Thanks for your recommendations, I look forward to reading them all.
I’m aligned with your thinking about the growth of positive-sum games (it’s the premise of the site where my posts originate). I was interested that you believe that zero-sum games will return “due to the laws of physics”. What do you think is going to change about physics to reverse the trend towards positive-sum games? We live in a planet with surplus free energy (from the sun, which makes positive-sum systems from life to civilisation possible), so I’m not sure why we would expect (while that fuel source exists) for the positive-sum results of that surplus to change.
Perhaps you’re making a Malthusian prediction based on limited resources here on earth?
Perhaps you’re making a Malthusian prediction based limited resources?
Kind of.
More specifically, assuming we can’t cheat and circumvent the problem of the laws of thermodynamics/speed of light (which I put 50% probability on at this point, I have been convinced by Adam Brown that this might be cheatable in the far future), then at a global scale, energy, which is the foundation of all utility, is conserved globally, meaning that a global scale, everything must be a 0-sum game, because if it wasn’t, you could use this as a way to break the first law of thermodynamics.
This also means that the engine of progress which made basically everything positive sum vanishes, and while I expect more positive sum games than the pre-industrial times, due to being able to cooperate better, the universally positive-sum era of the last few centuries would have to end.
… at a global scale, energy, which is the foundation of all utility, is conserved globally, meaning that a global scale, everything must be a 0-sum game.
If this were the case, there would be no life on earth. The “engine of progress which made basically everything positive sum” is the sun. The sun provides a constant stream of energy and will continue to do so for billions of years. So, “at a global scale” the system is positive-sum, not zero-sum, no breaking of the first law of thermodynamics required. While the total energy on earth remains constant that is because we dissipate heat through entropy. The fact that we take in energy (order) and dissipate heat (disorder) is a byproduct of global “work” which can continually take place as long as the sun survives.
It seems very strange to make arguments referencing the laws of thermodynamics to explain the specifics of civilisation without recognising the role of the sun. Sorry to seem argumentative, I really think you’re mistaken on this point.
I was implicitly assuming a closed system here, to be clear.
The trick that makes the game locally positive sum is that the earth isn’t a closed system relative to the sun, and when I said globally I was referring to the entire accessible universe.
Thinking about that though, I now think this is way less relevant except on extremely long timescales, but the future may be dominated by very long-term people, so this does matter again.
Thanks for your recommendations, I look forward to reading them all.
I’m aligned with your thinking about the growth of positive-sum games (it’s the premise of the site where my posts originate). I was interested that you believe that zero-sum games will return “due to the laws of physics”. What do you think is going to change about physics to reverse the trend towards positive-sum games? We live in a planet with surplus free energy (from the sun, which makes positive-sum systems from life to civilisation possible), so I’m not sure why we would expect (while that fuel source exists) for the positive-sum results of that surplus to change.
Perhaps you’re making a Malthusian prediction based on limited resources here on earth?
Kind of.
More specifically, assuming we can’t cheat and circumvent the problem of the laws of thermodynamics/speed of light (which I put 50% probability on at this point, I have been convinced by Adam Brown that this might be cheatable in the far future), then at a global scale, energy, which is the foundation of all utility, is conserved globally, meaning that a global scale, everything must be a 0-sum game, because if it wasn’t, you could use this as a way to break the first law of thermodynamics.
This also means that the engine of progress which made basically everything positive sum vanishes, and while I expect more positive sum games than the pre-industrial times, due to being able to cooperate better, the universally positive-sum era of the last few centuries would have to end.
Adam Brown on changing the laws of physics below:
https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/adam-brown
If this were the case, there would be no life on earth. The “engine of progress which made basically everything positive sum” is the sun. The sun provides a constant stream of energy and will continue to do so for billions of years. So, “at a global scale” the system is positive-sum, not zero-sum, no breaking of the first law of thermodynamics required. While the total energy on earth remains constant that is because we dissipate heat through entropy. The fact that we take in energy (order) and dissipate heat (disorder) is a byproduct of global “work” which can continually take place as long as the sun survives.
It seems very strange to make arguments referencing the laws of thermodynamics to explain the specifics of civilisation without recognising the role of the sun. Sorry to seem argumentative, I really think you’re mistaken on this point.
I was implicitly assuming a closed system here, to be clear.
The trick that makes the game locally positive sum is that the earth isn’t a closed system relative to the sun, and when I said globally I was referring to the entire accessible universe.
Thinking about that though, I now think this is way less relevant except on extremely long timescales, but the future may be dominated by very long-term people, so this does matter again.