
Meditations on Moloch - gjm11
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
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gjm11
This was referenced in the recent discussion of ad-blockers. The title isn't
terribly informative if you don't already know what the article is about, so
I'll explain.

Moloch (the name of an ancient Near Eastern god, to whom children were
allegedly sacrificed) is used in one of Alan Ginsberg's poems as a metaphor
for, well, actually it's not entirely clear, but something responsible for all
kinds of societal failures.

Scott Alexander (author of the article linked here) riffs off this, using
Moloch as a metaphor for _coordination problems_ like the famous "tragedy of
the commons", where the result of lots of individuals optimizing things is a
grossly suboptimal overall outcome. Everyone works longer hours than is
actually productive, because anyone who doesn't will be condemned as a
slacker? Moloch. Every product in some category is substandard because
customers can't readily measure quality and any business trying to do better
would be outcompeted? Moloch. Ten companies making near-identical products
spend a lot of money on advertising, the end result of which is the same as if
there were no advertising? Moloch. Etc.

And it turns out there's rather a lot to be said about this and related ideas,
and Scott Alexander duly says rather a lot about them. Also featuring: Las
Vegas, Discordianism, artificial intelligence, Rudyard Kipling, H P Lovecraft,
transhumanism.

(Pretty much everything else in his blog is well worth reading too.)

~~~
marcusgarvey
TPP? Moloch.

This was amazing to read.

