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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   28491 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Fairly sure this was not an uncommon topic in the Less Wrong of 10 years ago. How do you have a functional military in your rationalist utopia when it is always rational for the individual to flee and/or surrender? Except if everyone does that, your utopia gets conquered by the nearest group of marginally less 'rational' barbarians.

There's nothing strange or unreasonable about history being full of groups of people willing to risk their lives for the abstract concepts of their group. Because groups without such memes generally don't last long enough to leave a mark on history.

And from a game theory perspective, the credible pre-commitments of MAD are how all military defense functions, really. If you attack us, we commit to fighting a bloody war instead of rolling over. Even though the cost for the defender will be greater, the cost for the attacker will be much greater. And the only way to make that pre-commitment credible is to follow through even after the deterrence has failed. Because it is an iterated game, both from the defenders perspective, assuming they survive, and evolutionarily - "fuck with me and we'll both end up worse" is credible coming from humans because humans have evolved to follow through often enough.

Since when is it rational to flee? The evolutionary imperative is to spread your dna (your algorithm or code). If you die but a million people who share significant parts of your code survive then it is rational to die.

Humans already live forever. When you reproduce your reproduction shares a percentage of you. Reproduce enough and you not only survive but multiples of you survive.

The rationalist model here is just wrong. It’s rational to die.

That's not how it works. See "The Tragedy of Group Selectionism" by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Because Eliezer wrote something it’s not a fact?

Also one of the arguments used is that foxes don’t limit their breeding. Which doesn’t apply to humans since we often do the discussed behavior of fighting and personal sacrifice for their tribe.

How about fleeing to another [more affluent] country, taking the necessary steps to have your descendants take control of that country and then exact revenge on the initial threat?

Would that be a successful strategy?

Do you have a specific example in mind? I suppose I could uncharitably assume you are talking about Jews, since you are fond of Darkly Hinting about them, but in that case you should speak plainly and also explain which country they have taken control of.

Otherwise this seems like a low-effort hypothetical just for the sake of being argumentative.

I can’t tell if your just trolling with AI.

I'm replying to a post that's wondering why people don't just surrender to save their lives. And the very point of those discussions on LW was that any model of rationality that easily destroyed can't be all that rational. Which is why the last paragraph of my post gives a game-theoretic reason to fight.

But humans very much do not live forever. You are not your genes, your consciousness is their byproduct and will die with your physical body. And your desires are only indirectly linked with genetic success (adaptation executors vs fitness maximizers and all that). Plus, for genetic success it's much better to get other people to die for you instead.

Yea and I disagree with your game theoretic analysis.

I think it’s just genes. And we do live forever. And my model really explains behavior that seems irrational to you.

Fairly sure this was not an uncommon topic in the Less Wrong of 10 years ago. How do you have a functional military in your rationalist utopia when it is always rational for the individual to flee and/or surrender? Except if everyone does that, your utopia gets conquered by the nearest group of marginally less 'rational' barbarians.

As smart people as Less Wrong crowd thought about this problem before, Future Rational Utopia just needs to learn from their experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops#Red_Army

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%B4

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