A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “coordination problems”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott analyzes reactions to the Hugging Face incident and celebrates a major open letter from AI lab employees calling for coordinated slowdowns, which he sees as significantly improving humanity's chances of surviving AI development.
A deep dive into the Book of Abraham, focusing on how Joseph Smith's translations of Egyptian papyri were definitively proven false by Egyptologists, yet Mormonism continues to thrive—raising questions about whether instrumental rationality trumps epistemic rationality.
Scott analyzes why people support government-funded foreign aid instead of donating voluntarily, examining and critiquing several theories including virtue signaling, coordination problems, and time-inconsistent preferences.
Scott Alexander argues that increasing housing density in a city may actually increase local prices due to induced demand, while lowering prices nationally.
Scott Alexander compares political spending to the almond industry, revealing surprisingly low amounts in politics due to coordination problems.
Scott examines why the rich appear to influence politics despite theoretical barriers, proposing that moral philosophies may emerge to solve wealthy coordination problems.
Scott Alexander reviews Singer's book on Marx, finding Marx's ideas deeply flawed, particularly his refusal to plan for communist governance and his belief in infinitely malleable human nature.
Scott explores the concept of an 'Economists' Paradise' to derive a form of contractualism as a basis for morality, potentially grounding utilitarianism and resolving some of its paradoxes.
Scott Alexander analyzes Moloch as a metaphor for destructive societal coordination problems, using various examples to show how competing incentives can lead to negative outcomes.
Scott Alexander discusses Robin Hanson's vision of a future with emulated humans, debating the preservation of human values and the nature of future societal coordination.
Scott presents six game theory scenarios demonstrating how strategic thinking can force rational actors into seemingly irrational outcomes, ranging from theoretical examples like evil plutocrats and hostile takeovers to real-world applications like dollar auctions and the Golden Balls game show.
Scott explains Nash equilibria (outcomes where no player regrets their strategy given the other's choice) and Schelling points (focal points that help coordinate between multiple equilibria), using examples ranging from meeting a partner to military strategy to show how these game theory concepts apply to real-world coordination problems.