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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I expect intergroup competition will prevent a total return to subsistence for humanity. It is true that our current world has little intergroup competition. This era began in 1945 when the 5 most powerful continent spanning empires formed the Security Council. Their main act has been to prevent expansionist wars between states. While in the short term the end to expansionist wars has averted tremendous suffering, it had obvious benefits for the 5 main partiers. The five empires stopped any new empires from forming. You don't need a degree to understand why the five crime families collude to stop new families starting, or why the 5 empires would collude to stop new empires.The unfortunate long run effect is that intergroup competition at the state level declined greatly after 1945. Lebanon may be a terrible country at producing economic growth, public legitimacy, or effective state institutions (the key resources of war and other competition). But Lebanon survives as a zombie state because norms against conquest are strongly enforced by the security council. As a result we no longer face strong competitive pressures at both levels.RH has claimed that in the future competitive pressures will force *individuals* to subsistence levels (setting aside AI for the moment). For individuals to reach subsistence levels in the long run requires one of the following1. The cartel of conquest capacity in the security council must continue *even when most humans live subsistence lives*2. Those states where humans live at subsistence levels are the most competitive states -OR- not one state ever solves the subsistence problemThe first scenario is pretty obvious. Most states degrade as society approaches subsistence. However, the security council maintains its capacity to coordinate, wield violence and control nuclear weapons and continues the anti-conquest international norm. Maybe Japan solves the subsistence problem for a while but Japan's solution cannot spread because they are not actually competing with other states.In the second scenario, at least one state should solve the subsistence problem. For example if every member of a society is a clone of past members (taken from say 2100), evolution toward competition would not occur. Or if a successful one child policy was implemented. Suppose that Japan, China and New Zealand (the big three) successfully institute such policies, but the other countries do not. The Big Three have huge advantages over other countries: surpluses not put toward subsistence and a population more genetically disposed to rule following and altruism. With the security council long defunct as an institution, the interstate competition is back on the menu.There have been past epochs where some states possessed such advantages and no security council existed. Consider 1650-1914, when European empires dominated the glove. Or the dawn of the iron age. Or the spread of Catholicism and Islam respectively. The result was usually some form of domination of the stronger states. In the short term that domination greated tremendous human suffering. But in the long term it spread those more competitive institutions around the globe (see Karl Marx "On British Imperialism in India). In conclusion I find a future of subsistence level human to human competition implausible because group level competition should eradicate it except in extreme scenarios. Of course AI or Age of Em futures face very different rules.

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Donald Hobson's avatar

Suppose you were highly uncertain about how much competition there would be. In a high competition world, everything settles out in the same equilibrium, whatever we do now. There is only one nash equilibria, or a few that are largely similar.

We have an opportunity to influence the low competition worlds.As such, we focus on the low competition worlds.

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