Although I appreciate the thought and attention that goes into articles written for LessWrong, the language is often difficult to unpack.
Take the term "Pareto-efficient society" used in the first paragraph. This is a term I'm incredibly unfamiliar with. A link to a definition or an article on it would have been useful. After doing my dutiful research on wikipedia, I found that the definition means more or less "a society in which it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off." This definition is analogous to "zero sum society." So, the fourth sentence of the first paragraph reads "this bias [thinking that it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off] is the major obstacle to a society in which it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off."
Buh?
I support a lot of the concepts behind LessWrong, but all of the articles read like Critical Theory midterm essays.
Go back for a moment to Pareto-efficiency. What that means is that you're looking for a move which benefits yourself without harming anyone else.
A Pareto-efficient society is a society in which no such moves exist; we have the optimal wealth available. If you want more wealth, you have to take it from someone else.
So naturally, if you mistakenly believe we live in a Pareto-efficient society ( I doubt anyone would agree ) it makes it very difficult to actually create a Pareto-efficient society. It's all rather Utopian, but generally I like the sentiment.
Though I'd rather believe that Pareto-efficiency is unobtainable and we can always create more wealth.
I don't believe there is an innate zero-sum bias. Why would humans be hunting in groups 200,000 years ago if we evolved to be zero-sum thinkers?
I find too many people on HN use the zero-sum bias argument against everything because Paul Graham said so.
Some resources are zero-sum, and remain so through the last century of technological progress (which has seen most of mankind's improvements). Land ownership (especially coastal properties) is ever diminishing. Cities still fight over water (desalination is expensive). Oil, a new zero-sum resource, has been the cause of many wars.
It is only in the utopia of software development (where duplication is cheap), that people are blind to this. If the population ever outstrips availability of crucial goods like land, water, or food, you will see your software and webapp sales plummet to 0 no matter how hard you work on it.
> I don't believe there is an innate zero-sum bias. Why would humans be hunting in groups 200,000 years ago if we evolved to be zero-sum thinkers?
It would be just one of many heuristics and biases. Others, like the ones that make us help people who carry our genes (family, but originally, almost everybody in a tribe), are probably the foundation of cooperation and altruism of the kind you write about.
I would say in prehistoric times resources were more available than now - people could just walk away from each other and live on what nature provided without fighting. I think this is why people spreaded over the whole world. So why should zero sum bias be encouraged by evolution?
Zero-sum is only a simplification, the world can get richer or poorer and I don't think is a zero-sum game. Evolution is not related to zero-sum games. Perhaps the post is about
learning to cooperate is better that thinking life is a zero-sum game.
[+] [-] Gianteye|15 years ago|reply
Take the term "Pareto-efficient society" used in the first paragraph. This is a term I'm incredibly unfamiliar with. A link to a definition or an article on it would have been useful. After doing my dutiful research on wikipedia, I found that the definition means more or less "a society in which it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off." This definition is analogous to "zero sum society." So, the fourth sentence of the first paragraph reads "this bias [thinking that it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off] is the major obstacle to a society in which it is impossible to make one person better off without necessarily making someone else worse off."
Buh?
I support a lot of the concepts behind LessWrong, but all of the articles read like Critical Theory midterm essays.
[+] [-] sprout|15 years ago|reply
A Pareto-efficient society is a society in which no such moves exist; we have the optimal wealth available. If you want more wealth, you have to take it from someone else.
So naturally, if you mistakenly believe we live in a Pareto-efficient society ( I doubt anyone would agree ) it makes it very difficult to actually create a Pareto-efficient society. It's all rather Utopian, but generally I like the sentiment.
Though I'd rather believe that Pareto-efficiency is unobtainable and we can always create more wealth.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] codexon|15 years ago|reply
I find too many people on HN use the zero-sum bias argument against everything because Paul Graham said so.
Some resources are zero-sum, and remain so through the last century of technological progress (which has seen most of mankind's improvements). Land ownership (especially coastal properties) is ever diminishing. Cities still fight over water (desalination is expensive). Oil, a new zero-sum resource, has been the cause of many wars.
It is only in the utopia of software development (where duplication is cheap), that people are blind to this. If the population ever outstrips availability of crucial goods like land, water, or food, you will see your software and webapp sales plummet to 0 no matter how hard you work on it.
[+] [-] MikeCapone|15 years ago|reply
It would be just one of many heuristics and biases. Others, like the ones that make us help people who carry our genes (family, but originally, almost everybody in a tribe), are probably the foundation of cooperation and altruism of the kind you write about.
[+] [-] ajuc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isnoteasy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ardit20|15 years ago|reply
Of course it is. If the deer does not run faster, the cheetah will have him/her for dinner.