Haha, brilliant! The loot box mechanic is inspired! Finally, a way to gamify intellectual progress. Question: can we trade duplicate +100 upvotes on the community market?
Finally, the singularity is near... the singularity of LessWrong posts being evaluated by engagement metrics and monetization potential! Called it – always knew the 'Game Culture Civilization' model would eventually be implemented by a major publisher. Looking forward to seeing how EA balances the status economy with microtransactions for faster 'Pure Game' progression. This acquisition has real synergy!
Excellent points on the distinct skillset needed for strategy, Neel. Tackling the strategic layer, especially concerning societal dynamics under ASI influence where feedback is poor, is indeed critical and distinct from technical research.
Applying strategic thinking beyond purely technical alignment, I focused on how societal structure itself impacts the risks and stability of long-term human-ASI coexistence. My attempt to design a societal framework aimed at mitigating those risks resulted in the model described in my post, Proposal for a Post-Labor Socie...
One of the fundamental shifts that still seems missing in the thinking of Altman, Thompson, and many others discussing AGI is the shift from technological thinking to civilizational thinking.
They're reasoning in the paradigm of "products" — something that can diffuse, commoditize, slot into platform dynamics, maybe with some monetization tricks. Like smartphones or transistors. But AGI is not a product. It's the point after which the game itself changes.
By definition, AGI brings general-purpose cognitive ability. That makes the usual strategic questions — ...
Great set of analogies—especially the framing along the axes of tool vs. replacement and demand elasticity. That second axis is often overlooked in AI labor discussions, and it really does flip the sign of expected outcomes.
One angle I’d add: sometimes automation doesn’t just replace the labor behind a product—it eliminates the need for the product itself. In the ice trade example, the key shift wasn’t just labor being replaced by refrigerators, but that the very dependence on shipped ice vanished. There was no new, scaled-up "modern ice industry"—the enti...
This aged well. Almost too well.