a Leviathan could try to transcend/straddle these fruits/niches and force them upward into a more Pareto optimal condition, maybe even into the non-Nash E. states if we’re extra lucky.
Remember that old Yudkowsky post about Occam’s Razor, wherein he points out how “a witch did it” sounds super-simple, but the word “witch” hides a ton of hidden complexity? I’m pretty sure you’re doing the same thing here with the word “could”. Instead of trying to picture what an imaginary all-powerful leader could do, imagine what a typical leader would do. You’ve just given a speech to Hillary Clinton about why it’s imperative to decimate the university system for economic reasons, or to Donald Trump about how protectionism is always Pareto-suboptimal. Do they react the way you wish them to act? Does their reaction make you want to give them more forceful power, or less?
For that matter, you don’t have to imagine any speeches—every politician and their staff have access to the same internet you do, and can learn everything about coordination problems and their solutions that you can, and even without totalitarian official power they still have enough of a “bully pulpit” and enough credibility, seriousness, and so on to push the world out of at least the shallowest non-globally-optimal local optima. How many of them are doing so? By contrast, how many of them are deliberately setting up more barriers to such changes?
Remember that old Yudkowsky post about Occam’s Razor, wherein he points out how “a witch did it” sounds super-simple, but the word “witch” hides a ton of hidden complexity? I’m pretty sure you’re doing the same thing here with the word “could”. Instead of trying to picture what an imaginary all-powerful leader could do, imagine what a typical leader would do. You’ve just given a speech to Hillary Clinton about why it’s imperative to decimate the university system for economic reasons, or to Donald Trump about how protectionism is always Pareto-suboptimal. Do they react the way you wish them to act? Does their reaction make you want to give them more forceful power, or less?
For that matter, you don’t have to imagine any speeches—every politician and their staff have access to the same internet you do, and can learn everything about coordination problems and their solutions that you can, and even without totalitarian official power they still have enough of a “bully pulpit” and enough credibility, seriousness, and so on to push the world out of at least the shallowest non-globally-optimal local optima. How many of them are doing so? By contrast, how many of them are deliberately setting up more barriers to such changes?