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Would Moloch qualify as an Egregores?
I recently read Terry Bouricious' book about Sortition and I highly recommend it (It's completely free on his substack)
Typo: It's Prediction Markets "Fail" To *Mooch (not Moloch)
Reducing the amount of voters can be good because it increases the remaining voters' motive to become well informed instead of remaining rationally ignorant, but it won't work if people just self refrain, because the people who refrain will probably me exactly those that should remain.
Using sortition to pick a representative subset of the population to vote solves this problem.
Technically it makes sense for the nuked side to lose everything and for the nuking side to gain little. But you want to model a scenario where the sides might actually want to nuke the other side, which you have naturally between enemies, but don't have between LessWrongers unless you incentivize them somehow. So giving rewards for nuking makes sense, because people want to increase their own Karma but don't want to decrease the Karma of others.
And I think the incentives are deliberately designed such that no nukes aren't the obvious optimal equilibrium. That's what makes it an exercise in not destroying the world. If it were easy it wouldn't be much of an exercise.
This is extremely cool! good job! Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds, which will unfortunately happen mostly as I sleep (and as a citizen I hope to come out at the end of this with no change to my Karma)
Thanks. If it's indeed framed as a game then I would like to participate as well. So I pressed the button and opted in.
That sounds like a terrible strategy. Your threat won't be credible because your goal is to make the world better, not destroy it. And anything you do to make the threat credible (like some sort of precomitment mechanism) will risk the world actually getting destroyed.
Did anything happen after you pressed it?
How would you leverage a button that destroys the world to make the world better?
So the responsible thing to do is to refrain, right? Cause if everybody did nobody would have the ability to destroy the site, and what would you do with such an ability anyway except not use it?
The problem is it feels like a game/exercise, and a game/exercise is something I want to opt in to, even if just to challenge myself.
That said, I think twice before pressing any big red button, and as of yet I haven't pressed this one.
Edit: Following Dagon's comment (published 8 hours after this post), which confirmed it's framed as a game, I decided to press the button and opt in.
a method to induce male stem cells to lose their Y chromosome and duplicate the X chromosome, thus becoming female.
If you had twin fertilised eggs, could you use this method to create almost-genetically-identical opposite-sex twins? Which would supposedly let you isolate the effects of sex on the individual?
Yeah, I think I agree with this. Do you have an idea for a name that captures this dynamic? Do you think one of the names I or Legionnaire suggested captures it?
Hmm.. I think our understanding what "Moloch" stands for is quite different, cause none of what you suggested seems close to me. Which I guess also illustrates why I wanted a different name. "Moloch" is very good at entering your head and creating a visceral feeling of the dynamic, but it can also make it ambiguous and difficult to understand. Also, I find when I introduce people to the concept, it really throws them off if I start to talking about some mythical deity from the Bible :)
Ouuu nice! there's some good ones here. I think my favourite from these is "Sacrificial Spiral". "Sacrificial Contest" is also good. Deadlock is also a good term, though not as part of "Competition Deadlock". Perhaps "Mutual Sacrifice Deadlock", or something of the sort. "Feedback" can also be a good term.
Thanks!
I tried to think of different names for the Moloch Dynamic[1] and came up with
- Mutual Sacrifice Trap
- Mutual Sacrifice Equilibrium
- Mutual Sacrifice Equilibrium Trap
- Sacrifice Race
- Sacrifice Competition
"Collective" can also replace or be added before "Mutual", to signify that it tends to refer to dynamics of many actors, where coordinating to get out of the equilibrium trap is difficult.
What do you think of these options?
- ^
A reminder of what the Moloch Dynamic is:
"In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse." - Scott Alexander, Meditations on Moloch
From Protection or Free Trade by Henry George:
The Robber that Takes All that is Left
Labor may be likened to a man who as he carries home his earnings is waylaid by a series of robbers. One demands this much, and another that much, but last of all stands one who demands all that is left, save just enough to enable the victim to maintain life and come forth next day to work. So long as this last robber remains, what will it benefit such a man to drive off any or all of the other robbers?
Such is the situation of labor today throughout the civilized world. And the robber that takes all that is left, is private property in land. Improvement, no matter how great, and reform, no matter how beneficial in itself, cannot help that class who deprived of all right to the use of the material elements have only the power to labor—a power as useless in itself as a sail without wind, a pump without water, or a saddle without a horse.
I recommend the full chapter, and book.
One extreme solution, which I think is good regardless of this issue, is using sortition with high alternance, like they did in ancient Athens. I recommend Terry Bouricius' book on sortition.
The difference between leaders in dictatorships and in democracies isn't so much in the average time they rule, but in the variability in the time they rule. Yes, not ageing wouldn't help someone like Bachir Gemayel who was assassinated after two weeks in office, but it would probably have helped a leader like Stalin. So I care more about the variability of how much no-ageing would help dictators than the average. But still, I agree ageing isn't the main bottleneck on dictatorship.
The comment option sorting is amazing! Thanks!
The new reacts are also cool, though I also liked the "I checked" reacts and would have liked to have both.
I am really missing the word counter. It's something I look at quite a lot (less so on reading time estimates, as I got used to making the estimate myself based on the wordcount).
Why is no one talking about the GiveDirectly study on UBI? It seems to also be a very good study, and it found positive results.
I'd be happy to try :)
Sending you a DM
Crossposting here: I'm still looking for a dialogue partner
I'm looking for a dialogue partner with whom to discuss my normative philosophy of political/social change which I call Experimentalism or Experimentationism.
It is an attempt to give a name and structure to a position I believe many people already implicitly and intuitively tend towards, and to go beyond Progressivism and Conservatism, or to "synthesise" them, if you want, though I don't particularly like the term.
I found it a bit hard to flesh out an explanation on my own, so I hope doing so in a dialogue would be helpful. This doesn't require any significant familiarity with the subject, just an ability to ask good questions and to challenge me to better flesh out my idea.
If anyone is interested please comment here or send me a DM :)
I didn't go to college/university, but i'm also from Israel, not the US, so it's a little different here. If it still feels relevant then i'd be willing to join.
Are there multiwinner voting methods where voters vote on combinations of candidates?
from their FAQ
How much does it cost? Unlike pretty much everyone else, we don't take a cut from your donations! Premium features like Memberships, Ko-fi Shop and Commissions can either be paid for via a small subscription to Ko-fi Gold or a low 5% transaction fee. You decide.
How do I get paid? Instantly and directly into your PayPal or Stripe account. We take 0-5% fees from donations and we don't hold onto your money. It goes directly from your supporter to you. Simple!
Their fees do seem lower than other services, but I think other services can pay directly to your bank account, so you don't have to pay PayPal or Stripe fees.
I haven't clicked this fast on a LessWrong post in a long while. I've been waiting for someone to seriously tackle this issue ever since I read the sequences six years ago. So thanks! Now I'm going to take some time to think about it :)
Wow, I had no idea about the effects of alcohol on hearing! It makes so much sense - I never drink and I hate how loud the music is in parties!
Yeah, when there's loud music it's much easier for me to understand people I know than people I don't because I'm already used to their speaking patterns, and can more easily infer what they said even when I don't hear it perfectly. And also because any misunderstanding or difficulty that rises out of not hearing each other well is less awkward with someone I already know than someone I do.
Collaborative Truth Seeking = Deliberation
Sometimes our community has a different name for something than others do, so it's useful to know which name others use so we can learn from them.
Today I learned, that deliberative democracy researchers call Deliberation what we call Collaborative Truth Seeking:
"Deliberation requires rational reasoning, or “thinking slow,” in Kahneman’s terminology. It is distinct from oratory, rhetoric, negotiation, persuasion, and common forms of debate, which frequently use pathos and emotion. (...) According to deliberative democracy theorists, deliberative conversation is a cooperative venture seeking truth or the common good, rather than seeking to “win,” or defeat an opponent."
'Good Deliberation' section From Terry Bouricius' book about sortition democracy
They seem to have studied this a lot, and there's probably a lot we can learn from them to improve our Group Rationality skills. One day I might dive into their literature and write a post about it, but for now I'm just sharing this so others can do so as well.
I think George does see the dividend as necessary for solving poverty, but only in addition to taxing rent. On its own it would indeed be gobbled up by landlords.
Also, what George suggests is a bit different from UBI (and I think Universal Land Dividend is a better name for it than Citizen's Dividend). With UBI, the law dictates a set amount to be given each person each year/month. With the Citizen's Dividend, whatever revenue isn't spent at the end of the year is distributed equally between everyone. This on the one hand leads to a variable income, on the other hand it doesn't place an obligation on the government that it might not be able to fulfil. Personally I think it's a better and more elegant policy.
“One can do logic without empiricism, but one must never do empiricism without logic.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I think this neatly explains why, though we cherish Empiricism, we call ourselves Rationalists.
Reason must come before observation, for without reason observation cannot be processed and made sense of.
I love how user tooltip now shows a three of their posts (and generally all the new features. You're doing a great Job, LW team!).
Currently the tooltip shows the 3 most recent posts. It would be nice if it was possible to pin posts on the user page, and then if you did it would prioritise the pinned posts on the tooltip before new posts.
On the other hand, Obsidian doesn't have an option to convert Markdown to rich text, if you want to copy-paste the other way around (say from obsidian to gdocs). Would be nice if it did.
Looking for blog platform/framework recommendations
I had a Wordpress blog, but I don't like wordpress and I want to move away from it.
Substack doesn't seem like a good option because I want high customizability and multilingual support (my Blog is going to be in English and Hebrew).
I would like something that I can use for free with my own domain (so not Wix).
The closest thing I found to what I'm looking for was MkDocs Material, but it's still geared too much towards documentation, and I don't like its blog functionality enough.
Other requirements: Dark/Light mode, RSS, Newsletter support.
Does anyone have another suggestion? It's fine if it requires a bit of technical skill (though better if it doesn't).
The article you cited has a paywall, so I cannot read it for myself, but Reddit says it's bad, and I'm highly skeptical myself. Wikipedia also doesn't mention any critique that comes anywhere close to what you describe, not even on the talk page. I also tried to search for such criticism somewhere else, and didn't find anything. So I'm confidant that this is wrong, and that the way I described Leopold is largely correct.
Domain: Singing (especially theatre/musicals, but not just)
Link: Excerpt, full interview
Person: Philip Quast
Background: He played Javert in the 10th anniversary rendition of Les Mis.
Why: Philip Quast's has probably done the best performance of Javert, and in the interview he goes through the process of how he figures out how to sing his songs.
For those who, like me, didn't know the reference
I suggested something similar a few months back as a requirement for casting strong votes.
I'd be interested in tacit knowledge videos about writing, if anyone knows any.
Huh. That's not a possibility I considered. I'm still betting it is AI generated but you changed my odds.
Yes, it doesn't say so explicitly, but it's very clear from the post that it is.
Is it possible to download all songs at once?
Yep.. That's what I expected the first one to be.
I did not know AI has gotten this good at creating music. Wow...
“To be one more milestone in humanity's road is the best that can be said of anyone” - Eliezer Yudkowsky
Daniel Kahneman, you were a milestone in humanity's road to rationality. Thank you for that.