Meditations on meditations on Moloch
Very late for the task, but here we go. Since the problems and future of capitalism were prominent in the debate so far, I’m adding a long article I’ve read some time taken from Slate Star Codex by Scott Alexander (pseudonym), a blog which was recently at the center of a controversy with the NYT. *https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/*
It starts with a full quote of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Moloch, a poem with an exaggerated number of exclamation marks of which I give you a taste here: Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
This poem has traditionally been understood as referring to capitalism. What the article does is broadening a bit the scope, and interpreting this poem, which describes the ultimate life-consuming evil, as referring to all those situation in which multiple actors pursuing their legitimate interest create an overall system that is distructive/ unsustainable. The author calls them Multipolar Traps. The implicit question is – if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it? And Ginsberg answers: “Moloch”. It’s powerful not because it’s correct – nobody literally thinks an ancient Carthaginian demon causes everything – but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent. Among examples given: the prisoner’s dilemma, auctions, the Malthusian trap, cancer growth, “publication bias” in the scientific process etc. What do all these have in common? In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse. There is a ton more in the article and extensive quotes from obscure sources, but in general I like the idea that so many of our problems can be reconducted to this basic principle. The point is: the system is “evil” because it was not designed. Multipolar traps are a feature of nature itself, which can be seen in game theory, evolution, the spread of memes (which are, as per Richard Dawkins, “information genes”) and there is an element of nature which is intrinsically hostile to what we value as a human society. Something to keep in mind next time people make the unthought-through equation Naural=Good. Or extolls free markets. This could even be taken as an argument against the existence of god: if god is a designer of worlds, he is a bad designer. Indeed, with a bit of a leap I like to connect this “evilness of nature” all the way to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy – but maybe let’s leave this for another time. So what is the answer to all of this (life, the universe an everything)? 42. No, really, it’s actually design, in its broadest conception. Design as not leaving things up to chance or nature or individual initiative. Design as a the coordinated human action creating systems of correct incentives that get us out of multipolar traps. In a small way, that’s really what we do in our day to day, from interfaces to businesses. The problem is that we obviously never do it with a broad, systemic view. So here is a question for us all: who has the authority to design systems at the highest of levels? How could it even be done? How does it not turn into a totalitarian dystopia? I hope this made sense, it’s not 100% figured out in my mind either. Thanks,