I have just recently read Meditations on Moloch and I agree it is fascinating post, but also entirely misses the point. Competition does not make you sacrifice your values, that’s how these values came to existence in the first place. There was analogy with rats who came to live in the island and used their spare time to do art, but stopped when resources had depleted. That`s not how story goes. When rats first came to island they did not care about art or any such nonsense, all they did was eat and fuck all day and everyone was happy. But one day, there was no more food to continue to just do that. Only then some rats started to be creative. Turns out if you paint your picture with bigger muscles than you actually have, and you put it on rats-tinder, you get to mate more than if you just posted your real picture. That’s how art came to exist in rats island.
I have just recently read Meditations on Moloch and I agree it is fascinating post, but also entirely misses the point. Competition does not make you sacrifice your values[…]
Scott wasn’t suggesting that competition alone makes people sacrifice their values. He was suggesting (as I understand it) that the following configuration tends to suck for everyone pretty systematically:
You have a bunch of agents who are in competition for some resource.
Each agent is given an opportunity to sacrifice something important to them in order to gain competitive advantage over the other agents.
The agents can’t coordinate about who will or won’t take advantage of this opportunity.
The net effect is generally that agents who accept this trade tend to win out over those who don’t. This incentivizes each agent to make the trade so that they can at least stay in competition.
In particular, this means that even if there’s common knowledge of this whole setup, and there’s common knowledge that it sucks, it’s still the case that no one can do anything about it.
Each agent is given an opportunity to sacrifice something important to them in order to gain competitive advantage over the other agents.
Yes, and what I am asking is why those things are important fot them in the first place? Probably because having these things important gave those agents competetive advantage. Love your children? Thats Moloch wants you to replicate your stomach so you could eat mode baby elephants, than you alone could. You only sacrifice those things that Molach himself has given you.
The way I would put it is that agents evolve to make use of the regularities in the environment. If exploiting those regularities leads to increased success, then competition creates complexity that allows for those regularities to be taken advantage of. Whereas complexity which is no longer useful, either because the regularities no longer exist in the new environment or because there are more powerful regularities to exploit instead, will eventually be eaten away by competition.
Thus it’s true that competition gave us those things originally. But on the other hand, if you’re looking from the perspective of what we have now and want to preserve it, then it’s also fair to say that competition is a threat to it.
Let me put it this way—if this is a problem, you would probably want to solve it? Generally if you want to solve a problem you would prefer it to not have existed in the first place? If yes then you would also not have any of the values you want to save. Considering this, does Moloch still qualifies as a problem?
This is incorrect and I think only sounds like an argument because of the language you’re choosing; there’s nothing incoherent about 1. preferring evolutionary pressures that look like Moloch to exist so that you end up existing rather than not existing, and 2. wanting to solve Moloch-like problems now that you exist.
Also, there’s nothing incoherent about wanting to solve Moloch-like problems now that you exist regardless of Moloch-like things causing you to come into existence. Our values are not evolution’s values, if that even makes sense.
So to again summarise this whole argument: Moloch is a problem, that made you exist and is impossible to solve by definition. So what are you going to do about it? (I suggest trying to answer this to your self at first, only then to me)
I have just recently read Meditations on Moloch and I agree it is fascinating post, but also entirely misses the point. Competition does not make you sacrifice your values, that’s how these values came to existence in the first place. There was analogy with rats who came to live in the island and used their spare time to do art, but stopped when resources had depleted. That`s not how story goes. When rats first came to island they did not care about art or any such nonsense, all they did was eat and fuck all day and everyone was happy. But one day, there was no more food to continue to just do that. Only then some rats started to be creative. Turns out if you paint your picture with bigger muscles than you actually have, and you put it on rats-tinder, you get to mate more than if you just posted your real picture. That’s how art came to exist in rats island.
Scott wasn’t suggesting that competition alone makes people sacrifice their values. He was suggesting (as I understand it) that the following configuration tends to suck for everyone pretty systematically:
You have a bunch of agents who are in competition for some resource.
Each agent is given an opportunity to sacrifice something important to them in order to gain competitive advantage over the other agents.
The agents can’t coordinate about who will or won’t take advantage of this opportunity.
The net effect is generally that agents who accept this trade tend to win out over those who don’t. This incentivizes each agent to make the trade so that they can at least stay in competition.
In particular, this means that even if there’s common knowledge of this whole setup, and there’s common knowledge that it sucks, it’s still the case that no one can do anything about it.
That, personified, is Moloch.
Yes, and what I am asking is why those things are important fot them in the first place? Probably because having these things important gave those agents competetive advantage. Love your children? Thats Moloch wants you to replicate your stomach so you could eat mode baby elephants, than you alone could. You only sacrifice those things that Molach himself has given you.
The way I would put it is that agents evolve to make use of the regularities in the environment. If exploiting those regularities leads to increased success, then competition creates complexity that allows for those regularities to be taken advantage of. Whereas complexity which is no longer useful, either because the regularities no longer exist in the new environment or because there are more powerful regularities to exploit instead, will eventually be eaten away by competition.
Thus it’s true that competition gave us those things originally. But on the other hand, if you’re looking from the perspective of what we have now and want to preserve it, then it’s also fair to say that competition is a threat to it.
We might want to preseve those, but can we? By definition we will be outcompeted by those who do not.
And that problem is exactly what Scott refers to as Moloch.
Let me put it this way—if this is a problem, you would probably want to solve it? Generally if you want to solve a problem you would prefer it to not have existed in the first place? If yes then you would also not have any of the values you want to save. Considering this, does Moloch still qualifies as a problem?
This is incorrect and I think only sounds like an argument because of the language you’re choosing; there’s nothing incoherent about 1. preferring evolutionary pressures that look like Moloch to exist so that you end up existing rather than not existing, and 2. wanting to solve Moloch-like problems now that you exist.
Also, there’s nothing incoherent about wanting to solve Moloch-like problems now that you exist regardless of Moloch-like things causing you to come into existence. Our values are not evolution’s values, if that even makes sense.
So to again summarise this whole argument: Moloch is a problem, that made you exist and is impossible to solve by definition. So what are you going to do about it? (I suggest trying to answer this to your self at first, only then to me)
Yes.