This also rhymes with Justin Murphy's idea that "communism" (which he thinks of in an unorthodox way" requires "accurate social valuation of individual characters". theotherlifenow.com/aristocracy-an
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Murphy notes that "intentional communities" fail because people don't reward helpfulness and competence, or punish freeloading and sociopathy. The kinds of people who join those communities aren't even *trying* to do that, because they don't believe character matters.
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Murphy's proposal is strangely simple: "Each person in a community agrees to assign status (i.e. distribute their respect) to all the others according to the others' contributions to the community, however each person honestly evaluates the others' contributions."
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This is impractical for a reason I think you’re missing. Most transactions that go bad are not 2-way but 3-way or 4-way. There are intermediaries. Or the people paying are not the people supervising. Or the people working are not the owners of the capital good being used.
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Sorry, I'm not following -- how does that change things?
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It changes things because people who can spot bad faith behaviors are often not the ones able to punish it, and are under incentives to not complain. And the ones able to punish often have incentives to not know. The less power someone has, the more they get caught in such traps.
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A generally robust pattern here is the double Morton effect, aka survival of the stupidest. In n>2 games, stupidity can be adaptive, and thus can create room for malice to be adaptive as well. I haven’t worked out the full argument.
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I was taught this early by experience: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Thanks for the game theoretic explanation of what exactly the hell kicked me, decades ago.
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"Stupid" actions in DM parlance are often uncoordinated ones: ones where you can't or won't trust the other players. This loops back around through Moloch, as well: slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/med
The trouble with leaving The System is trusting all good fellows to do so simultaneously.
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I’d actually transpose Sarah’s whole argument to stupid people in a specific sense: not necessarily dumb, but under the robotic control of a Thinking System. Formulaic pseudothinkers who crank through algorithmic cognition with no attention to contents, context, or consequences.
That kind of robotic stupidity scares me far more than malice, and I’m more likely to adopt a “do not deal” strike behavior with them. I can mostly handle malicious assholes who are actually showing signs of live, engaged thinking.
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