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I've never had a real adversary

And this is a big problem for thinking about adversarial situations

Paul Crowley recently mentioned that we underrate the effect of the Russian IRA (Internet Research Agency) which works full-time on creating discord and anger among Americans online (it was in the context of Robin Hanson’s dismayed surprise at how much racist vitriol a post about Africa had attracted; Eliezer Yudkowsky correctly pointed out the vitriol could be entirely manufactured by bots; Crowley added IRA as a culprit). Here is a group that will bend all their effort, all their human creativity, working 40 hours a week plus overtime, trying to find novel ways to mess with their target. Indeed, for a person without an adversary (i.e. most of us), just taking the idea seriously sounds like paranoid delusion (“what if that flat tire was because of…” “what if the IRS called because…” “what if that woman asked for my number because…”).

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