Suppose that different humans have different selection criteria when deciding to share a meme. …
Nowadays, memes can specialize to focus onto tiny subsets of the population.
One difference between ‘the past’ and ‘the present’ that Eliezer doesn’t mention, but which is relevant to the question of selection effects, is to what extent memes are spread by ‘thought leaders’ (who are typically optimizing for multiple things, and have some sense of responsibility) and to what extent memes are spread ‘peer-to-peer.’ Whether this improves or degrades selection on the relevant criteria obviously depends on the incentives involved, but with ‘general reasonableness’ it’s clear to see how a pundit is incentivized to appeal to other pundits (of all camps) whereas a footsoldier is incentivized to appeal to other footsoldiers. (One common point among the base of both left and right appears to be distrust of the party elite, which is often seen as being too willing to cooperate with the other side—imagine how they might react to the party elite of a century ago, before the increased polarization!)
And so, if more and more of the political conversation becomes “signalling on Facebook pages” instead of “editorials in the national paper of record”, it’s clear to see how reasonableness could be modeled less, and thus adopted less.
This reminds me of a book Gang Leader for a Day, where author describes how leaders of various gangs prefer peace, because that means greater profit from selling drugs (when gang members are shooting each other on the streets, customers are afraid to approach), but footsoldiers prefer war, because that is their best opportunity to increase their status.
Perhaps it is similar with politics. Online, people compete for getting closer to some extreme archetype. That is their only way to increase their status. In office, politicians have to cooperate with people having different opinions, and have to make deals with them. Also, online people can be fragmented into thousand groups, each of them intolerant towards the others; but the politician need to be acceptable to a sufficient number of people to get elected.
Before social networks, politics was mostly “rich people’s business”. Now ordinary people can compete against each other by posting “edgy” comments.
PSA: His name is spelled “Eliezer.”
One difference between ‘the past’ and ‘the present’ that Eliezer doesn’t mention, but which is relevant to the question of selection effects, is to what extent memes are spread by ‘thought leaders’ (who are typically optimizing for multiple things, and have some sense of responsibility) and to what extent memes are spread ‘peer-to-peer.’ Whether this improves or degrades selection on the relevant criteria obviously depends on the incentives involved, but with ‘general reasonableness’ it’s clear to see how a pundit is incentivized to appeal to other pundits (of all camps) whereas a footsoldier is incentivized to appeal to other footsoldiers. (One common point among the base of both left and right appears to be distrust of the party elite, which is often seen as being too willing to cooperate with the other side—imagine how they might react to the party elite of a century ago, before the increased polarization!)
And so, if more and more of the political conversation becomes “signalling on Facebook pages” instead of “editorials in the national paper of record”, it’s clear to see how reasonableness could be modeled less, and thus adopted less.
This reminds me of a book Gang Leader for a Day, where author describes how leaders of various gangs prefer peace, because that means greater profit from selling drugs (when gang members are shooting each other on the streets, customers are afraid to approach), but footsoldiers prefer war, because that is their best opportunity to increase their status.
Perhaps it is similar with politics. Online, people compete for getting closer to some extreme archetype. That is their only way to increase their status. In office, politicians have to cooperate with people having different opinions, and have to make deals with them. Also, online people can be fragmented into thousand groups, each of them intolerant towards the others; but the politician need to be acceptable to a sufficient number of people to get elected.
Before social networks, politics was mostly “rich people’s business”. Now ordinary people can compete against each other by posting “edgy” comments.