I’ve been thinking of Moloch as the God of the Perverse Incentives, which doesn’t quite cover it (it has the right shape, but strictly speaking a perverse incentive needs to be perverse relative to some incentive-setting agent, which the universe lacks) but has the advantage of fitting the meter of a certain Kipling poem.
This is pretty close to my definition, but I’d simplify it to “Moloch is incentives”. Perverse or not, Moloch is the god that gives you near-mode benefits unrelated to your far-mode values.
I’ve been thinking of Moloch as the God of the Perverse Incentives, which doesn’t quite cover it (it has the right shape, but strictly speaking a perverse incentive needs to be perverse relative to some incentive-setting agent, which the universe lacks) but has the advantage of fitting the meter of a certain Kipling poem.
This is pretty close to my definition, but I’d simplify it to “Moloch is incentives”. Perverse or not, Moloch is the god that gives you near-mode benefits unrelated to your far-mode values.