I always think it's interesting when I read these stories. No matter how bad it gets. No matter how many red flags are raised no one is going to do a single thing. Our governments are completely failing us by doing nothing useful.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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I'd guess it's largely just a consequence of the Tragedy of the Commons. My favorite example demonstrating the effect I read in Meditations on Moloch:
The Fish Farming Story
As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.
But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.
A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.
But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.
Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.
Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.”
Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit…
A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.
Until it's more profitable to do the right thing it's likely we'll continue doing nothing, if not outright exacerbating things, just so we can get ours before it's all gone.
The example is pretty standard, but I feel obligated to caution people about the author (just because he's linked to here and some unassuming people might dive in).
Scott Alexander falls loosely under the TESCREAL umbrella of ideologies. Even in this article, he ends up concluding the only way out is to build a superintelligent AI to govern us... which is like the least productive, if not counterproductive, approach to solving the problem. He's just another technoptimist shunting problems onto future technologies that may or may not exist.
So, yeah, if anyone decides they want to read more of his stuff, make sure to go in informed / having read critiques of TESCREALism.
Building a super intelligent AI sounds soooo much more difficult than breaking one of mikes fingers every month he goes without the filter.
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I wish your parents had been part of that gang. Then I wouldn't have to read your inane comments.
It’s just a joke, buddy.
I'm not your buddy, pal!
I’m not your pal, friend-o!
I'm not you friend-o, chief!