1. Lock-in is supposed to be highly stable. As far as I understand, your argument therefore is, or rests on, the notion that competitive dynamics between multiple agents can become highly stable. But I wonder whether that’s usually the case.
For instance, you mention the wars/competition between European countries. However, these wars eventually stopped—and currently, most European countries rather cooperate as members of the European Union. I think that we have some reason to believe that that’s the default—particular competitive dynamics won’t be stable, but will eventually evolve into something else. So one would like more details on what specific mechanisms would give rise to a locked-in competitive dynamic. (By contrast, it seems to me that we do have a hunch of how a powerful global autocracy could cause a lock-in—e.g. they could use advanced surveillance, meticulously control transfers of power, etc.)
2. The post is nominally about multilateral lock-in, but it seems to me that some parts of it (e.g. section V) are concerned with demonstrating that multilateral systems have downsides in general, rather than with lock-in specifically. Though maybe I’m missing some aspect of the dialectic.
3.
But lock-in, as it is understood by EAs, contains an additional component: that the future of humanity must be locked into a highly negative end-state.
As far as I can tell, effective altruists haven’t generally seen a negative end-state as part of the definition of “lock-in”. It seems possible to be locked into a positive end-state.
4.
> [U]nless we have good reason to assume a selective process is heavily biased towards desirable states, we ought to assume that it will produce undesirable states.
I guess that sometimes we do have such reasons. E.g. the selection process may be biased towards wealth (since wealth is useful in competition) or towards making your country attractive to migrants from competitors (thereby typically making it attractive to natives as well).
Thanks for this original post.
1. Lock-in is supposed to be highly stable. As far as I understand, your argument therefore is, or rests on, the notion that competitive dynamics between multiple agents can become highly stable. But I wonder whether that’s usually the case.
For instance, you mention the wars/competition between European countries. However, these wars eventually stopped—and currently, most European countries rather cooperate as members of the European Union. I think that we have some reason to believe that that’s the default—particular competitive dynamics won’t be stable, but will eventually evolve into something else. So one would like more details on what specific mechanisms would give rise to a locked-in competitive dynamic. (By contrast, it seems to me that we do have a hunch of how a powerful global autocracy could cause a lock-in—e.g. they could use advanced surveillance, meticulously control transfers of power, etc.)
2. The post is nominally about multilateral lock-in, but it seems to me that some parts of it (e.g. section V) are concerned with demonstrating that multilateral systems have downsides in general, rather than with lock-in specifically. Though maybe I’m missing some aspect of the dialectic.
3.
As far as I can tell, effective altruists haven’t generally seen a negative end-state as part of the definition of “lock-in”. It seems possible to be locked into a positive end-state.
4.
> [U]nless we have good reason to assume a selective process is heavily biased towards desirable states, we ought to assume that it will produce undesirable states.
I guess that sometimes we do have such reasons. E.g. the selection process may be biased towards wealth (since wealth is useful in competition) or towards making your country attractive to migrants from competitors (thereby typically making it attractive to natives as well).