[beaconstudios]

as the saying goes, the lunatics are running the asylum.

In reality it's all systemic pressures everywhere and nobody, not even institutional administrators, likely have much in the way of free choice over anything that matters.

[Schroedingersat]

The rationalist celebrities could look more at dynamical systems, but then they'd have to admit that systematic effects exist and that daddy Thiel et al are using them to f* everyone over forever in order to pad their already bloated wallets.

[beaconstudios]

True, being a libertarian does disincentivise looking at systems and systemic effects because the biggest system we live in is capitalism and the systemic analyses that have already been done on it don't paint the prettiest picture.

[Schroedingersat]

Moloch will eat us all.

[beaconstudios]

indeed he will, unless we learn how to manipulate him. This is why I'm confused as to why rationalists seem to have done basically no research into complexity theory (systems/cybernetics). Scott Alexander's done the Moloch pieces, and this one article on dynamical systems [1] but aside from that the closest they get is machine learning, which is a descendant.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatri...