“Postrel does describe five characteristics of ‘dynamist rules’:
As an overview, dynamist rules:
Allow individuals (including groups of individuals) to act on their own knowledge.
Apply to simple, generic units and allow them to combine in many different ways.
Permit credible, understandable, enduring, and enforceable commitments.
Protect criticism, competition, and feedback.
Establish a framework within which people can create nested, competing frameworks of more specific rules.
I see some overlap with existing ideas in AI policy:
Transparency, everyone’sfavorite consensus recommendation, fits well into a dynamist worldview. It helps with Postrel’s #1 (giving individuals access to better information that they can act on as they choose), #3 (facilitating commitments), and #4 (facilitating criticism and feedback). Ditto whistleblower protections.
Supporting the development of a third-party audit ecosystem also fits—it helps create and enforce credible commitments, per #3, and could be considered a kind of nestable framework, per #5.
The value of open models in driving decentralized use, testing, and research is obvious through a dynamist lens, and jibes with #1 and #4. (I do think there should be some precautionary friction before releasing frontier models openly, but that’s a narrow exception to the broader value of open source AI resources.)
Another good bet is differential technological development, aka defensive accelerationism—proactively building technologies that help manage challenges posed by other technologies—though I can’t easily map it onto Postrel’s five characteristics. I’d be glad to hear readers’ ideas for other productive directions to push in.”
Quick link-post highlighting Toner quoting Postrel’s dynamist rules + her commentary. I really like the dynamist rules as a part of the vision of the AGI future we should aim for:
“Postrel does describe five characteristics of ‘dynamist rules’:
I see some overlap with existing ideas in AI policy:
Transparency, everyone’s favorite consensus recommendation, fits well into a dynamist worldview. It helps with Postrel’s #1 (giving individuals access to better information that they can act on as they choose), #3 (facilitating commitments), and #4 (facilitating criticism and feedback). Ditto whistleblower protections.
Supporting the development of a third-party audit ecosystem also fits—it helps create and enforce credible commitments, per #3, and could be considered a kind of nestable framework, per #5.
The value of open models in driving decentralized use, testing, and research is obvious through a dynamist lens, and jibes with #1 and #4. (I do think there should be some precautionary friction before releasing frontier models openly, but that’s a narrow exception to the broader value of open source AI resources.)
Another good bet is differential technological development, aka defensive accelerationism—proactively building technologies that help manage challenges posed by other technologies—though I can’t easily map it onto Postrel’s five characteristics. I’d be glad to hear readers’ ideas for other productive directions to push in.”