People in a city switch from using cars to using other forms of transport.
Switching from worse dating sites to something better.
People in a group house switching from defecting on cleaning the house out of expectation others won’t help clean, to one in which everyone starts cleaning because they expect others to cooperate in cleaning.
Buying or renting an otherwise too-expensive property.
Switching from the Multiplayer Game That Everyone Is Playing to a Better Multiplayer Game.
Switching to a new religion from Christianity.
Accountability contracts—“I’ll engage in habit X if Y other people are also engaging in Habit X conditional on Y other people engaging in Habit X”
“I’ll stop making political posts if >75% of my friends also agree to stop making political posts”, “I’ll stop making memes if 1000 other people also agree to stop making them”.
Recruiting people to make world record attempts that involve large numbers of people, where it’s not worth marginally joining if that doesn’t look likely and therefore it doesn’t get off the ground.
Recruiting people to do things that would otherwise result in the police arresting them if there were a smaller amount of people, e.g. 1 million people using psychedelics as a protest in Washington D.C.
People attending events in general! Many events don’t have a critical mass to seem worthy of joining on the margin.
Starting an exercise circle if there are 5 other people to also start it with.
Going through a course of study if there are 10 other people to also study it with.
Switching people from Bitcoin to whatever is better (how would people decide that?).
Meta: sufficient amount of people coordinating to use the same Kickstarter for Inadequate Equilibria. (I’m sorry)
“I’ll stop making political posts if >75% of my friends also agree to stop making political posts”
So, one of the things that might be tricky about a tool, where people make commitments of the form “I’ll do X if Y% of people do X” is that there can be more than one fixed point. Adding the “friends” constraint adds a graph theory aspect to it. (And makes it sound like the product is going to need to be like Facebook.)
People at Location X and Y move to Location Z.
People in a city switch from using cars to using other forms of transport.
Switching from worse dating sites to something better.
People in a group house switching from defecting on cleaning the house out of expectation others won’t help clean, to one in which everyone starts cleaning because they expect others to cooperate in cleaning.
Buying or renting an otherwise too-expensive property.
Switching from the Multiplayer Game That Everyone Is Playing to a Better Multiplayer Game.
Switching to a new religion from Christianity.
Accountability contracts—“I’ll engage in habit X if Y other people are also engaging in Habit X conditional on Y other people engaging in Habit X”
“I’ll stop making political posts if >75% of my friends also agree to stop making political posts”, “I’ll stop making memes if 1000 other people also agree to stop making them”.
Recruiting people to make world record attempts that involve large numbers of people, where it’s not worth marginally joining if that doesn’t look likely and therefore it doesn’t get off the ground.
Recruiting people to do things that would otherwise result in the police arresting them if there were a smaller amount of people, e.g. 1 million people using psychedelics as a protest in Washington D.C.
People attending events in general! Many events don’t have a critical mass to seem worthy of joining on the margin.
Starting an exercise circle if there are 5 other people to also start it with.
Going through a course of study if there are 10 other people to also study it with.
Switching people from Bitcoin to whatever is better (how would people decide that?).
Meta: sufficient amount of people coordinating to use the same Kickstarter for Inadequate Equilibria. (I’m sorry)
I can write more specific examples upon request.
So, one of the things that might be tricky about a tool, where people make commitments of the form “I’ll do X if Y% of people do X” is that there can be more than one fixed point. Adding the “friends” constraint adds a graph theory aspect to it. (And makes it sound like the product is going to need to be like Facebook.)
Yeah… that’s the ironic tragedy, huh?