Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Because without that, Alice, Bob and Carol are individually carrying out a risk calculus under the assumption that each of them is the only one who hates Stalin. If you hate Stalin and everybody else loves him, the expected payoff for publicly criticising him is that you are shipped off to the gulag. Thus everyone in the society is incentivised not to criticise Stalin, and he remains in power.
But when it becomes common knowledge, the payoff matrix changes: if I hate Stalin and I know that everybody else does too, the expected payoff for publicly criticising him is that it creates a chain reaction culminating in Stalin being forced out. Common knowledge that Stalin is widely despised is the only thing that can incentivise a self-interested agent in the system (an agent concerned with self-preservation) to act to change the system from within.
The scenario I'm describing above is a pretty quintessential Moloch trap. From outside the system, it's obvious that it's in Alice, Bob and Carol's best interest to rise up and overthrow Stalin. From within the system, none of them have any good reason to believe that attempting to overthrow Stalin would end in any other way than being immediately shipped off to the gulag or executed; hence, they all keep their heads down and the system endures.
More options
Context Copy link