Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer • Hacker News Board

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#71

Post by lukifer » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #53

lukifer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means. Do I want life-saving medicine? Do I want a soul-sucking job that pays the bills? Do I want to be de-facto-required to participate in Facebook in order to socialize? I may voluntarily choose all of these things, and while that is unambiguously better than being forced to do them by violence, that's subtly distinc…

"Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means." And while that's all very interesting and important in the abstract, it's worth double-checking that you don't get yourself lost in the weeds... which I think you did... and forget that the paperclip maximizer is scary precisely because it has no concept of wants in it. With capitalism, wants can be changed in…

You are right that the analogy breaks down at the assumption that humans would allow the paperclip machine to run amok; human wants do powerfully change and influence the market machine. At the same time, the abyss gazes into us, and human wants change in response to the machine as well.

I'll give an example that intersects the Pavlovian scare words of both "capitalism" and "government": the Prison-Industrial Complex. It's reasonable to want to remove members of society who are dangerously violent, or "cheaters" of sufficient scope. Yet iterate this desire over enough time, and it takes on a life of its own: politicians who want to look tough on crime, parents who want their fears assuaged, private companies who want to profit from correctional tax dollars, and most insidiously, the swaths of police, prison guards, and support staff who want paychecks, benefits and job security.

The final product is something we don't actually want: the most populous prison system in the world, which is massively expensive, socioeconomically predatory, and fails to rehabilitate most of its inmates. Yet there are enough stakeholders who do want the institution to persist for reasons of personal benefit (and enough taxpayers who want to imagine a cute moralistic story and are willing to pay for the luxury of ignorance), that a massive machine of oppression is created and sustained out of a simple, reasonable human want.

I'm not intrinsically anti-capitalist; I'm in the camp of Jaron Lanier, in that money, markets, and corporations are all technologies, and neither good nor evil. But technology should serve humans, and not the other way around; that means paying attention to the power of unchecked, autonomous feedback loops and their power to influence human behavior and our various social ecosystems.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#72

Post by Retra » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #65

Retra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that you've created a scenario that talks about a single human brain, but "maximizing human happiness" doesn't refer to any single person's brain. It refers the state of our entire social environment as viewed through the aggregate of individual experience. And you're probably vastly underestimating the complexity and comprehensiveness demanded of such a machine.

Would I like to impose the experience machine to all of humanity or at least all those that I love? My answer doesn't change. Actually, I would go to great lengths to prevent imposing such a fate on humanity. I may be naive in thinking this but human emotions and euphoria can probably be boiled down to a chemical reaction in our brain such that brain activity of someone experiencing something pleasurable in "real lif…

Again, I don't think you are aware of what "indistinguishable from reality" actually entails. The capabilities are so extreme there that you'll have essentially created your own universe.

And what do you care if you live in a different universe? You don't even understand this one well enough to know the difference. So you're basically making this decision on the grounds of your own ignorance.

What if this world is a simulation, and the real world is a wonderful and happy place? You don't know the difference, so what business do you have taking a stand on the issue?

>However, I believe there is so much more to existence than our own perception even though I am not spiritual at all.

You don't know what that word means, then.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#73

Post by ArkyBeagle » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

Capitalism depends on price theory, which predicts that making too many paperclips will cause them to be in glut and the price will drop. So a paperclip-maximizing AI might oughta be built to take that into account.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#74

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 11:50 PM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #71

jerf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means." And while that's all very interesting and important in the abstract, it's worth double-checking that you don't get yourself lost in the weeds... which I think you did... and forget that the paperclip maximizer is scary precisely because it has no concept of wants in it. With capitalism, wants can be changed in…

You are right that the analogy breaks down at the assumption that humans would allow the paperclip machine to run amok; human wants do powerfully change and influence the market machine. At the same time, the abyss gazes into us, and human wants change in response to the machine as well. I'll give an example that intersects the Pavlovian scare words of both "capitalism" and "government": the Prison-Industrial Complex…

>It's reasonable to want to remove members of society who are dangerously violent, or "cheaters" of sufficient scope. Yet iterate this desire over enough time, and it takes on a life of its own: politicians who want to look tough on crime, parents who want their fears assuaged, private companies who want to profit from correctional tax dollars, and most insidiously, the swaths of police, prison guards, and support staff who want paychecks, benefits and job security.

Of course, this assumes all the actors were initially well-intentioned, which they weren't. Plenty of people supported harsh policies of criminalization and "justice" because they wanted to come down hard on the dark-skinned and the poor.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#75

Post by cheald » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #64

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.

>Capitalism maximizes "giving people what they want". This is much closer to the benevolent AI models than to paperclip maxizers. Yes, I'm sure that what I want involves working lots of hours to buy Boston real-estate. That surely wasn't determined for me by capitalism, in roughly the same way that a not-quite benevolent AI might determine that what I really ought to want is paperclips.

You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously! You want real estate in Boston - so do many other people, many more than who can physically own real estate in Boston. How is it decided who receives and who goes without?

Wants cannot be considered seriously independent of the reality of scarcity. The sum of the world's wants is greater than the sum of the world's resources, so we have to have some system of allocating those resources among those wants. There are many theories on how to do this, but free market trade is somewhat unique in that it is one of the only systems that acknowledges and allows for subjective value. So long as you are permitted to freely trade your time and resources, you are able of exchanging them for whatever you want most - which is not the same as being able to exchange them for all that you want.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#76

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 11:53 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #75

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Capitalism maximizes "giving people what they want". This is much closer to the benevolent AI models than to paperclip maxizers. Yes, I'm sure that what I want involves working lots of hours to buy Boston real-estate. That surely wasn't determined for me by capitalism, in roughly the same way that a not-quite benevolent AI might determine that what I really ought to want is paperclips.

You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously! You want real estate in Boston - so do many other people, many more than who can physically own real estate in Boston. How is it decided who receives and who goes without? Wants cannot be considered seriously independent of the reality of scarcity. The sum of the world's wants is greater than t…

>You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously!

Well, no. What I actually want is to live with my fiancee and not be homeless, and she's from Boston and needs to live near family right now, so here we are. Revealed-preference theory is one subgoal stomp after another.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#77

Post by cheald » Thu, Sep 10, 2015, 12:08 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #76

cheald wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously! You want real estate in Boston - so do many other people, many more than who can physically own real estate in Boston. How is it decided who receives and who goes without? Wants cannot be considered seriously independent of the reality of scarcity. The sum of the world's wants is greater than t…

>You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously! Well, no. What I actually want is to live with my fiancee and not be homeless, and she's from Boston and needs to live near family right now, so here we are. Revealed-preference theory is one subgoal stomp after another.

Certainly, and if we dig deeper, it's not that you want to live with your fiancee, it's that you want human companionship and sex, and we eventually get down into Maslow, but the fact of the matter is that you are making the choice that having real estate in Boston is more valuable to you than not working long hours - your want is indeed to work long hours to live in Boston, rather than to not work long hours to not live in Boston.

Among the choices available to you, you are getting what you want. That's not to suggest that the choices you have available are the choices you want, but I would suggest that the blame for that lies with the fact that we do not live in a post-scarcity society rather than on the resource distribution model we use.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#78

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Sep 10, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

cheald wrote: post #77

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You want it more than you want not having any real estate, or having real estate in some place that isn't Boston, obviously! Well, no. What I actually want is to live with my fiancee and not be homeless, and she's from Boston and needs to live near family right now, so here we are. Revealed-preference theory is one subgoal stomp after another.

Certainly, and if we dig deeper, it's not that you want to live with your fiancee, it's that you want human companionship and sex, and we eventually get down into Maslow, but the fact of the matter is that you are making the choice that having real estate in Boston is more valuable to you than not working long hours - your want is indeed to work long hours to live in Boston, rather than to not work long hours to not…

>and if we dig deeper, it's not that you want to live with your fiancee, it's that you want human companionship and sex,

No, actually. I want to live with my fiancee. I could perhaps come up with a supergoal for that if I tried, but it would still involve this specific fiancee.

Some things are terminally good, others instrumentally. The chain of reduction stops at things I want for their own sake, long before it hits "Maslow".

>Among the choices available to you, you are getting what you want.

This is vacuous. Firstly, there might be some superior option nobody told me about, or that I didn't think of. Secondly, defining "what I want" as "what was available to me" amounts to rationalizing economics backwards into psychology while ignoring the available empirical evidence. You don't get to tell me what I want based on what I did, because there are in fact many, many filters between what I want and what I do.

>but I would suggest that the blame for that lies with the fact that we do not live in a post-scarcity society rather than on the resource distribution model we use.

These are effectively the same statement. We have more than enough resources to put everyone in the realm of diminishing returns to additional economic resources -- we just have capitalism instead of happiness.

(This is another reason why revealed preferences theories are crap.)

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#79

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Sep 10, 2015, 5:16 AM UTC

gglitch wrote: post #22

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. If that were the case then cash reserves would be where the bulk of people poured their resources. In fact the majority of non-debt "capital" is held in real-estate and some combination of financial instruments (CD, bonds, common stock etc...). You are confusing how the assets are valued with what is actually being valued. What I think you are saying though…

Out of my depth here, but aren't the real estate and financial instruments being held merely as a generator of more money (except in the rare case that one actually lives on the real estate, I suppose)?

It's a mix, but in general you can look at the risk profile of these assets as a range between "storage" and "return." The left end is more (historically) stable asset classes with lower returns like government bonds and the latter with volatile and high tech startups.

Again though, it's not "money" per se, ie. cash, that they are trying to generate - though in the cases of dividend yielding assets as part of a retirement portfolio that is true - but rather to put their money into an asset that beats inflation with variable levels of security and maintenance, aka Risk. I guess you could say that you always want a higher cash value over time but I think that is a vulgar interpretation of how a market works.

Re: Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer

#80

Post by madaxe_again » Thu, Sep 10, 2015, 7:32 AM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #31

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…

>Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" Sorry, but what? I'm guessing that you don't even really believe this and that you don't even know what those phrases are supposed to mean. Why else would you put them in quotes -- twice? I can only guess that this is supposed to mean that capital somehow binds up prior effort into a claim on (others?) futur…

Dude. Smith (WoN) and Marx (Kapital). Know your sources before shooting your mouth off.