Most people talk too much about values relative to facts, as they care more about showing off their values than about learning facts. So I usually avoid talking values. But I’ll make an exception today for this value:
"If such collective actions are your main excuse for trying to control other folks’ related choices, maybe you should consider not supplying such things collectively..."
This. If only we could do this.
From a totally self centered point of view we seem to be doing everything right in order to get ahead. No children (by choice), double income, steady jobs, look after ourselves (health, exercise, no smoking/doping), live frugally, save (for retirement)...
And get taxed to death.
To support "the other". Yes some of the tax goes to actual governance, but there is no denying that larger and larger portions goes to "social spending".
If it weren't for excess taxes (the part in the budget that supports the other) we would be able to retire right now.
Now I get that one can argue, if not for state education masses will go uneducated and turn to crime (argument for expanding?). And this is where people turn to the options re: education/population you mention. No one is an island
I see that there is very little in it for people like myself to gain by expanding...?
I thought you were approving of open source software on the basis that it represents EXPAND (i.e., fix for market failure), because such software can charge $0 for a license, and thereby create more social value for a given amount of inputs compared to commercial software that have to charge more than marginal cost for licenses. (This seems different from the kind of generosity where someone transfers resources to another person but doesn't create more value in the process of doing so.)
If you're saying that you don't consider open source software to represent EXPAND or fix for market failure, then I'm confused about what you're referring to by "EXPAND" or "fix for market failure". Can you perhaps give some examples of actions that do count as EXPAND or fix for market failure, besides adjusting property rights to be closer to optimal?
>That's different from saying that there's a strong NEED for such software.
Yes, I was making a weaker argument, that working on AI safety is at least as much EXPAND or fix for market failure as typical open source software. Maybe a stronger argument for NEED can also be made but at this point I'm just trying to understand what counts as a reasonable argument for something being EXPAND at all.
One can approve of open source software in general on the basis of approving of the generosity of those who contribute. That's different from saying that there's a strong NEED for such software. We need a stronger argument to claim that a particular kind of software is greatly needed and unlikely to be provided without the contributions of open source.
Thanks Robin, that helps me understand your thinking a bit better. As far as your suggested analogy of AI to software, I brought up open source software earlier and you said you approve of that. So why isn't working on AI safety (if one does it in expectation of making the results public domain) at least as good (in terms of counting as EXPAND) as working on open source software? Can you point out a specific disanalogy here, or point me to an economic analysis of open source software that would help me figure out the disanalogy myself?
It is clearer in the Cosmic Commons scenario because that has little innovation and little infrastructure. So in that case it does look like the race induces overly fast colonization.
Ok, it seems like I may have mistaken my professor's personal views on Homestead Act be the consensus of the field. Do you think in the Burning the Cosmic Commons scenario, it's similarly hard to tell whether under the default property rights (ie, none for uncolonized space) arrivals will be too early or too late? If so I wonder if you can point me to an example of analysis of property rights that does draw a strong conclusion, so I can see what that kind of analysis looks like.
Regarding the "Burning the Cosmic Commons" scenario it is very hard to have property rights in that scenario, as any enforcers of it arrive too late to matter. In more familiar Homestead Act scenarios yes there is a race effect inducing overly early arrival, but there's also a counter effect of early arrivers making it easier for later arrivers via creating infrastructure. There's a consensus that both effects exist, but it can be hard to weigh them in real situations. So it can be hard to know if in fact arrivals were too early or too late.
We ended up doing a Skype chat and the main takeaways for me are:
1. If there's an argument to be made here, it would be a general argument that also applies elsewhere so I should think in that direction.
2. Absent a better argument from me, I should trust analogous standard economic analysis of property rights in related areas, with real estate being analogous to space, and computer software and descendants analogous to AI.
I had a question at the end and ran out of time to explain it, so I'll ask here.
In your 1998 paper you assumed that there would be no property rights for virgin uncolonized space. Is that still your expectation of how property rights would work for uncolonized space? What does standard economic analysis say about whether that is optimal, and if not what does it say we should do to try to change it?
If there's a literature related to that question or something analogous, can you send me a link? I think my current views mostly came from my econ of property rights professor who said that the US Homestead Acts caused a lot of waste by inducing an inefficient race to grab land. I thought that is a standard economic view that seems most analogous to absence of property rights in uncolonized space. Am I wrong about that being the standard view, or wrong about the analogy?
Capitalism is full of "creative destruction". It happens all the time, in every industry. Over-leveraged banks might well go bankrupt. Mortgages might not get repaid. CDOs might drop in value. All of that is indeed possible. Just as failures could happen (and do happen) in any industry.
None of that is very important, for the overall US economy. You wouldn't even have noticed. The reason you noticed, is the deep, long, severe Great Recession that began in 2008. And the cause of the recession was bad monetary policy.
Your mistake is not in trying to identify causes of failures in banking, housing, mortgages, etc. The mistake instead is assuming that failures in those narrow industries require a subsequent recession. They don't. With good monetary policy, those failures remain local to those industries. The "housing crisis of 2008" should have been no more important than the "stock market crash of 1987", or the "dot com crash of 2000". Namely: very important to the people directly involved in those industries, but hardly noticed by the huge diverse US economy as a whole.
I thought the non-linear fallout from 2008 compared to typical failures was a fairly strong data point, as I said above. But not, I can't offer more than a few examples along with a structural explanation of why these failures scale super-linearly, because we haven't seen many such failures.
Your attempts at monocausal explanations are not completely wrong, but they are certainly incomplete. Changing monetary policy doesn't remove the risks from over-leveraged and poorly managed investment banking groups that are paid to take risks and can trust in government bailouts. Monetary policy also doesn't fix the structural problems in the housing market created by CDOs and dishonest brokers leading to incentives to build and sell houses well in excess of demand, at values that are inflated by the demand for the loans. And it doesn't remove the incentives for fraud when banks originating loans don't need to hold the liabilities themselves. But if you want to try and explain how those aren't principle agent failures, I'm all ears.
A system devoid of serious internal contradictions is more viable than a system full of them, because it consumes less energy for its life support. A heterogeneous system consumes much more energy for its maintenance than a homogeneous one, but at the same time has a much greater potential for development (Evolution).Only a high level of contradictions will give the necessary potential for the qualitative rapid Development.
Each contradiction is eliminated at the expense of a steeper contradiction, which is also not solved, but is replaced by the following contradiction. The achievement of the Singularity of Humanity can be ensured by the transition and by practicing a high level of contradictions on purpose (the transition from monologue to dialogue and from dialogue to polylogue - rhizome technology).
Technology and the social are intimately bound up with one another, and changes in either potentiate and reinforce changes in the other. Whereas the techno-utopians argue for acceleration on the basis that it will automatically overcome social conflict, our position is that technology should be accelerated precisely because it is needed in order to win social conflicts.
Competition and fighting is very important, it gives a competitive spirit and the qualitative development of the entire Dimension, but it must occur within the Dimension - increasing the dimensionality of Orda Dimension. The more quality projects in Orda Dimension, the higher the capitalization, and, accordingly, the welfare of all the nomads of Orda Dimension.
Building a system with a more equitable distribution of assets and income generated by them is possible - PoI (Proof of Intelligence). https://medium.com/@cryppix...
Democrats put minorities at a disadvantage
"If such collective actions are your main excuse for trying to control other folks’ related choices, maybe you should consider not supplying such things collectively..."
This. If only we could do this.
From a totally self centered point of view we seem to be doing everything right in order to get ahead. No children (by choice), double income, steady jobs, look after ourselves (health, exercise, no smoking/doping), live frugally, save (for retirement)...
And get taxed to death.
To support "the other". Yes some of the tax goes to actual governance, but there is no denying that larger and larger portions goes to "social spending".
If it weren't for excess taxes (the part in the budget that supports the other) we would be able to retire right now.
Now I get that one can argue, if not for state education masses will go uneducated and turn to crime (argument for expanding?). And this is where people turn to the options re: education/population you mention. No one is an island
I see that there is very little in it for people like myself to gain by expanding...?
What about the silent man?
Yes, you get some credit for expanding if you avoid the problem that software price is well above marginal cost. That applies to any software.
I thought you were approving of open source software on the basis that it represents EXPAND (i.e., fix for market failure), because such software can charge $0 for a license, and thereby create more social value for a given amount of inputs compared to commercial software that have to charge more than marginal cost for licenses. (This seems different from the kind of generosity where someone transfers resources to another person but doesn't create more value in the process of doing so.)
If you're saying that you don't consider open source software to represent EXPAND or fix for market failure, then I'm confused about what you're referring to by "EXPAND" or "fix for market failure". Can you perhaps give some examples of actions that do count as EXPAND or fix for market failure, besides adjusting property rights to be closer to optimal?
>That's different from saying that there's a strong NEED for such software.
Yes, I was making a weaker argument, that working on AI safety is at least as much EXPAND or fix for market failure as typical open source software. Maybe a stronger argument for NEED can also be made but at this point I'm just trying to understand what counts as a reasonable argument for something being EXPAND at all.
One can approve of open source software in general on the basis of approving of the generosity of those who contribute. That's different from saying that there's a strong NEED for such software. We need a stronger argument to claim that a particular kind of software is greatly needed and unlikely to be provided without the contributions of open source.
Thanks Robin, that helps me understand your thinking a bit better. As far as your suggested analogy of AI to software, I brought up open source software earlier and you said you approve of that. So why isn't working on AI safety (if one does it in expectation of making the results public domain) at least as good (in terms of counting as EXPAND) as working on open source software? Can you point out a specific disanalogy here, or point me to an economic analysis of open source software that would help me figure out the disanalogy myself?
It is clearer in the Cosmic Commons scenario because that has little innovation and little infrastructure. So in that case it does look like the race induces overly fast colonization.
Ok, it seems like I may have mistaken my professor's personal views on Homestead Act be the consensus of the field. Do you think in the Burning the Cosmic Commons scenario, it's similarly hard to tell whether under the default property rights (ie, none for uncolonized space) arrivals will be too early or too late? If so I wonder if you can point me to an example of analysis of property rights that does draw a strong conclusion, so I can see what that kind of analysis looks like.
Regarding the "Burning the Cosmic Commons" scenario it is very hard to have property rights in that scenario, as any enforcers of it arrive too late to matter. In more familiar Homestead Act scenarios yes there is a race effect inducing overly early arrival, but there's also a counter effect of early arrivers making it easier for later arrivers via creating infrastructure. There's a consensus that both effects exist, but it can be hard to weigh them in real situations. So it can be hard to know if in fact arrivals were too early or too late.
We ended up doing a Skype chat and the main takeaways for me are:
1. If there's an argument to be made here, it would be a general argument that also applies elsewhere so I should think in that direction.
2. Absent a better argument from me, I should trust analogous standard economic analysis of property rights in related areas, with real estate being analogous to space, and computer software and descendants analogous to AI.
I had a question at the end and ran out of time to explain it, so I'll ask here.
In your 1998 paper you assumed that there would be no property rights for virgin uncolonized space. Is that still your expectation of how property rights would work for uncolonized space? What does standard economic analysis say about whether that is optimal, and if not what does it say we should do to try to change it?
If there's a literature related to that question or something analogous, can you send me a link? I think my current views mostly came from my econ of property rights professor who said that the US Homestead Acts caused a lot of waste by inducing an inefficient race to grab land. I thought that is a standard economic view that seems most analogous to absence of property rights in uncolonized space. Am I wrong about that being the standard view, or wrong about the analogy?
Capitalism is full of "creative destruction". It happens all the time, in every industry. Over-leveraged banks might well go bankrupt. Mortgages might not get repaid. CDOs might drop in value. All of that is indeed possible. Just as failures could happen (and do happen) in any industry.
None of that is very important, for the overall US economy. You wouldn't even have noticed. The reason you noticed, is the deep, long, severe Great Recession that began in 2008. And the cause of the recession was bad monetary policy.
Your mistake is not in trying to identify causes of failures in banking, housing, mortgages, etc. The mistake instead is assuming that failures in those narrow industries require a subsequent recession. They don't. With good monetary policy, those failures remain local to those industries. The "housing crisis of 2008" should have been no more important than the "stock market crash of 1987", or the "dot com crash of 2000". Namely: very important to the people directly involved in those industries, but hardly noticed by the huge diverse US economy as a whole.
I thought the non-linear fallout from 2008 compared to typical failures was a fairly strong data point, as I said above. But not, I can't offer more than a few examples along with a structural explanation of why these failures scale super-linearly, because we haven't seen many such failures.
Your attempts at monocausal explanations are not completely wrong, but they are certainly incomplete. Changing monetary policy doesn't remove the risks from over-leveraged and poorly managed investment banking groups that are paid to take risks and can trust in government bailouts. Monetary policy also doesn't fix the structural problems in the housing market created by CDOs and dishonest brokers leading to incentives to build and sell houses well in excess of demand, at values that are inflated by the demand for the loans. And it doesn't remove the incentives for fraud when banks originating loans don't need to hold the liabilities themselves. But if you want to try and explain how those aren't principle agent failures, I'm all ears.
A system devoid of serious internal contradictions is more viable than a system full of them, because it consumes less energy for its life support. A heterogeneous system consumes much more energy for its maintenance than a homogeneous one, but at the same time has a much greater potential for development (Evolution).Only a high level of contradictions will give the necessary potential for the qualitative rapid Development.
Each contradiction is eliminated at the expense of a steeper contradiction, which is also not solved, but is replaced by the following contradiction. The achievement of the Singularity of Humanity can be ensured by the transition and by practicing a high level of contradictions on purpose (the transition from monologue to dialogue and from dialogue to polylogue - rhizome technology).
Technology and the social are intimately bound up with one another, and changes in either potentiate and reinforce changes in the other. Whereas the techno-utopians argue for acceleration on the basis that it will automatically overcome social conflict, our position is that technology should be accelerated precisely because it is needed in order to win social conflicts.
https://medium.com/@cryppix...
Competition and fighting is very important, it gives a competitive spirit and the qualitative development of the entire Dimension, but it must occur within the Dimension - increasing the dimensionality of Orda Dimension. The more quality projects in Orda Dimension, the higher the capitalization, and, accordingly, the welfare of all the nomads of Orda Dimension.
Building a system with a more equitable distribution of assets and income generated by them is possible - PoI (Proof of Intelligence). https://medium.com/@cryppix...
New Game, new status - stratification by the level of Karma. Full reset to past achievements.https://medium.com/@cryppix...