Scott’s post proves too much. In particular it proves that early multicellular organisms would inevitably revert back to micro-organisms.
Edit: This is a bit too opaque. Scott argues that agents that sacrifice the common good for individual gains in reproduction and survival sill survival will outcompete agents that do not make these sacrifices. However, cells within early multicellular organisms could have done this, yet multicellular organisms nevertheless exist.
I understood it to mean that multicellular organisms don’t maximize the values of their cells, if we would anthropomorphize them.
In other words, in this scenario you are the (potential) cancer. And the system evolves in a way that you either lose your battles (most of the time), or your victory against the system would result in your death anyway. (Because your survival depends on the system in too many ways.)
Look at example 9: cancer. That basically is a multicellular organism reverting back to micro-organisms. And in some sense it’s as depressing as Scott says: billions of years, and evolution still hasn’t figured out an immune system that can reliably put an end to that garbage?
In another sense it’s outright encouraging: billions of years of animals afflicted by cancer, and here we still are, and that wasn’t just good luck. The winning strategy seems to be “group selection”, where we think of organisms as a group of cooperating cells. Cancer may eventually take my group of cells down, but if by the time that happens there’s two or three independent groups running around preserving many of the same values (in this case genes, memes, etc) as my group had, those values live on.
In a third sense it’s much more depressing. Scott’s only identified solution category is to prevent runaway competition from destroying our values by governing all that competition with a singleton: a single agent or coordinated group so powerful as to be able to squelch any outsider or subgroup’s attempt to subvert human values, even if that villain is specifically making itself as effective as possible by sacrificing those values on the altar of efficiency. But in the cancer analogy, this is the sort of idea that would have ended up with the death of all multicellular life: even if a single megaorganism might be vastly better than run-of-the-mill organisms at defeating cancer (better immune systems via economies of scale, less energy wasted in zero-sum games against competing organisms, whatever), it only needs to lose once and it’s lost for all time. Back outside the analogy, either Scott makes his singleton perfectly stable, or it gets replaced by whatever manages to subvert it, and now whatever managed to subvert it is a singleton. FAI slips up and we get a universe tiled with smiley faces. Archipelago slips up and we get a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Cancer may eventually take my group of cells down, but if by the time that happens there’s two or three independent groups running around preserving many of the same values (in this case genes, memes, etc) as my group had, those values live on.
This opens up a different means of stopping societal cancers—closed borders. Prevent the infections from spreading to all of civilization.
This is true, at least loosely speaking. I’m not sure why you were downvoted. Inducting from “nothing has ever permanently won” to “nothing ever will” would be overconfident, but noticing that nothing has ever permanently won and examining the reasons why might be very instructive.
Even bacteria? The specific genome that caused the black death is potentially extinct but Yersinia pestis is still around. Divine agents of Moloch if I ever saw one.
Its primary hosts are doing great. And it’s got nothing on bacillus subtilis or whatever that cyanobacteria with hundreds of billions per cubic meter of seawater is. And even those haven’t ‘won’ in the sense that sometimes gets discussed around here. They’re one form among many. Even bacteria are not the main primary producers in all environments—the land-plants take that up over a third of the earth’s surface (in a constantly shifting ecological arrangement with other things).
Scott’s post proves too much. In particular it proves that early multicellular organisms would inevitably revert back to micro-organisms.
Edit: This is a bit too opaque. Scott argues that agents that sacrifice the common good for individual gains in reproduction and survival sill survival will outcompete agents that do not make these sacrifices. However, cells within early multicellular organisms could have done this, yet multicellular organisms nevertheless exist.
I understood it to mean that multicellular organisms don’t maximize the values of their cells, if we would anthropomorphize them.
In other words, in this scenario you are the (potential) cancer. And the system evolves in a way that you either lose your battles (most of the time), or your victory against the system would result in your death anyway. (Because your survival depends on the system in too many ways.)
Look at example 9: cancer. That basically is a multicellular organism reverting back to micro-organisms. And in some sense it’s as depressing as Scott says: billions of years, and evolution still hasn’t figured out an immune system that can reliably put an end to that garbage?
In another sense it’s outright encouraging: billions of years of animals afflicted by cancer, and here we still are, and that wasn’t just good luck. The winning strategy seems to be “group selection”, where we think of organisms as a group of cooperating cells. Cancer may eventually take my group of cells down, but if by the time that happens there’s two or three independent groups running around preserving many of the same values (in this case genes, memes, etc) as my group had, those values live on.
In a third sense it’s much more depressing. Scott’s only identified solution category is to prevent runaway competition from destroying our values by governing all that competition with a singleton: a single agent or coordinated group so powerful as to be able to squelch any outsider or subgroup’s attempt to subvert human values, even if that villain is specifically making itself as effective as possible by sacrificing those values on the altar of efficiency. But in the cancer analogy, this is the sort of idea that would have ended up with the death of all multicellular life: even if a single megaorganism might be vastly better than run-of-the-mill organisms at defeating cancer (better immune systems via economies of scale, less energy wasted in zero-sum games against competing organisms, whatever), it only needs to lose once and it’s lost for all time. Back outside the analogy, either Scott makes his singleton perfectly stable, or it gets replaced by whatever manages to subvert it, and now whatever managed to subvert it is a singleton. FAI slips up and we get a universe tiled with smiley faces. Archipelago slips up and we get a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Very good points:
This opens up a different means of stopping societal cancers—closed borders. Prevent the infections from spreading to all of civilization.
Additionally, if the history of life on Earth should show you anything its that nothing ever ‘wins’.
This is true, at least loosely speaking. I’m not sure why you were downvoted. Inducting from “nothing has ever permanently won” to “nothing ever will” would be overconfident, but noticing that nothing has ever permanently won and examining the reasons why might be very instructive.
Even bacteria? The specific genome that caused the black death is potentially extinct but Yersinia pestis is still around. Divine agents of Moloch if I ever saw one.
Its primary hosts are doing great. And it’s got nothing on bacillus subtilis or whatever that cyanobacteria with hundreds of billions per cubic meter of seawater is. And even those haven’t ‘won’ in the sense that sometimes gets discussed around here. They’re one form among many. Even bacteria are not the main primary producers in all environments—the land-plants take that up over a third of the earth’s surface (in a constantly shifting ecological arrangement with other things).