why can't we have nice things? usually it's not because anyone is evil. it's because we're stuck in a multipolar trap: everyone acting rationally, and everyone worse off for it. its a race to the bottom that nobody can leave first - because the first to cooperate, alone, loses.... picture it as terrain. 1. the trap is a deep valley where everyone has defected. 2. cooperation is a summit, clearly visible, clearly better. 3. every incentive arrow points downhill. the way out isn't asking people to be nicer. it's reshaping the landscape - binding commitments that make the cooperative move the rational one. change the terrain, and the same self-interested actors climb together!show more

u can just do stuff jedi: positive sum games mid: doesn't play dumb: negative sum games

Thanks for this clear presentation of the multipolar trap as a structure of incentives. ..... but/and before we speak of terrain, valleys, or the reshaping of landscapes, I must ask you to return, with me, to the things themselves as they are given in your own experience @owocki . How does this “race to the bottom” actually appear in your lived experience? Not as an abstract model, not as a diagram of arrows pointing downhill, but as it is lived by you ... moment by moment. When you encounter others defecting, or feel the pressure not to be the first to cooperate, what is the precise character of that experience? What is the intentional structure of that sense of being “stuck”? and how is the 'better' summit given to you ... intuitively, anticipatorily, or only emptily meant? Rest aside, for a moment, the economic and game-theoretic interpretations. Describe for me, as faithfully as you can, the phenomena as they present themselves in the first person. From a more pure description of the lived experience I think we can begin to see the essential structures at work.

I think a good example is climate. Hypothetical but relatable example follows: I make a decision to say, fly across the world (or drive somewhere, or other economic activity), because I want to work/leisure/some other goal, while knowing the carbon footprint is non zero. Of course I don’t want to live in a Venus-ified planet. But I also don’t know that I trust the carbon offset product offered by airline (or in case of other economic activity, offsets don’t exist). Nor does my individual commitment make much difference without commitments from many others. So i just do the economic thing and usually don’t offset the carbon. How dat?

Yes … getting there , @owocki. I want to stay with the phenomena as they give themselves in that moment of decision. You stand before the possibility of the flight (or the drive, the purchase). The goal ( work, leisure, the concrete project ) is given with a certain fullness....: it draws you, it has the character of something already underway in your practical horizon, almost bodily anticipated. Alongside it, or rather co-given but in a different mode, is the carbon footprint. How does that appear? Not as a number first, but as a non-zero mark, a shadow that accompanies the intentional act of choosing the trip. Is it given as a present perception, or more as an empty intending ..... a meaning that points toward consequences never yet fulfilled in intuition for you personally? The Venus-ified planet: how is it present to consciousness in that instant? As a vivid fulfillment of dread, or only as an emptily meant horizon, a limit-possibility that floats at the edge of the practical field without ever pressing into the here-and-now with the same force as the immediate goal? And the offset: you do not trust it. Describe that distrust as it is lived. Is it a felt opacity in the object itself (the “product” offered by the airline), a sense that the intentional rays directed toward it fail to reach any genuine fulfillment? Or is it more the awareness of an intersubjective failure ... that the chain of acts required for the offset to mean what it claims remains unfulfilled by the others? Here is the turn in direction: “my individual commitment makes much difference without commitments from many others.” Here our sense of being “stuck” crystallizes. What is its precise intentional structure? Do you experience yourself as one among anonymous others whose acts remain empty, so that one’s own act is felt as almost nullified in advance? Is the “many others” given as a concrete community of co-intenders, or only as an abstract multiplicity whose cooperation is perpetually postponed? And finally ...... the settling into “just doing the economic thing.” What is the character of that settling? A release? A residual unease that continues to co-intend the unfulfilled horizon? A shift in the mode of attention, where the practical goal absorbs the field and the ecological meanings are bracketed, not denied, but simply no longer attended to with the same intensity? I want to stay with these lived structures a little longer, if we can. From the pure description of how these meanings are given ... full or empty, near or remote, fulfilled or frustrated .... .. we may begin to see the essential forms that make the multipolar trap more than a diagram.

I sincerely try to make room for experience, but my theoretical fluency often rushes in to occupy that room.

I am learning to let experience interrupt my understanding before my understanding organizes the experience.

I don't want to abandon theory, but to suspend its premature authority and make it answerable to how things are given, evidenced, and corrected. .. in other words ... Experience gets to interrupt theory before theory speaks for experience.

i think theory/empiricism are complementary ways of knowing. one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies:

The scene stages two incomplete forms ... A. theory without embodiment, and B. action without understanding. What it seems to seek is praxis: .... thought that risks becoming conduct, and conduct that remains reflective and answerable to the world. I would put it this way ..... A theory of transformed life becomes credible when it is permitted to transform the theorist’s life.

No one thinks they are evil but we have evil in the world. Rational actions are based on perception of the world. Different perceptions lead to different rational actions.

I discuss much about aligning incentives like this in my book. It covers Routing Work, one of the few consensus mechanisms thats truly incentive aligned:

why do tech people need a 3 dimensional plane to explain the concept of honour

My current business thesis in a nutshell. --> Partner w other startups and municipalities, even if they seem like "competition" --> Climb the hill together, linked arm in arm --> Gain critical mass to topple the hyperscalers.

This is how a pot full of crabs behaves: one starts to climb, and the others actually drag it down.

imagine if we all just decided to share instead

hmm 🤔 if only enough people could rise up at once to dismantle the old perverse incentive structures and establish new ones in which everyone benefits bc the individual interests have now aligned with the collective interests...

bro you can’t fix the players without fixing the game

There were some political movements in the early 1900s that tried to implement this solution. If only there was a way to bind everyone’s commitments in a single rational direction.

cooperate with a knife held between your teeth

working on this at

incentive design matters more than good intentions

Isn't that just a game theory? If we play nice we get nice things, but it takes just few to not play nice and nobody get nice things.

Either way, if you want to see what humanity is naturally like, you have to stop trying to engineer society and let it evolve on its own. Meddling, even when you think what you're doing is "good," on a societal level just sets us back every time. No one needs to be herded.

So bend reality to encourage better behavior?

Where does the teachings of Jesus fit into game theory?

deep, really deep not a lot of people are ready to accept the way out

so how we changing the terrain without jeopardizing freedom?

the first attractor is catastrophe/coordination failure the second attractor is dystopia - by solving coordination failure, giving control to a governor that may become authoritarian third attractor is decentralized coordination (either non-coercive or coercive with stronger/self-enforced boundary conditions) study the third attractor

This is the best visualization of this that I have seen.

been farting around w creating more @ multipolartrap dot xyz

What a coincidence, I just solved this whole problem. Lol.

cooperation becomes stable only when cheating is visible and costly before its rewards compound

i dont understand. what does this apply to? and what does that look like. i'm not the smartest but this seems like a very vague explanation of something important

yesssssir this guy gets it; all about aligning incentives to create a better world

The way out is being the first to be willing to lose

I would question the validity of this assumption, Quote - "it's because we're stuck in a multipolar trap: everyone acting rationally" More likely a tiny raft of rationality, floating on a giant irrational sea - most humans are not sane, rational, critters... Do you have any credible evidence to the contrary ?

Only true if you surround yourself with people who share the same topography. Which is why it’s good to surround yourself with people to disagree with and challenge you.

The graphic needs another dimension, winning / loosing. In the example, the "alone cooperator" clearly made higher ground and closer to green. That they "lost" is a qualitative statement not demonstrated in the graphic. I propose each dot gets a heat map, relativity to group

that's only if you think acting for yourself is rational though ... isn't it? acting for yourself has always been the irrational thing from my point of view ... atomization is death ...

There are also evil people

How can I use a graphic like this in place of a Technical or Product Roadmap?

"People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”"