One fairly strong disagreement I have with the simulacrum frame is the implication that the stages come in order. Using words like “corrupted”, and that performing certain actions moves you from level 1-to-2 or 2-to-3, implies (to my mind) a misleading model.
I think it’s most likely that the various levels co-evolved. I could imagine level 4 coming much later than level 3, since 4 requires a bit of sophistication, but level 3 seems like it probably existed for thousands of years, at least.
I think if you’re in a reasonably object-level environment where you have to do-things-on-purpose with your brain to survive and flourish, you’re probably living in a mixed level 2-3 world.
(I also think blatant lying about nontrivial things, conscious or unconscious, usually just isn’t effective, so it’s more like you’re living in a mixed level 1 and 3 world. [I’m less confident about that though]. Or at least, that’s how the concepts in this particular post seem – in some other posts where Benquo illustrated level 2 in somewhat different contexts, it had a different feel to me)
I think there are certain environments and domains where level 1 wins, because it’s actually just the dominating strategy.
So the framework that I look at this all through is:
How can we construct environments where level 1 dominates (and then you don’t have to really enforce anything because the environment just causes you to do level 1 automatically). Such an environment probably needs to have strong barrier to entry.
How do we negotiate a safe transition from level 4 to level 3, or level 3 to level 1, in situations where you can’t construct such an environment? Such a transition actually needs to take into account that you still need to defend yourself against level 2 threats.
The metaphor that feels comparable to me is “the status quo is a zombie apocalypse or wild west town, where everyone’s got guns, “everyone knows” that mostly the strong and ruthless survive so that you can’t easily trust people you meet on the road, and somehow in this hostile world you need to bootstrap cooperation and civilization.
Cooperation has the benefit of typically being win/win so it’s a stable equilibrium if you can get to it, but that doesn’t mean unilaterally switching to a new set of norms. It requires building common knowledge of a new set of norms that will actually be locally advantageous to switch to.
In the metaphor, this would involve:
Starting with clear protocols to costly signal trust to each other (when meeting people on the road)
Having strong barriers to entry to particular towns that allow people to significantly relax and not carry weapons around all the time, and focus on things other than self defense.
I’m still working out my conceptions of what this non-metaphorically means.
One fairly strong disagreement I have with the simulacrum frame is the implication that the stages come in order. Using words like “corrupted”, and that performing certain actions moves you from level 1-to-2 or 2-to-3, implies (to my mind) a misleading model.
I think it’s most likely that the various levels co-evolved. I could imagine level 4 coming much later than level 3, since 4 requires a bit of sophistication, but level 3 seems like it probably existed for thousands of years, at least.
I think if you’re in a reasonably object-level environment where you have to do-things-on-purpose with your brain to survive and flourish, you’re probably living in a mixed level 2-3 world.
(I also think blatant lying about nontrivial things, conscious or unconscious, usually just isn’t effective, so it’s more like you’re living in a mixed level 1 and 3 world. [I’m less confident about that though]. Or at least, that’s how the concepts in this particular post seem – in some other posts where Benquo illustrated level 2 in somewhat different contexts, it had a different feel to me)
I think there are certain environments and domains where level 1 wins, because it’s actually just the dominating strategy.
So the framework that I look at this all through is:
How can we construct environments where level 1 dominates (and then you don’t have to really enforce anything because the environment just causes you to do level 1 automatically). Such an environment probably needs to have strong barrier to entry.
How do we negotiate a safe transition from level 4 to level 3, or level 3 to level 1, in situations where you can’t construct such an environment? Such a transition actually needs to take into account that you still need to defend yourself against level 2 threats.
The metaphor that feels comparable to me is “the status quo is a zombie apocalypse or wild west town, where everyone’s got guns, “everyone knows” that mostly the strong and ruthless survive so that you can’t easily trust people you meet on the road, and somehow in this hostile world you need to bootstrap cooperation and civilization.
Cooperation has the benefit of typically being win/win so it’s a stable equilibrium if you can get to it, but that doesn’t mean unilaterally switching to a new set of norms. It requires building common knowledge of a new set of norms that will actually be locally advantageous to switch to.
In the metaphor, this would involve:
Starting with clear protocols to costly signal trust to each other (when meeting people on the road)
Having strong barriers to entry to particular towns that allow people to significantly relax and not carry weapons around all the time, and focus on things other than self defense.
I’m still working out my conceptions of what this non-metaphorically means.