In hunter-gatherers, trust is generally established under conditions of scarcity, when people develop networks of social reciprocity for food-sharing, child-care, sickenss-care, and catastrophe-avoidance. Only when people face starvation, illness, disasters, or warfare can they learn who they can really trust. And the trust functions mostly for risk-pooling.
By contrast, only under conditions of local abundance—e.g. unusually high-productivity hunter-gatherer environments (e.g. pacific northwest salmon & shellfish areas), or farming with agricultural surpluses—do we see a lot of top-down hierarchical coercion, with persistent inequality, divisions of labor, despotism, harems, large-scale warfare, etc.
Only when people face starvation, illness, disasters, or warfare can they learn who they can really trust.
Isn’t this approximately equivalent to the claim that trust becomes much more risky/costly under conditions of scarcity?
only under conditions of local abundance do we see a lot of top-down hierarchical coercion
Yeah, this is an interesting point. I think my story here is that we need to talk about abundance at different levels. E.g. at the highest level (will my country/civilization survive?) you should often be in scarcity mindset, because losing one war is disastrous. Whereas at lower levels (e.g. will my city survive?) you can have more safety: your city is protected by your country (and your family is protected by your city, and you’re protected by your family, and so on).
And so even when we face serious threats, we need to apply coercion only at the appropriate levels. AI is a danger on a civilizational level; but the best way to deal with danger on a civilizational level is via cultivating abundance at the level of your own community, since that’s the only way it’ll be able to make a difference at that higher level.
Counterpoint:
In hunter-gatherers, trust is generally established under conditions of scarcity, when people develop networks of social reciprocity for food-sharing, child-care, sickenss-care, and catastrophe-avoidance. Only when people face starvation, illness, disasters, or warfare can they learn who they can really trust. And the trust functions mostly for risk-pooling.
By contrast, only under conditions of local abundance—e.g. unusually high-productivity hunter-gatherer environments (e.g. pacific northwest salmon & shellfish areas), or farming with agricultural surpluses—do we see a lot of top-down hierarchical coercion, with persistent inequality, divisions of labor, despotism, harems, large-scale warfare, etc.
Isn’t this approximately equivalent to the claim that trust becomes much more risky/costly under conditions of scarcity?
Yeah, this is an interesting point. I think my story here is that we need to talk about abundance at different levels. E.g. at the highest level (will my country/civilization survive?) you should often be in scarcity mindset, because losing one war is disastrous. Whereas at lower levels (e.g. will my city survive?) you can have more safety: your city is protected by your country (and your family is protected by your city, and you’re protected by your family, and so on).
And so even when we face serious threats, we need to apply coercion only at the appropriate levels. AI is a danger on a civilizational level; but the best way to deal with danger on a civilizational level is via cultivating abundance at the level of your own community, since that’s the only way it’ll be able to make a difference at that higher level.