Failure mode: When B-cultured entities invest in “having more influence”, often the easiest way to do this will be for them to invest in or copy A’-cultured-entities/processes. This increases the total presence of A’-like processes in the world, which have many opportunities to coordinate because of their shared (power-maximizing) values. Moreover, the A’ culture has an incentive to trick the B culture(s) into thinking A’ will not take over the world, but eventually, A’ wins.
I’m wondering why the easiest way is to copy A’—why was A’ better at acquiring influence in the first place, so that copying them or investing in them is a dominant strategy? I think I agree that once you’re at that point, A’ has an advantage.
In other words, the humans and human-aligned institutions not collectively being good enough at cooperation/bargaining risks a slow slipping-away of hard-to-express values and an easy takeover of simple-to-express values (e.g., power-maximization).
This doesn’t feel like other words to me, it feels like a totally different claim.
Thanks for noticing whatever you think are the inconsistencies; if you have time, I’d love for you to point them out.
In the production web story it sounds like the web is made out of different firms competing for profit and influence with each other, rather than a set of firms that are willing to leave profit on the table to benefit one another since they all share the value of maximizing production. For example, you talk about how selection drives this dynamic, but the firm that succeed are those that maximize their own profits and influence (not those that are willing to leave profit on the table to benefit other firms).
So none of the concrete examples of Wei Dai’s economies of scale seem to actually seem to apply to give an advantage for the profit-maximizers in the production web. For example, natural monopolies in the production web wouldn’t charge each other marginal costs, they would charge profit-maximizing profits. And they won’t share infrastructure investments except by solving exactly the same bargaining problem as any other agents (since a firm that indiscriminately shared its infrastructure would get outcompeted). And so on.
Specifically, the subprocesses of each culture that are in charge of production-maximization end up cooperating really well with each other in a way that ends up collectively overwhelming the original (human) cultures.
This seems like a core claim (certainly if you are envisioning a scenario like the one Wei Dai describes), but I don’t yet understand why this happens.
Suppose that the US and China both both have productive widget-industries. You seem to be saying that their widget-industries can coordinate with each other to create lots of widgets, and they will do this more effectively than the US and China can coordinate with each other.
Could you give some concrete example of how the US widget industry and the Chinese widget industries coordinate with each other to make more widgets, and why this behavior is selected?
For example, you might think that the Chinese and US widget industry share their insights into how to make widgets (as the aligned actors do in Wei Dai’s story), and that this will cause widget-making to do better than other non-widget sectors where such coordination is not possible. But I don’t see why they would do that—the US firms that share their insights freely with Chinese firms do worse, and would be selected against in every relevant sense, relative to firms that attempt to effectively monetize their insights. But effectively monetizing their insights is exactly what the US widget industry should do in order to benefit the US. So I see no reason why the widget industry would be more prone to sharing its insights
So I don’t think that particular example works. I’m looking for an example of that form though, some concrete form of cooperation that the production-maximization subprocesses might engage in that allows them to overwhelm the original cultures, to give some indication for why you think this will happen in general.
> Failure mode: When B-cultured entities invest in “having more influence”, often the easiest way to do this will be for them to invest in or copy A’-cultured-entities/processes. This increases the total presence of A’-like processes in the world, which have many opportunities to coordinate because of their shared (power-maximizing) values. Moreover, the A’ culture has an incentive to trick the B culture(s) into thinking A’ will not take over the world, but eventually, A’ wins.
> In other words, the humans and human-aligned institutions not collectively being good enough at cooperation/bargaining risks a slow slipping-away of hard-to-express values and an easy takeover of simple-to-express values (e.g., power-maximization).
This doesn’t feel like other words to me, it feels like a totally different claim.
Hmm, perhaps this is indicative of a key misunderstanding.
For example, natural monopolies in the production web wouldn’t charge each other marginal costs, they would charge profit-maximizing profits.
Why not? The third paragraph of the story indicates that: “Companies closer to becoming fully automated achieve faster turnaround times, deal bandwidth, and creativity of negotiations.” In other words, at that point it could certainly happen that two monopolies would agree to charge each other lower cost if it benefitted both of them. (Unless you’d count that as instance of “charging profit-maximizing costs”?) The concern is that the subprocesses of each company/institution that get good at (or succeed at) bargaining with other institutions are subprocesses that (by virtue of being selected for speed and simplicity) are less aligned with human existence than the original overall company/institution, and that less-aligned subprocess grows to take over the institution, while always taking actions that are “good” for the host institution when viewed as a unilateral move in an uncoordinated game (hence passing as “aligned”).
At this point, my plan is try to consolidate what I think the are main confusions in the comments of this post, into one or more new concepts to form the topic of a new post.
At this point, my plan is try to consolidate what I think the are main confusions in the comments of this post, into one or more new concepts to form the topic of a new post.
Sounds great! I was thinking myself about setting aside some time to write a summary of this comment section (as I see it).
I’m wondering why the easiest way is to copy A’—why was A’ better at acquiring influence in the first place, so that copying them or investing in them is a dominant strategy? I think I agree that once you’re at that point, A’ has an advantage.
This doesn’t feel like other words to me, it feels like a totally different claim.
In the production web story it sounds like the web is made out of different firms competing for profit and influence with each other, rather than a set of firms that are willing to leave profit on the table to benefit one another since they all share the value of maximizing production. For example, you talk about how selection drives this dynamic, but the firm that succeed are those that maximize their own profits and influence (not those that are willing to leave profit on the table to benefit other firms).
So none of the concrete examples of Wei Dai’s economies of scale seem to actually seem to apply to give an advantage for the profit-maximizers in the production web. For example, natural monopolies in the production web wouldn’t charge each other marginal costs, they would charge profit-maximizing profits. And they won’t share infrastructure investments except by solving exactly the same bargaining problem as any other agents (since a firm that indiscriminately shared its infrastructure would get outcompeted). And so on.
This seems like a core claim (certainly if you are envisioning a scenario like the one Wei Dai describes), but I don’t yet understand why this happens.
Suppose that the US and China both both have productive widget-industries. You seem to be saying that their widget-industries can coordinate with each other to create lots of widgets, and they will do this more effectively than the US and China can coordinate with each other.
Could you give some concrete example of how the US widget industry and the Chinese widget industries coordinate with each other to make more widgets, and why this behavior is selected?
For example, you might think that the Chinese and US widget industry share their insights into how to make widgets (as the aligned actors do in Wei Dai’s story), and that this will cause widget-making to do better than other non-widget sectors where such coordination is not possible. But I don’t see why they would do that—the US firms that share their insights freely with Chinese firms do worse, and would be selected against in every relevant sense, relative to firms that attempt to effectively monetize their insights. But effectively monetizing their insights is exactly what the US widget industry should do in order to benefit the US. So I see no reason why the widget industry would be more prone to sharing its insights
So I don’t think that particular example works. I’m looking for an example of that form though, some concrete form of cooperation that the production-maximization subprocesses might engage in that allows them to overwhelm the original cultures, to give some indication for why you think this will happen in general.
Hmm, perhaps this is indicative of a key misunderstanding.
Why not? The third paragraph of the story indicates that: “Companies closer to becoming fully automated achieve faster turnaround times, deal bandwidth, and creativity of negotiations.” In other words, at that point it could certainly happen that two monopolies would agree to charge each other lower cost if it benefitted both of them. (Unless you’d count that as instance of “charging profit-maximizing costs”?) The concern is that the subprocesses of each company/institution that get good at (or succeed at) bargaining with other institutions are subprocesses that (by virtue of being selected for speed and simplicity) are less aligned with human existence than the original overall company/institution, and that less-aligned subprocess grows to take over the institution, while always taking actions that are “good” for the host institution when viewed as a unilateral move in an uncoordinated game (hence passing as “aligned”).
At this point, my plan is try to consolidate what I think the are main confusions in the comments of this post, into one or more new concepts to form the topic of a new post.
Sounds great! I was thinking myself about setting aside some time to write a summary of this comment section (as I see it).