Upvoted for the motion of checking-for-assumptions, although I think my assumptions are a bit different.
This assumes orgs with bounded goals that have big leads can’t use their leads to suppress competition
My assumption is more like ‘that’s already part of the game and factored into the calculus’
I think, when examining global scale actors, most of the actors are there because they have runaway, goodharty goals. Romeostevens summarizes on “why do people become ambitious?” as:
redirection of sex or survival drives get caught up in some sort of stable configuration where they can never be satisfied yet the person doesn’t notice that aspect of the loop and thus keeps Doing the Thing far past the time normal people notice.
While there are also people with bounded goals on the global scale, the runaway unbounded-goal-actors got there first, and are already using their leads to squash competition. So while a bounded actor can do the same, they still have to behave as if they were an unbounded actor in order to get the chance.
I notice that empires, despite their lead, keep declining and falling. This implies that something weird is going on at the global scale. My guess is that empires rise when they have a good inner circle, but that inner circle is eventually lost to entropy – either the King dies and the successor king is slightly less good, or the king dies and there isn’t even a successor king to consider.
This does imply that final victory for the “good guys” has to look like:
1. build an empire that can compete with unbounded powerhungry agents.
2. build a succession tool with no loss to entropy, where the Inner Council always consists of trustworthy people.
3. repeat for literally eternity.
And this actually seems possible… but important to note that success here looks very weird to naive human values, because you don’t get to cash in your victory chips until you are perfectly safe.
Upvoted for the motion of checking-for-assumptions, although I think my assumptions are a bit different.
My assumption is more like ‘that’s already part of the game and factored into the calculus’
I think, when examining global scale actors, most of the actors are there because they have runaway, goodharty goals. Romeostevens summarizes on “why do people become ambitious?” as:
While there are also people with bounded goals on the global scale, the runaway unbounded-goal-actors got there first, and are already using their leads to squash competition. So while a bounded actor can do the same, they still have to behave as if they were an unbounded actor in order to get the chance.
I notice that empires, despite their lead, keep declining and falling. This implies that something weird is going on at the global scale. My guess is that empires rise when they have a good inner circle, but that inner circle is eventually lost to entropy – either the King dies and the successor king is slightly less good, or the king dies and there isn’t even a successor king to consider.
This does imply that final victory for the “good guys” has to look like:
1. build an empire that can compete with unbounded powerhungry agents.
2. build a succession tool with no loss to entropy, where the Inner Council always consists of trustworthy people.
3. repeat for literally eternity.
And this actually seems possible… but important to note that success here looks very weird to naive human values, because you don’t get to cash in your victory chips until you are perfectly safe.