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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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feels like one of those cursed anti-inductiveness/self-defeating-prophecy dynamics.

I believe the technical term is 'negative-feedback loop'.

The term "negative feedback loop" is a technical term for this but a non-specific one. Other related terms are "non-credible threat", "equilibrium selection", and "brinksmanship". I like the term "one of those cursed anti-inductive things", though, because

  1. The situation is cursed
  2. The anti-inductiveness is the main think causing the situation to be cursed
  3. I don't have the math chops to know what the equilibrium actually looks like here, so using proper terms from the game theory literature would be an implicit claim to expertise that I don't have.

Here's how I'm modeling the situation:

  • Trump has two buttons. The first button is labeled "WIN", and announces to the world that an economic disaster will happen. The second button is labeled "LOSE", and announces to the world that the scheduled economic disaster has been cancelled.
  • Trump views himself if a winner if his people love him AND his most-recently-pressed button was the "WIN" button. He cares more about being loved than about winning.
  • Trump wants to be a winner.
  • Trump can press both buttons any number of times.
  • Trump's people are old and their nest eggs have significant market exposure. If the market drops >10%, his people will stop loving him until the market recovers to at least that point.

As far as I can tell, this situation leads to the cycle

  1. Trump presses "WIN".
  2. Nothing happens until market participants judge that there's at least a 25% chance that Trump won't press "LOSE"
  3. Once market participants judge a 25% chance that Trump presses "LOSE", the market drops by 10%
  4. Trump's people stop loving him
  5. Trump presses "LOSE".
  6. The market recovers. Anyone who bet that Trump would press "LOSE" makes money.
  7. Go to 1.

I don't have the math chops to figure out what actually happens in this model as market participants get better at predicting Trump's behavior though. My suspicion is "25% chance the disaster actually happens each time we go through the cycle".