I should note that I’m not very confident about the strategy here. (I’m speaking in stereotypical more-confident-than-I-have-right-to-be-rationalist-voice that gets criticized sometimes. But I’m, like, less than 50% confident of any of my claims here. This whole model has the pluratity but not majority of my confidence)
I think there are probably ways to build a pocket of power and trustworthiness, which does get absorbed by powerful empires which rise and fall around it, and doesn’t lose it’s soul in the absorption process. Rather than try and compete with empires on their own terms, make sure you either look uninteresting or illegible to empires, or build good relationships with them so you get to keep surviving. (Hmm. The illegible strategy maps to the Roma, the good-relationship strategy maps to the Amish?)
Then, slowly expand. Optimize for lasting longer than empires at the expense of power. Maybe you incrementally gain illegible power and eventually get to win on the global scale. I think this would work fine if you don’t have important time-sensitive goals on the global scale.
I think there are probably ways to build a pocket of power and trustworthiness, which does get absorbed by powerful empires which rise and fall around it, and doesn’t lose it’s soul in the absorption process. Rather than try and compete with empires on their own terms, make sure you either look uninteresting or illegible to empires, or build good relationships with them so you get to keep surviving. (Hmm. The illegible strategy maps to the Roma, the good-relationship strategy maps to the Amish?)
I’ll add Israelites / Jews to the list here. Not the same kinds of good relations as the Amish—we’re more of a target—but we seem to be able to survive in many more, varied political environments, and with a different kind of long-run ambition—and we’ve been around for longer.
Getting conquered and exiled by the Babylonians precipitated a rapid change in strategies from territorial integrity around a central physical cultic site, to memetic integrity oriented around a set of texts. This hasty transition worked well enough that when the Persians conquered the Babylonian empire, Jews were able to play court politics well enough to (a) avoid getting murdered for retaining a group identity, (b) return to their original territory, and (c) get permission to rebuild their physical cultic site, all without having to fight at a scale that could take on the empire.
By the time of the Roman exile, the portable cultural tech had been improved enough to sustain something recognizable for multiple millennia, though the pace of progress also slowed by quite a lot.
There was also a prior transition from having almost exclusively nonhierarchical distributed governance, to having a king, also partially in response to external pressure.
I agree with the strategy in this comment, for some notions of “absorbed”; being absorbed territorially or economically might be fine, but being absorbed culturally/intellectually probably isn’t. Illegibility and good relationships seem like the most useful approaches.
Nod. In modern times, I’d consider a relevant strategy is “how to get your company purchased by a larger company in a way that lets your company mostly get to keep doing what it’s doing.”
Then, slowly expand. Optimize for lasting longer than empires at the expense of power. Maybe you incrementally gain illegible power and eventually get to win on the global scale. I think this would work fine if you don’t have important time-sensitive goals on the global scale.
I have a stub post about this in drafts, but the sources are directly relevant to this section and talk about underlying mechanisms, so I’ll produce it here:
Accumulation of power, and longevity in power, are largely a matter of keeping options open
In order to keep options as open as possible, commit to as few explicit goals as possible
This conflicts with our goal-orientation
Sacrifice longevity in exchange for explicit goal achievement: be expendable
Longevity is therefore only a condition of accumulation—survive long enough to be able to strike, and then strike
Explicit goal achievement does not inherently conflict with robust action or multivocality, but probably does put even more onus on calculating the goal well beforehand
~~~
Robust action and multivocality are sociological terms. In a nutshell, the former means ‘actions which are very difficult to interfere with’ and the latter means ‘communication which can be interpreted different ways by different audiences’. Also, it’s a pretty good paper in its own right.
I should note that I’m not very confident about the strategy here. (I’m speaking in stereotypical more-confident-than-I-have-right-to-be-rationalist-voice that gets criticized sometimes. But I’m, like, less than 50% confident of any of my claims here. This whole model has the pluratity but not majority of my confidence)
I think there are probably ways to build a pocket of power and trustworthiness, which does get absorbed by powerful empires which rise and fall around it, and doesn’t lose it’s soul in the absorption process. Rather than try and compete with empires on their own terms, make sure you either look uninteresting or illegible to empires, or build good relationships with them so you get to keep surviving. (Hmm. The illegible strategy maps to the Roma, the good-relationship strategy maps to the Amish?)
Then, slowly expand. Optimize for lasting longer than empires at the expense of power. Maybe you incrementally gain illegible power and eventually get to win on the global scale. I think this would work fine if you don’t have important time-sensitive goals on the global scale.
I’ll add Israelites / Jews to the list here. Not the same kinds of good relations as the Amish—we’re more of a target—but we seem to be able to survive in many more, varied political environments, and with a different kind of long-run ambition—and we’ve been around for longer.
Getting conquered and exiled by the Babylonians precipitated a rapid change in strategies from territorial integrity around a central physical cultic site, to memetic integrity oriented around a set of texts. This hasty transition worked well enough that when the Persians conquered the Babylonian empire, Jews were able to play court politics well enough to (a) avoid getting murdered for retaining a group identity, (b) return to their original territory, and (c) get permission to rebuild their physical cultic site, all without having to fight at a scale that could take on the empire.
By the time of the Roman exile, the portable cultural tech had been improved enough to sustain something recognizable for multiple millennia, though the pace of progress also slowed by quite a lot.
There was also a prior transition from having almost exclusively nonhierarchical distributed governance, to having a king, also partially in response to external pressure.
I agree with the strategy in this comment, for some notions of “absorbed”; being absorbed territorially or economically might be fine, but being absorbed culturally/intellectually probably isn’t. Illegibility and good relationships seem like the most useful approaches.
Nod. In modern times, I’d consider a relevant strategy is “how to get your company purchased by a larger company in a way that lets your company mostly get to keep doing what it’s doing.”
Example: Deepmind?
I have a stub post about this in drafts, but the sources are directly relevant to this section and talk about underlying mechanisms, so I’ll produce it here:
~~~
The blog post is: Francisco Franco, Robust Action, and the Power of Non-Commitment
The paper is: Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici
Accumulation of power, and longevity in power, are largely a matter of keeping options open
In order to keep options as open as possible, commit to as few explicit goals as possible
This conflicts with our goal-orientation
Sacrifice longevity in exchange for explicit goal achievement: be expendable
Longevity is therefore only a condition of accumulation—survive long enough to be able to strike, and then strike
Explicit goal achievement does not inherently conflict with robust action or multivocality, but probably does put even more onus on calculating the goal well beforehand
~~~
Robust action and multivocality are sociological terms. In a nutshell, the former means ‘actions which are very difficult to interfere with’ and the latter means ‘communication which can be interpreted different ways by different audiences’. Also, it’s a pretty good paper in its own right.