It’s noteworthy that the law of comparative advantage stops being true exactly at the moment we figure out how to make something that’s generally better at the work of humans (strictly, it would have to have better manufacturing and running costs than a human too, but you know it wont be long after AGI before we reach that point) It would be very easy for a game designer who lived only in the human era to omit this additional factor of violence that we can infer would be present in post-human economies, but I think we should study it. Oppression might not be very different though.
A game of Risk, but with the victory condition of “At the end of ten rounds, your score is however many armies you control” would count in my head as cohabitive and the process of getting there has a good chance of becoming a bloodbath
Mm, that’s neat, right. You only get (immediate) stable pluralism if defense > attack, or if there are diminishing returns to scale. (I think you get a new pluralism later on when the victor develops deep internal specializations but that’s less relevant to present day meatbags)
I was going to say, economics (and so, necessarily, industrial growth as well?) is a great subject for games in this genre, because then you can use these games to test economic reforms.
If that’s the object of study, then I think it might be fine to just contrive pluralism? Human governments contrive pluralism, because humans/human cultures value survival over the prospect of growth (if we can trade the possibility of attaining global domination for the guarantee of security/survival, we will make that trade, and most of the free world explicitly did).
For my games, the object of study is lower down, cooperative bargaining, the art of cohabitation sole. I want games to at least start without the assumption of the existence of money. I can’t really easily explain why we have money in the same way I could explain why we maximize EV, I’m not sure I’ll be able to present a clear principled argument for money unless money emerges within the game from pre-money conditions. I’m personally fairly comfortable with the existence of money (though very doubtful of single-global-currency maximalism. I think we’ll have complete designs for plural money at some point pretty soon) but I have a lot of sympathy for those who cannot embrace it, and they want cooperative bargaining, and if these games give rise to a principled argument for money, they’ll need to play that through themselves and experience it (and so do I).
I think the law of comparative advantage keeps being true even if the other agent is better at all the things than you are (imagine if I can gather one coconut a day or two gallons of water a day, and you can gather ten coconuts a day or five gallons of water a day; I think it’s still worth trading my water for your coconuts?) but stops being true if they’re better at all the things and they can freely copy themselves. So yes, in a full AGI foom, humans are kind of useless. From the perspective of trying to make fun games, any exchange rate offered between other resources and extra turns needs to be very finely calculated and I have never managed to tune that in a way that was fun for everyone.
Testing new economic reforms and studying what happens with AGI seems quite in scope for cohabitive games, including the part where sometimes the stable balance point is with some players getting pushed off the board entirely. I’ve found playing around in this space to be a good intuition pump for how pushing players off the board isn’t necessarily the result of malicious intent or a goal to destroy others, but instead an instrumental preference for wanting the resources they’re using. For my own designs, one of the things I want is a way to play around with and internalize how complex economies and supply chains work faster than spending ten years working in the manufacturing and logistics field.
I think understanding economics and industrial growth often fails in competitive and cooperative games, or worse, works but gives a needlessly competitive or cooperative view towards economies. It’s very relevant to how I negotiate with my boss at a 9-5 standard job that I’m not trying to win by having more money at the end of ten turns, and also that me and the boss don’t collectively win by adding our incomes together at the end of the game. That kind of negotiation, where it’s positive sum but both of us want to capture as much of the gains as we can, seems pretty niche in non-cohabitive games.
I’ve mostly tried to avoid having (fake) money as a unit-of-account or medium-of-exchange, mostly because its lack seems to get people thinking about the use of resources like coconuts or water. Once trading is happening, the usefulness of a medium-of-exchange and the limitations imposed by barter seem to become obvious to me, but nobody I’ve played with spontaneously pointed out a medium-of-exchange would be useful here. (The usefulness I keep seeing is facilitating four way trades with at least four other resources, e.g. coconuts for water for wood planks for cloth.)
I think the law of comparative advantage keeps being true even if the other agent is better at all the things than you are
Probably, the part that stops being true is the assumption of non-aggression. With humans, damaging a human or even their culture or ego will generally make them far less valuable as a trading partner. But as soon as there are ways for one agent to use the materials of a human to make something more valuable, expect more aggression.
It’s noteworthy that the law of comparative advantage stops being true exactly at the moment we figure out how to make something that’s generally better at the work of humans (strictly, it would have to have better manufacturing and running costs than a human too, but you know it wont be long after AGI before we reach that point)
It would be very easy for a game designer who lived only in the human era to omit this additional factor of violence that we can infer would be present in post-human economies, but I think we should study it.
Oppression might not be very different though.
Mm, that’s neat, right. You only get (immediate) stable pluralism if defense > attack, or if there are diminishing returns to scale. (I think you get a new pluralism later on when the victor develops deep internal specializations but that’s less relevant to present day meatbags)
I was going to say, economics (and so, necessarily, industrial growth as well?) is a great subject for games in this genre, because then you can use these games to test economic reforms.
If that’s the object of study, then I think it might be fine to just contrive pluralism? Human governments contrive pluralism, because humans/human cultures value survival over the prospect of growth (if we can trade the possibility of attaining global domination for the guarantee of security/survival, we will make that trade, and most of the free world explicitly did).
For my games, the object of study is lower down, cooperative bargaining, the art of cohabitation sole. I want games to at least start without the assumption of the existence of money. I can’t really easily explain why we have money in the same way I could explain why we maximize EV, I’m not sure I’ll be able to present a clear principled argument for money unless money emerges within the game from pre-money conditions. I’m personally fairly comfortable with the existence of money (though very doubtful of single-global-currency maximalism. I think we’ll have complete designs for plural money at some point pretty soon) but I have a lot of sympathy for those who cannot embrace it, and they want cooperative bargaining, and if these games give rise to a principled argument for money, they’ll need to play that through themselves and experience it (and so do I).
I think the law of comparative advantage keeps being true even if the other agent is better at all the things than you are (imagine if I can gather one coconut a day or two gallons of water a day, and you can gather ten coconuts a day or five gallons of water a day; I think it’s still worth trading my water for your coconuts?) but stops being true if they’re better at all the things and they can freely copy themselves. So yes, in a full AGI foom, humans are kind of useless. From the perspective of trying to make fun games, any exchange rate offered between other resources and extra turns needs to be very finely calculated and I have never managed to tune that in a way that was fun for everyone.
Testing new economic reforms and studying what happens with AGI seems quite in scope for cohabitive games, including the part where sometimes the stable balance point is with some players getting pushed off the board entirely. I’ve found playing around in this space to be a good intuition pump for how pushing players off the board isn’t necessarily the result of malicious intent or a goal to destroy others, but instead an instrumental preference for wanting the resources they’re using. For my own designs, one of the things I want is a way to play around with and internalize how complex economies and supply chains work faster than spending ten years working in the manufacturing and logistics field.
I think understanding economics and industrial growth often fails in competitive and cooperative games, or worse, works but gives a needlessly competitive or cooperative view towards economies. It’s very relevant to how I negotiate with my boss at a 9-5 standard job that I’m not trying to win by having more money at the end of ten turns, and also that me and the boss don’t collectively win by adding our incomes together at the end of the game. That kind of negotiation, where it’s positive sum but both of us want to capture as much of the gains as we can, seems pretty niche in non-cohabitive games.
I’ve mostly tried to avoid having (fake) money as a unit-of-account or medium-of-exchange, mostly because its lack seems to get people thinking about the use of resources like coconuts or water. Once trading is happening, the usefulness of a medium-of-exchange and the limitations imposed by barter seem to become obvious to me, but nobody I’ve played with spontaneously pointed out a medium-of-exchange would be useful here. (The usefulness I keep seeing is facilitating four way trades with at least four other resources, e.g. coconuts for water for wood planks for cloth.)
Probably, the part that stops being true is the assumption of non-aggression. With humans, damaging a human or even their culture or ego will generally make them far less valuable as a trading partner. But as soon as there are ways for one agent to use the materials of a human to make something more valuable, expect more aggression.