that sentence should be buried 50 feet underground in a cask of fused silica.
I really like aspects of the garden of eden story and find the fact that our eternal paradise existence involved chilling naked and unashamed in a lovely garden munching on delectable fruit and veg rather nice. These early people really yearned to get away from doing hard farm work all the time and just wanted everything to be all walkable and natural and lovely, a kind of pining for the earlier days of hunter-gatherer life. When ever I see a nicely run permaculture garden or a nature reserve with happy people enjoying the wondrous loveliness of the natural world, I think to myself that's it's almost like we've crept just a little closer to eden.
>the valuable sex (women) have no incentive to run things well because they'll do OK whatever happens
Sure women have been oppressed for much of the history of the world, but whatevs.
This dude has definitely never lived in a society in which he is expected to have children, raise children, forbidden from having any participation in public life, forbidden from having any education, etc.
Nash equilibria of the social game are not pareto optimal, people
defect
gaaaaaaah
You can’t improve your position in a Nash equilibrium by “defecting”,
mother of Christ, that’s what Nash equilibrium means! In prisoner’s
dilemma the “good” scenario is not a Nash equilibrium but the “bad”
scenario is, that’s the whole point.
Maybe I'm being too charitable, but I thought that's what he was saying, just phrased unclearly. Cooperate/Cooperate is pareto optimal, because the only way to make someone better off is for that person to defect, which makes the other person worse off. But because people are maximizing personal outcomes rather than seeking a pareto-optimal overall distribution of resources, they defect, which leads to a nash equilibrium which is not pareto optimal.
> just phrased unclearly
If you are going to pontificate on socioreligious topics using jargon from another field, you should at the very least make jargon technically accurate.
Of course, you should probably cut out the jargon entirely but that’s too much to ask of them.
It’s phrased ambiguously, not really incorrectly though. Not defending him on the broader issue, but if read the way it was seemingly intended, it’s correct.
It is incorrect. Saying the "Nash equilibrium of the social game is XYZ" means that there exists a Nash equilibrium in the first place.
This is demonstrably false. Given any set of strategies for the players, there are always better strategies to improve ones personal gain given the knowledge of other actions (fraud, manipulation etc).
More importantly, the Nash equilibrium theorem doesn't even apply here because it requires that the set of actions a player can undertake is finite so that the set of mixed strategies is compact. This is false here since people have infinitely many choices of actions.
I mean, this seems like you’re objecting to game theoretic modeling of society in the first place. That’s fair enough, it might be that it isn’t a good paradigm. However, I don’t think that pointing to a model not being able to capture everything in the real world doesn’t mean that the jargon used is per se incorrect.
Like, Newtonian physics is ‘incorrect’ too, but noting that is pretty different from saying that someone is doing Newtonian physics incorrectly. Feel me?
I am not objecting to the modelling here. I am suggesting the theorem doesn't apply here.
One assumption of the theorem is that the number of actions a person can take is finite (more precisely the set of strategies is compact). If this isn't satisfied we have no reason to assume there exists a Nash equilibrium.
Now, yes Newtonian physics also fails in the relativistic cases, but in the limit of non-relativistic mechanics, it captures the behavior accurately. And since most physics we are interested in happens in the non-relativistic case, it is reasonable to assume Newtonian physics.
However, it isn't reasonable to assume that people only have finitely many choices for modelling purposes. This assumption is especially untenable because it isn't hard to show that given any strategy, there is a strategy which improves personal outcomes for atleast one person (which is precisely what happens in reality as well).
I’m not sure any widely used game theoretic models assume that options are infinite. Like, I don’t think that RAND was incorporating the Soviets all doing the chicken dance in their geostrategic models, even though that is an option the Soviets had.
Like, on your view, is it just always wrong to model social coordination with the prisoner’s dilemma because people theoretically have other options? That’s fine if that’s your objection, but then it does seem like you’re just against game theoretic modeling.
In my view, it is wrong to assume that there exists a best set of strategies (for people playing the "social game") such that deviation doesn't guarantee improved personal outcomes for atleast one person.
The reason it is wrong is because it is categorically-demonstrably false. One might think it's an approximation of emergent cooperation in non-cooperative situations but there it is rarely a consequence of people rationally maximizing their own outcomes.
Now yes, game-theoretic models won't incorporate all possible actions. This is irrelevant because the point of assumption of finite choices is to ensure that our set of strategies is "small" (compact) so that we can "search" (find a fixed point) for the best strategy for all.
Once this fails, we can't guarantee such a best strategy anymore. As such, this isn't about ensuring we accommodate every humane action possible and more about the method with which Nash proved his theorem. His methods simply fail at that point and any naive extension of their applicability simply fail on rudimentary inspection.
Again, that’s all fine, but I’m not sure why it wouldn’t apply to anybody doing the kind of modeling that Roko is gesturing at.
> One might think it's an approximation of emergent cooperation in non-cooperative situations but there it is rarely a consequence of people rationally maximizing their own outcomes.
Okay, but I don’t see why this applies to Roko’s gesturing, but not Axelrod and his intellectual descendants. If it applies to both, again, that’s fine, but then it seems like your objection is just to the whole sub field. Whereas the original objection was that Roko was incorrect, even assuming this kind of modeling is in general kosher.
First of, I think I should reemphasize the contents of the Nash existence theorem. In Roko's claim, it means that in our society, there _always_ exist a set of strategy that _every_ perfect _selfish_ rational agent must adopt to optimise their personal outcome. This is very false, which I think we both agree.
Now, are there Nash-_inspired_ game theoretic models that attempt to study societal cooperation? Sure. Are they valid in my view? Yes, so long as they don't make a necessity claim like "Nash equilibrium exists" or whatnot.
Moreover, why am I not lending charity to Roko's claim that I might to a game-theorists claim? For the same reason, I read Aristotle charitably and not a flat-earther. I know that Roko/flat-earthers don't know what they're talking about, and whatever terminology they're adopting is simply to make them sound smart rather than convey a complex viewpoint.
> Yes, so long as they don't make a necessity claim like "Nash equilibrium exists" or whatnot
I’m not sure who you’re quoting, but it’s not clear to me that Roko is claiming that the Nash equilibrium literally exists, or there just is one in his model.
> For the same reason, I read Aristotle charitably and not a flat-earther. I know that Roko/flat-earthers don't know what they're talking about, and whatever terminology they're adopting is simply to make them sound smart rather than convey a complex viewpoint.
My point is that aside from the clumsy wording, it seems like Roko does know what he’s talking about (within the world of game theoretic modeling, not necessarily corresponding to the real world ). To argue he doesn’t on the grounds that Nash equilibriums don’t literally exist seems to be begging the question.
> it’s not clear to me that Roko is claiming that the Nash equilibrium literally exists
The statement that "Nash equilibrium of the social game is X" implies that the Nash equilibrium of the social game exists. As such, my criticism applies. This was covered in my first comment to you.
> To argue he doesn’t on the grounds that Nash equilibriums don’t literally exist seems to be begging the question.
I am not sure if you understood what I said. It is a trivial fact that there doesn't exist a set of strategies that is optimal for selfish rational agents playing the social game. Thus, Nash equilibrium of the social game doesn't exist.
I don't see what "literally exist" mean here. There is no metaphorical sense in which Nash equilibrium occur (atleast in context of our conversation).
> The statement that "Nash equilibrium of the social game is X" implies that the Nash equilibrium of the social game exists. As such, my criticism applies. This was covered in my first comment to you.
Ok, but then we're just back to the general critique of game theoretic modeling. You could say the same thing about Axelrod or Schelling or whoever talking about nash equlibria in any of the social and geostrategic games.
> I am not sure if you understood what I said. It is a trivial fact that there doesn't exist a set of strategies that is optimal for selfish rational agents playing the social game.
It's a trivial fact that's also true of Axelrod's modeling of social games. I think I understand what you're saying, you just don't seem to think that it applies to more serious researchers, when the only reason you've given is just that you've decided to read them more charitably, even when they're saying the same thing.
> There is no metaphorical sense in which Nash equilibrium occur (atleast in context of our conversation).
Scientists typically make models of the world, but the model itself is not a literal representation of the world. The model might include things (like Nash equlibria) in their model even if one doesn't exactly exist in reality. Again, there's no reason why you would apply this criticism to Roko and not to Axelrod.
But then the right statement is "There doesn't exist a Nash equilibrium in the social game".
Nash equilibrium occurs when there exist a set of strategies for players where deviation from this set doesn't improved personal personal outcomes.
Since this is obviously not true for societies, aka there doesn't exist a set of strategies such that deviation doesn't result in improved outcomes, we have that the Nash equilibrium doesn't exist.
This reads like a 15-year-old incel posting his hot takes that he
truly believes no one in the world has ever thought before. “I’ve never
read the bible but I feel like I have a better understanding of it than
any christian” just… radiates the stench of marijuana smoke mixed with
Cheeto dust and spilled Mountain Dew.
To be fair, “I’ve never read the Bible but here’s how it confirms my
personal beliefs” is a pretty popular move throughout the history of
Judeo-Christian thought. This is still a profoundly stupid version of
that, though.
I think the most impressive part is saying this with no self-awareness:
> Hell/Heaven = old-fashioned Basilisk to make people behave
Uhhhh...don't you mean that the Basilisk (that you came up with!) is just a new version of the classic belief in Heaven/Hell that, again, _you_ came up with to try to appeal to atheistic Rationalists?
I have never been more convinced that a person is just saying words
because they sound complicated and smart, without any regard for what
they mean or if they make sense in this context.
I feel like the short length does illustrate the basic Rationalist playbook minus the Bayesian pretensions.
Like seriously I think I am dumber after reading this. Maybe that was the real Basilisk all along.
Could you get a more succinct summary of their entire methodology?
[deleted]
Imagine knowing enough about the anthropological view of theological concepts to avoid an oxymoron like “abstract embodiment.”
Roko seems consistently to be one of the dumbest of the whole gang
gaaaaaaah
You can’t improve your position in a Nash equilibrium by “defecting”, mother of Christ, that’s what Nash equilibrium means! In prisoner’s dilemma the “good” scenario is not a Nash equilibrium but the “bad” scenario is, that’s the whole point.
I love
because the basilisk is so clearly just new-fashioned silly tech heaven/hell but he wants to act like they’re copying him
This is just old NRX ‘the PROLES need religion to know their place’ shit.
This reads like a 15-year-old incel posting his hot takes that he truly believes no one in the world has ever thought before. “I’ve never read the bible but I feel like I have a better understanding of it than any christian” just… radiates the stench of marijuana smoke mixed with Cheeto dust and spilled Mountain Dew.
To be fair, “I’ve never read the Bible but here’s how it confirms my personal beliefs” is a pretty popular move throughout the history of Judeo-Christian thought. This is still a profoundly stupid version of that, though.
[The Great Unifier] (https://i.imgur.com/TmOFJO1.jpg)
This the fool that started all that basilisk stupidity ?
I have never been more convinced that a person is just saying words because they sound complicated and smart, without any regard for what they mean or if they make sense in this context.