-relationship-between-social-punishment-and-shared-maps/) for it because I believed what I was saying; I wasn't _being misleading_ just because the people who believed me were thereby led into falsehood.
-
-The temptation reflects a confusion as to the nature of the judgment. Mostly, people don't care about judging the innocence of your soul; they care about whether they'll be led into falsehood the next time they take the risk of believing what you say—if there is a next time. If you want there to be a next time and you're going to have social emotions about it, the most productive emotion is _embarrassment_ rather than defensiveness. Visibly embarrassed people can be counted on to work hard to make sure that people won't regret believing them next time. Defensive people won't, because, well, why would they? They didn't do anything wrong.
-
------
-
-Once, I suspected an ideological rival of misrepresenting a citation: they had linked to a webpage featuring an embedded PDF of an essay, but when I used my web browser's "Ctrl-F" search functionality with appropriate search terms to see what in the essay justified their claim, I came up empty. When considering whether to escalate to complaining more loudly about my rival over this (after the rival didn't respond to a blog comment and DM), I mentioned the matter to a third party—who pointed out that the essay _did_ contain my search term! On further testing, it appeared that my web browser's Ctrl-F behavior depended on which page element had focus: if the user had last clicked inside the embedded PDF viewer, the search returned results inside the PDF, but not if the user had last clicked elsewhere on the page.
-
-I was _so embarrassed_.
-
-To be clear, I knew I was innocent in my soul: the browser UX bug wasn't my fault, and if the browser hadn't been buggy, then my initial search would have succeeded and I never would have complained. I [certainly didn't _lie_](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/Dec/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly-useful-than-one-might-initially-think/). (I didn't say that I read the essay and verified that it didn't support the claim, which was false; I said the Ctrl-F search came up empty, which was true.)
-
-But the innocence of my soul didn't matter. I knew that raising a suspicion that turned out to be false _looked bad for me_, even if there was ultimately a perfectly reasonable explanation for my actions. If I didn't want to look bad, I couldn't count on everyone hanging around to listen to my perfectly reasonable explanation for why it was all the Firefox developers' fault. I would need to make some sort of generalizable change to my policy—perhaps, reading the entire PDF myself next time before raising the suspicion that an ideological rival was misrepresenting it.
-
-(Recounting this seven years later, I went back and downloaded the PDF. Excluding the title page and the endnotes, it was six pages.)
-
------
-
-Another time, a journalist wrote an article paraphrasing a source as saying that it "could be unfair" for journalists to discuss "both critics and supporters" of some controversial public figure and that they should instead "somehow prove statistically which side was right." I was familiar with the source's work, and the paraphrase didn't sound like something she would say. When I had occasion to talk to the same journalist three years later, I remembered that line from the article and asked the source about it. She told me that she recalled telling the journalist that she "wasn't a huge fan of 'both sides' journalism, where you just find someone with one opinion and someone with the other opinion" rather than trying to figure out the truth; she had gone on to give suggestions for data sources that might bear on claims about the public figure.
-
-In light of that statement, I thought the paraphrase in the article was misleading. "[S]omehow prove statistically which side was right" leads readers who aren't familiar with the source's work to imagine that she has an unreasonable faith in the power of statistics to resolve all questions, whereas voicing skepticism of [false balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance) is eminently reasonable. "Somehow" implies vagueness, but pointing out data sources that bear on some question is supplying a specific "how."
-
-[When I complained about this to the journalist](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P8GuwYdy6foSzyZog/conversations-with-cade-metz-on-the-rationalists#24_June_2025), he didn't seem embarrassed. "I had to boil down what she said to plain English," he said. I said that it hadn't worked. He said it did. He recounted that the source had objected when he said his coverage would represent both views of the public figure. When I continued to insist that it seemed like a bad paraphrase when compared to what the source had told me later, he said, "Is that necessarily what she said to me?"
-
-And in absolute fairness, maybe it wasn't, _necessarily_. I of course was not present for the conversation between the journalist and the source; I don't have the recording, if there was one. Even if the source can be assumed to be an authority about what she _meant_ to say, I cannot with absolute certainty rule out the scenario where the "somehow prove statistically which side was right" line was a reasonable paraphrase of the words she had literally said at the time and that her reconstruction three years later of what she remembered saying was unintentionally injecting more nuance after the fact. The source hadn't objected during the fact check call. If the journalist had reasonably paraphrased the words that were said to him at the time, then he was innocent in his soul. Even if his readers walked away with a distorted impression of what the source believed, the miscommunication wasn't his fault.
-
-I still think this episode _looks bad for him_ and that he should have been _embarrassed_, because there should have been generalizable policy changes that could have prevented this class of error—perhaps, thinking more carefully about whether a paraphrase that makes a subject look unreasonable is truly a fair paraphrase before going to print with it. Potential sources deciding whether they should talk to the journalist are mostly worried about the risk that their views will end up being miscommunicated, not whose fault a miscommunication would be if it happened. Unlucky accidents do not impinge upon the innocence of one's soul under the moral law, but the moral law is unmercifully permissive about everyone else's right to _avoid unlucky people_.
-
------
-
-And that's why accidentally misleading people should be embarrassing: because the desire to avoid such embarrassment motivates a counterfactual reduction in such incidents of people being misled, notwithstanding that it was an accident and totally unintentional.
--- /dev/null
+Title: Contra Piper on When Conversation Is Possible
+Date: 2027-01-01
+Status: draft
+Category: philosophy
+
+[Kelsey Piper replies to Richard Ngo on Twitter](https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/2071375416812867820):
+
+> since you have adopted the frame that liberals are self-deceived (and therefore not trustworthy about our beliefs) and you should make up beliefs you think we have, you have become markedly less likely to say things about politics that seem interesting or thought-provoking.
+>
+> I think the move of declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible.
+>
+> now, maybe you didn't value your ability to communicate with liberals, and don't see this as a loss, or see it as more than offset by whatever you gain from this frame! but from my perspective, it's a really serious loss.
+
+I categorically reject the idea declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible.
+
+It certainly doesn't make conversation with _me_ impossible. When someone tells me that my understanding of my beliefs and motives should be rejected, I don't take my ball and go home in a huff, muttering that they've made further conversation nearly impossible.
+
+
--- /dev/null
+Title: Repentance Is Not Compensation
+Date: 2027-01-01
+Status: draft
+Category: philosophy
+Tags: regret
+
+Previously, on the topic of when to apologize, [I wrote](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2026/Jun/contra-pace-on-when-to-apologize/)—
+
+> When someone wrongs me, it seems like the _smallest_ ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again (or more generally, update their policy such that they're less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be "made whole"—[for the past cannot be changed](http://unremediatedgender.space/2020/Dec/liability/)—but simply that they do better in the future, which can.
+>
+> If they refuse, saying, "That's sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on _my_ ledger. I'm sorry. That's on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time," I have to admit I'm skeptical. If I can't ask _not to be hurt again_, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
+
+[TODO—
+
+A skeptic might reply, wait, yes, obviously. Compensation in other goods is the normal case.
+
+Indeed, vNM continuity axiom seems to imply that it should work that way. If Agent A lowers agent B's utility, then there should be some payment from A to B that makes B whole. B has no further cause to complain, because B has been "made whole". (Whereas if B hasn't been made whole, B will terminate the relationship at minimum—it's not benefiting B—and possibly seek timeless revenge to show B is not to be messed with.) Making B whole keeps B bought in to the relationship.
+
+There are indeed lots of situations that work this way: the airline pays you to get bumped from an overbooked flight, just a commercial transaction.
+
+But some things don't work that way. We should taboo "apology" and think of two things that both might result in someone saying "I'm sorry": compensation, and repentence. We want to keep track of these two separate phenomena. We know that compensation is real; the economic logic is straightforward. Set it aside for now.
+
+But repentance is also a real thing in human psychology, that doesn't simply amount to compensation. What is it doing, psychologically? If the humans aren't vNM agents, how does the thing they're doing at least sort of make sense?
+
+Compensation includes cases where the actor wouldn't have acted differently, but wants to maintain the relationship.
+
+But sometimes people actually do regret things—to think that if they had been smarter or braver, they would and should have acted differently.
+
+Part of what's going on in trusted relationships is that we _don't_ make the utilities balance exactly; we're happy to roll over small balances in either direction, and probably not even keep that much track. (Whereas commercial relationships with some random store are expected to balance: the transaction is the transaction, not a bond.) But trusted relationships depend on trust (that you're the sort of person who would do right by me and vice versa). If something threatens that trust, the thing that's desired from an "apology" is not being made whole, but the restoration of the trust, by the sinner having credibly learned their lesson.
+
+There might be an apology gift, which superficially looks like compensation, but the difference is that the gift is a mere costly _signal_ of intent to change rather than being precisely sized to cancel out the harm.
+
+It's important to understand the distinction. Accidents don't need full compensation if you're sorry, but crimes demand vengence and punishment.
+
+You should notice when you're offering compensation and when you're repenting, and you should have a concept of repentance.
+
+If you stab my friend in the throat such that he'll never speak in public again, then you are my enemy. If it was a freak accident, I'd accept an apology (and an apology gift as a signal that you're actually sorry and it's not just cheap talk). If it's like, "Sorry, but his voice was just so annoying. I still like you, though", then you're still an enemy; I'm not going to be bought off.
+
+]
+++ /dev/null
-Title: Repentance vs. Compensation
-Date: 2027-01-01
-Status: draft
-Category: philosophy
-Tags: regret
-
-Previously, on the topic of when to apologize, [I wrote](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2026/Jun/contra-pace-on-when-to-apologize/)—
-
-> When someone wrongs me, it seems like the _smallest_ ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again (or more generally, update their policy such that they're less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be "made whole"—[for the past cannot be changed](http://unremediatedgender.space/2020/Dec/liability/)—but simply that they do better in the future, which can.
->
-> If they refuse, saying, "That's sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on _my_ ledger. I'm sorry. That's on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time," I have to admit I'm skeptical. If I can't ask _not to be hurt again_, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
-
-[TODO—
-
-A skeptic might reply, wait, yes, obviously. Compensation in other goods is the normal case.
-
-Indeed, vNM continuity axiom seems to imply that it should work that way. If Agent A lowers agent B's utility, then there should be some payment from A to B that makes B whole. B has no further cause to complain, because B has been "made whole". (Whereas if B hasn't been made whole, B will terminate the relationship at minimum—it's not benefiting B—and possibly seek timeless revenge to show B is not to be messed with.) Making B whole keeps B bought in to the relationship.
-
-There are indeed lots of situations that work this way: the airline pays you to get bumped from an overbooked flight, just a commercial transaction.
-
-But some things don't work that way. We should taboo "apology" and think of two things that both might result in someone saying "I'm sorry": compensation, and repentence. We want to keep track of these two separate phenomena. We know that compensation is real; the economic logic is straightforward. Set it aside for now.
-
-But repentance is also a real thing in human psychology, that doesn't simply amount to compensation. What is it doing, psychologically? If the humans aren't vNM agents, how does the thing they're doing at least sort of make sense?
-
-Compensation includes cases where the actor wouldn't have acted differently, but wants to maintain the relationship.
-
-But sometimes people actually do regret things—to think that if they had been smarter or braver, they would and should have acted differently.
-
-Part of what's going on in trusted relationships is that we _don't_ make the utilities balance exactly; we're happy to roll over small balances in either direction, and probably not even keep that much track. (Whereas commercial relationships with some random store are expected to balance: the transaction is the transaction, not a bond.) But trusted relationships depend on trust (that you're the sort of person who would do right by me and vice versa). If something threatens that trust, the thing that's desired from an "apology" is not being made whole, but the restoration of the trust, by the sinner having credibly learned their lesson.
-
-There might be an apology gift, which superficially looks like compensation, but the difference is that the gift is a mere costly _signal_ of intent to change rather than being precisely sized to cancel out the harm.
-
-It's important to understand the distinction. Accidents don't need full compensation if you're sorry, but crimes demand vengence and punishment.
-
-You should notice when you're offering compensation and when you're repenting, and you should have a concept of repentance.
-
-If you stab my friend in the throat such that he'll never speak in public again, then you are my enemy. If it was a freak accident, I'd accept an apology (and an apology gift as a signal that you're actually sorry and it's not just cheap talk). If it's like, "Sorry, but his voice was just so annoying. I still like you, though", then you're still an enemy; I'm not going to be bought off.
-
-]
The problem is that in order to be trusted, it's not enough to be trustworthy; the other needs to _know_ that you're trustworthy. You could try telling them, "Hey, you can trust me," but that doesn't work if a dishonest person could just as easily say the same thing.
-A solution, if there is one, has to take the form of [saying something that a dishonest person couldn't just as easily say](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybG3WWLdxeTTL3Gpd/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential).
+A solution, if there is one, has to take the form of [saying something that a dishonest person couldn't just as easily say](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2021/Mar/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential-signal-costs/).
----
-Economists call the kind of situation in which it's possible for one kind of agent to say something that a different kind couldn't just as easily say a _separating equilibrium_. To understand separating equilibria, imagine two types of owners of spherical cats on a frictionless plane shopping for cat insurance: those with healthy cats, and those with sick cats. Insurance companies on the frictionless plane can't tell the difference between healthy and sick cats, and therefore face an [adverse selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection) problem, where the very fact that someone is willing to buy insurance implies that they're less profitable to insure in expectation (because sick cats are in more need of cat insurance).
+Economists call the kind of situation in which it's possible for one type of agent to say something that a different type couldn't just as easily say a _separating equilibrium_. To understand separating equilibria, imagine two types of owners of spherical cats on a frictionless plane shopping for cat insurance: those with healthy cats, and those with sick cats. Insurance companies on the frictionless plane can't tell the difference between healthy and sick cats, and therefore face an [adverse selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection) problem, where the very fact that someone is willing to buy insurance implies that they're less profitable to insure in expectation (because sick cats are in more need of cat insurance).
-Depending on some math that we don't have time for, there can be situations in which the adverse selection problem is solved by the different types of cat owners having incentives to buy different policies. Sick cats face a greater fraction of possible worlds in which they file a claim than healthy cats, so making those worlds worse for the policyholder by decreasing the policy benefit payout, decreases the expected value of the policy more for sick cats than healthy cats.
+Depending on some math that we don't have time for, there can be situations in which the adverse selection problem is solved by the different types of cat owners having incentives to buy different policies. Sick cats face a greater fraction of possible worlds in which they file a claim than healthy cats, so making those worlds worse for the policyholder by decreasing the policy benefit payout decreases the expected value of the policy more for sick cats than healthy cats.
As a corollary, the owners of healthy cats are willing to accept a smaller discount on premium to take out a smaller-benefit policy rather than a larger-benefit one. We end up in a situation where the healthy-cat owners pay a lower premium for a lower-benefit policy and the sick-cat owners pay a higher premium for a higher-benefit policy. The choice of policy becomes a signal that distinguishes the cats; neither type has an incentive to send the signal of the other. That's our separating equilibrium.
There is a crucial asymmetry. Owners of sick cats would prefer that the insurance company falsely believe that their cats are healthy, whereas owners of healthy cats want their cats to be seen as they are. Pooling equilibria generally benefit the former at the expense of the latter. The existence of sick cats makes healthy cats shoulder the burden of more risk: the healthy-cat owners would prefer to transfer more risk to the insurance company by buying a policy with higher benefits, but the insurance company can't sell it to them, because then the sick-cat owners would buy it, too.
-(As it turns out, there are pooling equilibria that are better for the owners of healthy cats than some separating equilibria—but that's only because the cost they'd pay in reduced benefits-per-unit-premium to separate themselves from the owners of sick cats isn't worth it. They'd be even better off if cats never got sick.)
+(As it turns out, there can be pooling equilibria that are better for the owners of healthy cats than some separating equilibria—but that's only because the cost they'd pay in reduced benefits-per-unit-premium to separate themselves from the owners of sick cats isn't worth it. They'd be even better off if cats never got sick.)
----
-Or imagine a woman and a man in a recently-formed romantic relationship.
+
+Imagine a woman and a man early in a romantic relationship. After a few dates, the initial chemistry is starting to wane.
+
[TODO:
+https://claude.ai/chat/6be695f5-6ef9-4e95-93e4-66bdb204c6f6
+
"I learned from a previous relationship not to teach people how to tell me things I want to hear."
"I respect your security posture."
And that's why honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
They know that they have to pay a price to distinguish themselves from dishonest people,
-
-
-
projects / An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git / commitdiff