One of the things that originally bothered me about this post is that it treated system shocks as outside-the-systems as opposed to as selection pressures in a yet bigger system that would move towards a state of Molochian competition. I thought to myself, This is missing the point, Moloch is still winning—just on a longer time-scale. Then I read this for the third time:
The practical danger to this system, that is on the rise now, is the temptation to not let this cycling happen. Preventing the cycle stops short term pain and protects the powerful. In the places things are getting worse or on pace to start getting worse, where Moloch is locally winning, this is a key mechanism.
Now I realize that I was missing the point—because there are actually two different ways that Moloch wins and one of them could happen on a super-fast time-scale (I wonder if this is what Zvi means by “Moloch’s Army”?). Here are the specific mechanisms I have in mind:
#1. The slow, theoretically true way: Elua (an antifragile, high slack, high human-value system) is just what Moloch (a system encompassing all human societies that introduces existential shocks into them) has found to be most competitive. Eventually, Moloch will find a system Elu-nah (ie a society that figured out how to trade-off a lot of human value for more slack) that outcompetes Elua and doom us all.
#2. The super-fast actual thing that could be happening right now: Human beings, for personal reasons completely unrelated to the way that Moloch selects between Elua and other worse societal set-ups like Elu-nah, are actively trying to convert Elua antifragile high-human-value societies into super-antifragile low-human-value Elu-nah societies to preserve their current positions in power. And they use the theoretical justification of #1 to pretend like they’re not responsible.
And distinguishing these two mechanisms is really important. As humans, we can engineer situations where it takes an extremely long time for #1 to happen (ie by designing hard-to-destroy mechanisms that fight potential Elu-nah societies) so it’s really not so bad in the short-term and could potentially turn out okay over extremely long time-frames. In contrast, #2 is something that is happening right now, and could very quickly get us into a permanent Molochian equilibrium which would take #1 millions of years to achieve.
One of the things that originally bothered me about this post is that it treated system shocks as outside-the-systems as opposed to as selection pressures in a yet bigger system that would move towards a state of Molochian competition. I thought to myself, This is missing the point, Moloch is still winning—just on a longer time-scale. Then I read this for the third time:
Now I realize that I was missing the point—because there are actually two different ways that Moloch wins and one of them could happen on a super-fast time-scale (I wonder if this is what Zvi means by “Moloch’s Army”?). Here are the specific mechanisms I have in mind:
#1. The slow, theoretically true way: Elua (an antifragile, high slack, high human-value system) is just what Moloch (a system encompassing all human societies that introduces existential shocks into them) has found to be most competitive. Eventually, Moloch will find a system Elu-nah (ie a society that figured out how to trade-off a lot of human value for more slack) that outcompetes Elua and doom us all.
#2. The super-fast actual thing that could be happening right now: Human beings, for personal reasons completely unrelated to the way that Moloch selects between Elua and other worse societal set-ups like Elu-nah, are actively trying to convert Elua antifragile high-human-value societies into super-antifragile low-human-value Elu-nah societies to preserve their current positions in power. And they use the theoretical justification of #1 to pretend like they’re not responsible.
And distinguishing these two mechanisms is really important. As humans, we can engineer situations where it takes an extremely long time for #1 to happen (ie by designing hard-to-destroy mechanisms that fight potential Elu-nah societies) so it’s really not so bad in the short-term and could potentially turn out okay over extremely long time-frames. In contrast, #2 is something that is happening right now, and could very quickly get us into a permanent Molochian equilibrium which would take #1 millions of years to achieve.