
Meditations on Moloch (2014) - tosh
https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
======
HiroshiSan
I read this the other week before the site got taken down and I found it to be
incredibly prophetic.

I especially enjoyed this part:

"The point is – imagine a country full of bioweapon labs, where people toil
day and night to invent new infectious agents. The existence of these labs,
and their right to throw whatever they develop in the water supply is
protected by law. And the country is also linked by the world’s most perfect
mass transit system that every single person uses every day, so that any new
pathogen can spread to the entire country instantaneously. You’d expect things
to start going bad for that city pretty quickly.

Well, we have about a zillion think tanks researching new and better forms of
propaganda. And we have constitutionally protected freedom of speech. And we
have the Internet. So we’re kind of screwed."

~~~
closeparen
While the memes-as-viruses thing can be illustrative, it can also be oversold.
We don't actually live in _Snow Crash_. Putting the wrong text in front of
people does not turn them into zombies. The reality is both more banal and
more horrifying: people out there genuinely have minds and mindsets that are
different from your own, and arrive at conclusions that feel the same to them
as yours do to you.

~~~
barrkel
Yes. And some people are illiberal. Some people don't like the conflict and
confusion and disruption of a liberal democracy; they'd rather a consensus of
"people like us". And bad things happen when they support a leader who
promises to make things simple.

This is not a left vs right thing, it's a liberty vs autocracy thing. If the
popular autocrats win, they punish the people who have "mindsets that are
different from" their supporters.

~~~
z3ncyberpunk
> This is not a left vs right thing, it's a liberty vs autocracy thing. If the
> popular autocrats win, they punish the people who have "mindsets that are
> different from" their supporters.

... Idk why you chose to use liberals in your example when their push for woke
political correctness is nothing short of autocratic thought control.

~~~
esyir
He's probably talking about the principal of liberty. Turns out branding works
really well to muddy natural language

------
api
Moloch is game theory. Moloch is emergent behaviors in large groups of agents.
We want to stop it, but these things are vastly larger and more powerful than
the individuals who make them up. We can't resist any more than atoms can
resist the properties of the matter they form.

Or can we? I think there are a few cases where we have, cases where we have
used law or religion or spiritual awakenings or technology or bureaucracy to
countermand the emergent will of the mindless collective of history, economy,
and ecology. But somewhere along the way we listened to those who equate is
with ought and gave up on such attempts, or we listened to the cynics who say
the whole endeavor was a waste because it was only 70% successful not 100%
successful.

BTW I think conspiracy theory is a folklore level awareness of game theoretic
and emergent properties. Conspiracy theorists posit invisible canals behind
these things. They are right about the effect but wrong about the cause. The
agenda is real but the cabal does not exist. The cabal is all of us and none
of us.

------
Kutta
I also recommend Nick Bostrom's article "The Future of Human Evolution",
predating OP by ten years, which contains essentially the same arguments and
conclusions.

[https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html](https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html)

------
dropit_sphere
Always glad to see this get some play on HN. As our civilization gets more
interconnected and systems-centric, it becomes more and more useful to have a
name for the demon in the machine.

~~~
chongli
I'm glad to see people keeping Scott's writing alive in the general
conversation here. He has written so much over the years. It would be a
terrible shame to see it fade into obscurity after the deletion of the blog.

------
amasad
Game theory / Moloch should've never let open-source software happen. While
not perfect it works surprisingly well despite potentially suffering from all
the same coordination problems outlined in this essay: free rider problem,
tragedy of the commons, and all sorts of game theory race-to-the-bottom
scenarios.

I also notice random acts of kindness from people, spontaneous corporation
amongst rivaling tribes or companies, and things a strict self-interested
agent-based analysis will tell us it's not possible.

It's an insightful model of the world but it's too simplistic and pessimistic.

~~~
wizzwizz4
Part VIII.

> Somewhere in this darkness is another god. He has also had many names. In
> the Kushiel books, his name was Elua. He is the god of flowers and free love
> and all soft and fragile things. Of art and science and philosophy and love.
> Of niceness, community, and civilization. He is a god of humans.

> The other gods sit on their dark thrones and think “Ha ha, a god who doesn’t
> even control any hell-monsters or command his worshippers to become killing
> machines. What a weakling! This is going to be so easy!”

> But somehow Elua is still here. No one knows exactly how. And the gods who
> oppose Him tend to find Themselves meeting with a _surprising_ number of
> unfortunate accidents.

> There are many gods, but this one is ours.

~~~
toohotatopic
Flowers and free love, just the other side of the coin:

>4\. The Malthusian trap, at least at its extremely pure theoretical limits.
Suppose you are one of the first rats introduced onto a pristine island. It is
full of yummy plants and you live an idyllic life lounging about, eating, and
composing great works of art (you’re one of those rats from The Rats of NIMH).

>You live a long life, mate, and have a dozen children. All of them have a
dozen children, and so on. In a couple generations, the island has ten
thousand rats and has reached its carrying capacity. Now there’s not enough
food and space to go around, and a certain percent of each new generation dies
in order to keep the population steady at ten thousand.

------
carapace
> Sure, the Conspiracy program is cruel and demeaning, the cage is cramped and
> ugly and smells bad, but you can't get out and if you did get out you'd just
> want right back in again because the thing that is making the situation
> intolerable isn't in the situation, it's in your head.

NENSLO "hateword"
[http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0022_Nenslo_...](http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0022_Nenslo_HATEWORD.html)

FWIW, we have simple, easy solutions to all our physical problems. (Ask me
about "aircrete".)

~~~
balfirevic
> Ask me about "aircrete".

Alright, what about aircrete and how can it solve all our physical problems?

~~~
carapace
Cheers!

Air-crete is basically foam (like dish soap foam) mixed with concrete. It
can't solve all of our physical problems but it's pretty useful: It's fire
proof (you can build a furnace out of it), water proof (you can build a boat
out of it), also bug- and mildew-proof. It's lightweight, strong, durable, and
non-toxic. You can work it with hand tools. It holds nails and screws. It can
be formed in blocks or panels or columns or poured into molds. The machinery
to make it can be assembled from off-the-shelf parts for a couple of hundred
dollars. You can use plain ol' concrete mix and dish soap for the foaming
agent.

I heard about it years ago (Christopher Alexander wanted to use it with his
Pattern Language generative architecture) but it seems that there's been a
recent bloom of interest and applications with the invention of the small
backyard-scale foamer/mixers. People can and are using aircrete to make all
kinds of homes and other buildings. One group is teaching workshops on making
cool spherical homes that cost a few thousand dollars, can be built by a
handful of people in a couple of weeks, and will last for decades or even
centuries.

This is just one example of a really keen solution that's (as yet)
underutilized. I collect ideas the way stamp collectors collect stamps, and
I've "seen things you people wouldn't believe." (I.e. ever heard of a _phase
conjugate mirror?_ You point your flash light at this mirror and the light is
reflected back into the bulb.)

~~~
balfirevic
Thanks!

That does sound pretty cool.

But what was the reasoning behind your statement that "we have simple, easy
solutions to all our physical problems" (even if not all those solutions come
from aircrete)?

~~~
carapace
You're welcome. BTW here's the aircrete dome people:
[https://www.domegaia.com/](https://www.domegaia.com/)

> But what was the reasoning behind your statement that "we have simple, easy
> solutions to all our physical problems" (even if not all those solutions
> come from aircrete)?

Thanks for asking! Let me see if I can compress and express the kernel of what
I mean.

First, let me specify that, by "physical problems", I mean provisioning food,
water, shelter, waste recycling, clothing, transportation, electric power,
etc. as contrasted with political, ideological, social, and spiritual
problems.

I'm a fan of a school of applied ecology called "Permaculture" (I recently
learned of a parallel evolution of the same ideas called "Syntropic"
agriculture.) It's been demonstrated in farms and projects all over the world
by now. We can transform deserts into forests and meadows.

That accounts for food, water, waste recycling, and clothing, as well as some
building material. Also many medicines can be grown in the garden.

If you mine lime, etc., you can make aircrete and that accounts for a
tremendous amount of shelter. You also grow wood and bamboo for construction
purposes.

If you integrate alcohol fuel production with your food forest you have a
carbon-neutral fuel source. That accounts for electric power (along with
renewables, solar, wind, hydro, etc.) and your much of your transportation
costs. (You still have to mine metal and stuff for the vehicles themselves, of
course.) (
[http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/sitemap](http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/sitemap) )

To sum up, if we "reboot" agriculture using what we now know about ecology
(the science) we can provide for our needs in a way that is ecologically
harmonious (and can therefore continue long enough that maybe we can sort out
the other problems too, eventually.) Also, it's fun! And you can make money at
it. (The Syntropic agriculture founder grows the best cocoa beans in the
world, and gets 3x per acre as conventional cocoa farms, with no inputs. He
mimics the natural forest.)

------
afarrell
If someone could produce a book of his writings, I would buy it. Not sure for
how much.

~~~
boring_twenties
Good news. There are free ebooks, one per year:
[https://github.com/georgjaehnig/webpages-to-
ebook/blob/maste...](https://github.com/georgjaehnig/webpages-to-
ebook/blob/master/README.md#examples)

Also looks like someone combined them into one ebook:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hkbfj4/all_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hkbfj4/all_articles_20132020_in_one_ebook_epub_mobi_pdf/)

~~~
inetsee
I'm very pleased to see this. I hadn't thought about Slate Star Codex still
being available on the Internet Archive. After seeing this post I was thinking
about going through my bookmarks and finding copies of my favorite SSC posts
in the Archive. Downloading an ebook is so much easier.

Thank you for posting these links, and thank you to the people who created
these ebooks.

P. S. Fuck New York Times for fucking with Slate Star Codex.

------
lucrative
> As outside civilizations compete against you, your conditions will become
> more and more constrained.

This explains why I think China is currently "winning at economy" and will do
so even more in the future, simply because they can see long term since the
removal of the two-term limit of their president[1], and other[2] tactics[3].

From a "god’s-eye-view", countries should not withdraw democracy & freedom
from the hands of their citizens. But logically, I think this gives an
incentive for all other countries to also take this unfair advantage (become
capitalist dictatorships) in order to compete with China. But I'm not sure how
_logically_ this will play out in the next few decades.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/xi-jinping-
chi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/xi-jinping-china-
presidential-limit-scrap-dictator-for-life)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Railway_(1990)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Railway_\(1990\))

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_extradition_bil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_extradition_bill)

~~~
kiba
_This explains why I think China is currently "winning at economy" and will do
so even more in the future, simply because they can see long term since the
removal of the two-term limit of their president[1], and other[2] tactics[3].

From a "god’s-eye-view", countries should not withdraw democracy & freedom
from the hands of their citizens. But logically, I think this gives an
incentive for all other countries to also take this unfair advantage (become
capitalist dictatorships) in order to compete with China. But I'm not sure how
logically this will play out in the next few decades._

And yet I see articles positing strategic mistakes and unforced errors on the
behalf of the Chinese.

Mostly, I am of the opinion that outsiders don't know what's really going on
in the country because the truth of China is distorted by propaganda and
censorship regime they built up over generations and lack of independent
abilities to verify anything.

Maybe even the government don't know what's going on either.

~~~
labster
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-
anything-a...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-
about-china/)

At least everyone is equally in the dark.

