"skyscrapers literally miles high" - this sounds awful!
"trees that have been bioengineered to light the streets" - so does this!
"people who are eternally youthful and disease-free" . . .
If I could be eternally youthful and disease-free, that would be great, I think. But if everyone were eternally youthful and disease-free the human population would rapidly grow to a point where what is left of the natural world would be wiped out. Then what? Soylent Green? No thanks.
I'm glad I'm not living in the world you want to build. The god of sterility and lifelessness can't also be the god of lack of technology. Sterility and lifelessness is what technology does - weedkillers and chainsaws and concrete and plastic grass.
Lack of technology is perhaps the best example of lack of coordination. Why isn’t our science better (eg why don’t we have RT superconductors?). One big reason is we haven’t put that much effort into it. We spend more on apps. Why don’t we put effort into it? One major reason: the value would be largely captured by other people, including mostly future people.
It’s really hard to coordinate with those future people because it’s hard for them to send value to us (I think?). So we rely on relatively weak motivations like love of Truth and love of our descendants.
You had me at least somewhat sympathetic to your perspective until you said that Vegas was a good thing actually, which reminded me that I find extreme libertarianism highly untrustworthy both in terms of plausibility judgements and value judgements.
Ideally? 0 copies (in the world) of Vegas as it is. That is, 0 cities whose business model fundamentally relies on preying* on a vulnerable** subset of clients in ways that predictably ruin the lives of many people in that subset.
On the other hand, as many copies as are needed (to meet demand) of alternative Vegas's: groupings of entertainment businesses that made money primarily from people who casually gambled and which made it very difficult for a problem-gambler to spend any money.
*e.g. how-is-this-even-legal tactics like plying people with alcohol when those people are considering whether to commit to financial transactions that involve putting large amounts of money into the casino's hands
**e.g. those whose brains are maladaptive in ways that make slot machines especially compulsively engaging (compared to the median human)
this is a dumbass post when compared to Scott Alexander‘s. What, you‘re going to complain about a lack of technology and this is instrumentalized as a god now? Bro read the original from Alexander again and you will find that he talks about coordination failure and how it‘s unresolvable structurally. That‘s why it is a god. We can literally just build more tech
"he talks about coordination failure and how it‘s unresolvable structurally. That‘s why it is a god. We can literally just build more tech"
It's unresolveable structurally because he sets up an ideal of perfect coordination as a strawman to aspire to. If you set up a strawman of perfect technology then that would also be structurally unresolveable. But the whole point of my essay is that we don't (and shouldn't) do that—instead of saying "oh no we need to defeat Mot" we say "we can literally just build more tech", and we should have a similar attitude towards coordination ("we can literally just build more coordination tools/norms/technologies").
I agree with the substance of your comment but (1) I don't want to upvote a rude comment, and (2) it's a long time since I read Meditations on Moloch, so I may be misremembering.
But either I'm misunderstanding Scott's essay, or Richard is.
"skyscrapers literally miles high" - this sounds awful!
"trees that have been bioengineered to light the streets" - so does this!
"people who are eternally youthful and disease-free" . . .
If I could be eternally youthful and disease-free, that would be great, I think. But if everyone were eternally youthful and disease-free the human population would rapidly grow to a point where what is left of the natural world would be wiped out. Then what? Soylent Green? No thanks.
I'm glad I'm not living in the world you want to build. The god of sterility and lifelessness can't also be the god of lack of technology. Sterility and lifelessness is what technology does - weedkillers and chainsaws and concrete and plastic grass.
Agreed. This post is quite subjective
Lack of technology is perhaps the best example of lack of coordination. Why isn’t our science better (eg why don’t we have RT superconductors?). One big reason is we haven’t put that much effort into it. We spend more on apps. Why don’t we put effort into it? One major reason: the value would be largely captured by other people, including mostly future people.
It’s really hard to coordinate with those future people because it’s hard for them to send value to us (I think?). So we rely on relatively weak motivations like love of Truth and love of our descendants.
You had me at least somewhat sympathetic to your perspective until you said that Vegas was a good thing actually, which reminded me that I find extreme libertarianism highly untrustworthy both in terms of plausibility judgements and value judgements.
What is the optimal number of Vegases in America? In the world? (Feel free to give a fractional answer.)
Ideally? 0 copies (in the world) of Vegas as it is. That is, 0 cities whose business model fundamentally relies on preying* on a vulnerable** subset of clients in ways that predictably ruin the lives of many people in that subset.
On the other hand, as many copies as are needed (to meet demand) of alternative Vegas's: groupings of entertainment businesses that made money primarily from people who casually gambled and which made it very difficult for a problem-gambler to spend any money.
*e.g. how-is-this-even-legal tactics like plying people with alcohol when those people are considering whether to commit to financial transactions that involve putting large amounts of money into the casino's hands
**e.g. those whose brains are maladaptive in ways that make slot machines especially compulsively engaging (compared to the median human)
this is a dumbass post when compared to Scott Alexander‘s. What, you‘re going to complain about a lack of technology and this is instrumentalized as a god now? Bro read the original from Alexander again and you will find that he talks about coordination failure and how it‘s unresolvable structurally. That‘s why it is a god. We can literally just build more tech
"he talks about coordination failure and how it‘s unresolvable structurally. That‘s why it is a god. We can literally just build more tech"
It's unresolveable structurally because he sets up an ideal of perfect coordination as a strawman to aspire to. If you set up a strawman of perfect technology then that would also be structurally unresolveable. But the whole point of my essay is that we don't (and shouldn't) do that—instead of saying "oh no we need to defeat Mot" we say "we can literally just build more tech", and we should have a similar attitude towards coordination ("we can literally just build more coordination tools/norms/technologies").
I agree with the substance of your comment but (1) I don't want to upvote a rude comment, and (2) it's a long time since I read Meditations on Moloch, so I may be misremembering.
But either I'm misunderstanding Scott's essay, or Richard is.