Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer • Hacker News Board

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#41

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #29

madaxe_again wrote: post #8

Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it's up to you whether it's capital or not. Of…

Some would disagree that the purpose of existence is to promote happiness. Robert Nozick offered this thought experiment to which I would not opt to maximize happiness: > Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not disti…

[deleted]

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#42

Post by electricblue » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:19 PM UTC

War can only destroy capital, perhaps the most breathtaking destruction of capital in history was WWII. So War would be antithetical to this hypothetical capital maximizer and it would be it's among its top priorities to avoid it. Similarly, the market system based on human rationality is far too volatile for our capital maximizer, it would look to replace that ASAP.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#43

Post by fweespeech » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #29

madaxe_again wrote: post #8

Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it's up to you whether it's capital or not. Of…

Some would disagree that the purpose of existence is to promote happiness. Robert Nozick offered this thought experiment to which I would not opt to maximize happiness: > Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not disti…

I wonder what Robert Nozick would think of recreational drug use.

That is as close to that "machine" that we have in reality and its pretty clear people are willing to accept/risk the negative impacts and use such drugs.

This being the case, I'm pretty sure, people would use that machine if it was legal and cheap. Similarly, I'm pretty sure at least some of those people would prefer it to real life.

Similarly, the only reason I prefer "real life" is the relationships I built with people. If I had been given the choice, say, 10+ years ago to have such a machine ... I'd prefer it to RL and the effort it took to build the kind of life I want.

So its a philosophical question with answer of "it depends on the person and RL situation they have".

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#44

Post by Rhapso » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

Economic systems are optimizers (each with slightly different objective functions).

One of the first things we learn about optimizers is that they are rarely globally suited to solving problems, and that the best technique is to identify and apply the locally optimal solution over the range of input.

TLDR: We need to admit that there is not a globally applicable economic system, and learn to apply different models where they are most efficient/least disastrous.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#45

Post by bko » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #33

bko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would disagree that the purpose of existence is to promote happiness. Robert Nozick offered this thought experiment to which I would not opt to maximize happiness: > Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not disti…

Why wouldn't you?

Because I believe in a greater purpose in life (in the non-religious sense). But that's just me

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#46

Post by nevinera » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

Sakes wrote: post #17

nevinera wrote: post #11

Corporations can be usefully described as 'profit-maximizers', but capitalism itself doesn't have a coherent behavior - you can't describe it as any kind of AI.

AI is just a subset of intelligence. You absolutely can describe capitalism as an intelligent system since it is primarily made up of units (people) which are intelligent. If capitalism didn't have a coherent behavior, then how could we ever rely upon it as a primary driver of our economy? It must be coherent and on some level understandable for us to make predictions around it.

You can call an ecosystem 'intelligent' if you want to, I suppose, but there's not really any way to discuss it as a 'maximizer' when it has no goals and no intentional behavior. You could as easily describe water as a 'gravitational potential' minimizer - it has a collective aggregate behavior that you can characterize, but that doesn't make it intelligent by most definitions of the word.

>If capitalism didn't have a coherent behavior, then how could we ever rely upon it as a primary driver of our economy?

It is not a 'primary driver' of our economy, it is a description of our economy. The primary driver of our economy is corporations - entities obeying a profit motive. They have behaviors, intentions, and goals - they attempt maximize shareholder profits. "Capitalism" doesn't intend anything, have any goals; it doesn't even have any non-emergent behaviors.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#47

Post by plutooo » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

It's a faulty analogy. In fact, a paperclip maximizer goes against every single principle of capitalism out there.

The paperclip maximizer is bad exactly because it isn't based on capitalism; it will maximize paperclips regardless of whether someone values them or not! At _any cost_, it will maximize paperclips.

Markets, on the other hand, have the goal of providing products/services that people are willing to pay for. It adapts. The more people value it, the more capital it will attract, and the more resources will be allocated to it.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#48

Post by plutooo » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

drabiega wrote: post #12

marcosdumay wrote: post #7

Wait, what? Capitalism maximizes "giving people what they want". This is much closer to the benevolent AI models than to paperclip maxizers.

While that may be true in some sense there is a very important caveat. Capitalism maximizes giving people they want in proportion to the capital they have. The fact that the distribution is skewed by capital ownership and that agents other than people can own capital creates a powerful distortion and an entirely different systematic effect.

Remember that capitalism works in favor of big numbers. 1 person has to earn as much as 1000 people in order to have the same power as them.

So while your point still stands, if you have a decent middle-class then it will be much more powerful than any billionaire will ever be.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#49

Post by cylinder » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #33

bko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would disagree that the purpose of existence is to promote happiness. Robert Nozick offered this thought experiment to which I would not opt to maximize happiness: > Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not disti…

Why wouldn't you?

Replace drugs with machine and we already have such a thing. However the pleasure from drugs is stigmatized and prohibited, and the addiction to the pleasure machine is seen as life destroying.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#50

Post by irln » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

plutooo wrote: post #47

It's a faulty analogy. In fact, a paperclip maximizer goes against every single principle of capitalism out there. The paperclip maximizer is bad exactly because it isn't based on capitalism; it will maximize paperclips regardless of whether someone values them or not! At _any cost_, it will maximize paperclips. Markets, on the other hand, have the goal of providing products/services that people are willing to pay fo…

You've identified one of the key defects in capitalism today...the disconnect of a "true" market where value is measured by folk's willingness to pay for things.