Maybe we're not doomed

Manfred

This is prompted by Scott's excellent article, Meditations on Moloch.

I might caricature (grossly unfairly) his post like this:

Map some central problems for humanity onto the tragedy of the commons.
Game theory says we're doomed.

Of course my life is pretty nice right now. But, goes the story, this is just a non-equilibrium starting period. We're inexorably progressing towards a miserable Nash equilibrium, and once we get there we'll be doomed forever. (This forever loses a bit of foreverness if one expects everything to get interrupted by self-improving AI, but let's elide that.)

There are a few ways we might not be doomed. The first and less likely is that people will just decide not to go to their doom, even though it's the Nash equilibrium. To give a totally crazy example, suppose there were two countries playing a game where the first one to launch missiles had a huge advantage. And neither country trusts the other, and there are multiple false alarms - thus pushing the situation to the stable Nash equilibrium of both countries trying to launch first. Except imagine that somehow, through some heroic spasm of insanity, these two countries just decided not to nuke each other. That's the sort of thing it would take.

Of course, people are rarely able to be that insane, so success that way should not be counted on. But on the other hand, if we're doomed forever such events will eventually occur - like a bubble of spontaneous low entropy spawning intelligent life in a steady-state universe.

The second and most already-implemented way is to jump outside the system and change the game to a non-doomed one. If people can't share the commons without defecting, why not portion it up into private property? Or institute government regulations? Or iterate the game to favor tit-for-tat strategies? Each of these changes has costs, but if the wage of the current game is 'doom,' each player has an incentive to change the game.

Scott devotes a sub-argument to why we're still doomed to things be miserable if we solve coordination problems with government:

Incentives for government employees sometimes don't match the needs of the people.
This has costs, and those costs help explain why some things that suck, suck.

I agree with this, but not all governments are equally costly as coordination technologies. Heck, not all governments even are a technology for improving peoples' lives - look at North Korea. My point is that there's no particular reason that costs can't be small, with sufficiently advanced cultural technology.

More interesting to me than government is the idea of iterating a game to to encourage cooperation. In the normal prisoner's dilemma game, the only Nash equilibrium is defect-defect and so the prisoners are doomed. But if you have to play the prisoner's dilemma game repeatedly, with a variety of other players, the best strategy turns out to be a largely cooperative one. This evasion of doom gives every player an incentive to try and replace one-shot dilemmas with iterated ones. Could Scott's post look like this?

Map some central problems for humanity onto the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Evolutionary game theory says we're not doomed.

In short, I think this idea of "if you know the Nash equilibrium sucks, everyone will help you change the game" is an important one. Though given human irrationality, game-theoretic predictions (whether of eventual doom or non-doom) should be taken less than literally.

This is prompted by Scott's excellent article, Meditations on Moloch.

I might caricature (grossly unfairly) his post like this:

Map some central problems for humanity onto the tragedy of the commons.
Game theory says we're doomed.

Scott devotes a sub-argument to why we're still doomed to things be miserable if we solve coordination problems with government:

Incentives for government employees sometimes don't match the needs of the people.
This has costs, and those costs help explain why some things that suck, suck.

Map some central problems for humanity onto the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Evolutionary game theory says we're not doomed.

From the FDA perspective 23andme has the burden of proof.

It's nice to have the guns.

If you get completely different answer based on the company that you ask about your risk, do you really think that's no issue?

Discrepant diagnoses are hardly a new issue in medicine.

I'd note that the article you referred to is almost 5 years old now. How much more data does 23andMe have to make accurate predictions? A good order of magnitude at least.

How much more will they have next year? Not so much more, as our benevolent protectors have stopped their data collection efforts.

Yes, it would be nice if medicine got a lot better. They'd make predictions, they'd predict the same things, and they'd be right.

It doesn't get better by preventing data collection efforts. It doesn't get better by preventing prediction efforts. Get the FDA out of the way, and we'd have free GoogleCare in a couple of years for most routine doctor visits.

In the article you link, Ventner mentioned

a call to use more markers that provide information on risk factors for taking medication

This is actually the prime use for 23andMe info right now, and was useful 5 years ago. You get info on your particular genotype for some enzymes, which largely determines how well you metabolize different drugs. Turns out I'm a poor metabolizer for the enzyme that metabolizes a drug I was given years ago, and had a bad reaction to. Whaddya know, this crazy science stuff actually works.

A lot of drugs fail in stage 4 trials. Would you really want to have all those drugs on the market?

Yes. And that's even if I don't get the FDA incinerated in the bargain.

Having the drugs on the market doesn't require anyone to use them, it only allows them to use them. Many drugs with failed trials would likely be very useful for a lot of people. And they still have to get permission from a duly deputized agent of the state to get a prescription. Bah! What do doctors know about medicine? About your health? It's not like they're the all knowing, all seeing FDA apparatchiks.

How charming it is that we have to get permission to try to heal ourselves.

By the way, Stage 4 trials? You're talking Phase 4 monitoring?

Get the FDA out of the way, and we'd have free GoogleCare in a couple of years for most routine doctor visits.

I'm not aware that the FDA was responsible for Google ending Google Health.

By the way, Stage 4 trials? You're talking Phase 4 monitoring?

Sorry I was mentally starting to count with 1 and not 0.

Having the drugs on the market doesn't require anyone to use them, it only allows them to use them.

The question would be whether the companies would still run the trials if they weren't legally mandated. Trials are expensive and if the government w... (read more)

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