A review by inquiry_from_an_anti_library
Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.0

Is This An Overview?

In an efficient market, in an efficient civilization, the individual cannot do better than the collective power of the many who have a lot more available information.  Even if the individual has information that others do not, the individual cannot make an improvement, gain any benefits by fixing the problem, and cannot exploit the system.  Common problems within adequate systems are supposed to be resolved by the community, as good ideas have already been tried by the community.  The collective might not get the exact answer, but no individual can predict the average value of the error, the average value of the change.   

Alternatively, there are inadequate systems in which individuals can do better that the community, as problems exist but do not get resolved.  Civilization gets stuck with inadequate equilibria as they are systemically unfixable.  There are various reasons for how an inadequate system, an inadequate civilization can develop. 

Central decision makers can prevent others from fixing the problem.  Decisions makers are not the beneficiaries.  There is asymmetric information as decision makers cannot know what or whose information to trust.  Systems might be inadequate, but that does not make them exploitable as there are many competitors trying to benefit from available opportunities, a competitive equilibrium.  To improve the system would require large scale coordination action, but they are difficult to facilitate.

 

How To And Not To Think About Inadequate Systems?

Wrong guesses and false cynicism do exist.  Different systems are dysfunctional in different ways.  No individual is better at everything, but individuals can be better at somethings and worse at others.  There is a lot of variation in expert views.

Although there are inadequate systems, just assuming inadequacy can make people see inadequacy in everything with a lot of arguments.  Concluding inadequacy from a problem is not an adequate rule.  Even though systems have inadequate equilibria, a blanket distrust of inadequacy arguments does not get far.  Civilization cannot be beat all the time, but its good to be skeptical and check for inadequacy. 

 

Caveats?

The explanations can be improved.  The organizational quality is mixed.  There are practical examples and abstract reasoning.  The abstract reasoning and conversations can become confusing.  There are parts that would be better understood with prerequisite knowledge.   

This book is based on the dichotomy of perfect and imperfect information theory, an improvement on them.  Tailored to reduce the strictness of perfect information.