[An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git] /

Title: "Friends Can Change the World"; Or, Request for Social Technology: Credit-Assignment Rituals
Date: 2017-03-09 19:00
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe
Slug: friends-can-change-the-world-or-request-for-social-technology-credit-assignment-rituals

As a human living in a human civilization, it's tempting to think that social reality _mostly_ makes sense. Everyone _allegedly_ knows that institutions are flawed and that our leaders are merely flawed humans. Everyone wants to think that they're sufficiently edgy and cynical, that they've _seen through_ the official lies to the true, gritty reality.

But what if ... what if almost no one is edgy and cynical _enough_? Like, the only reason you _think_ there's a true, gritty reality out there that you _think_ you can see through to is because you're a _predatory animal_ with a brain designed by evolution to _murder_ other forms of life for the benefit of you, your family, and your friends.

To the extent that we have this glorious technological civilization that keeps most of us mostly safe and mostly happy most of the time, it's _mostly_ because occasionally, one of the predatory animals happens to try out a behavior that happens to be useful, and then all of her friends copy it, and then all of the animals have the behavior.

Some conceited assholes who think they're smart also like to talk about things that they think make the last five hundred years or whatever different: things like _science_ (a social competition that incentivizes the animals to try to mirror the process of Bayesian updating), _markets_ (a pattern of incentives that mirrors the [Bayes-structure](http://lesswrong.com/lw/o7/searching_for_bayesstructure/) of the microeconomic theory), or _democracy_ (a corporate governance structure that mirrors the Bayes-structure of counterfactual civil war amongst equals).

These causal processes are useful and we should continue to cooperate with them. They _sort of_ work. But they don't work _very well_. We're _mostly_ still animals organized into interlocking control systems that suppress variance.

Thus—

[School Is Not About Learning](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about-learning.html)  
[Politics Is Not About Policy](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politics-isnt-a.html)  
Effective Altruism Doesn't Work; Try to Master Unadulterated Effective First  
 Ideology Makes You Stupid  
Status Makes You Stupid  
Institutions Don't Work  
Discourse Doesn't Work  
Language Doesn't Work  
No One Knows Anything  
No One Has Ever Known Anything  
Don't Read the Comments  
Never Read the Comments  
∀_x_ ∀_y_, _x_ Is Not About _y_  
X Has Never Been About Y  
[Enjoy Arby's](https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys)

But _this is crazy_. Suppressing variance _feels_ like a good idea because variance is scary (because it means very bad things could happen as well as very good things, and bad things are scarier than good things are fun) and we want to be safe. But like, the way to _actually_ make yourself safer is by acquiring optimization power, and then spending some of the power on safety measures! And the way you acquire optimization power is by _increasing_ variance and then rewarding the successes!

Anyway, maybe someone should be looking for social technologies that mirror the Bayes-structure of the universe sort of like how science, markets, or democracy do, but which also take into account that we're not anything remotely like agents and are instead animals that want to help our friends. (["We need game theory for monkeys and game theory for rocks."](https://youtu.be/6cSG0p-uflA?t=33m48s))

So, I had an idea. You know how some people say we should [fund the solutions to problems with after-the-fact prizes](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/be-a-charity-angel.html), rather than picking a team in advance that we think might solve the problem and funding them? What if ... you did something like that, but on a _much_ smaller scale? A _personal_ scale.

Like, suppose you've just successfully navigated a major personal life crisis that could have gone _much_ worse if it weren't for some of the people in your life (both thanks to direct help they provided during the crisis, and things you learned from them that made you the sort of person that could navigate the crisis successfully). These people don't and shouldn't _expect_ a reward (that's what friends are for) ... but maybe you could reward them _anyway_ (with a special emphasis on people who helped you in low-status ways that you didn't understand at the time) in some sort of public ritual, to make them more powerful and incentivize others to emulate them, thereby increasing the [measure](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/08/measure/) of algorithms that result in humans successfully navigating major personal life crises.

It might look something like this—

* If you have some spare [money](http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/) lying around, set aside some of it for rewarding the people you want to reward. If you don't have any spare money lying around, this ritual will be _less effective_! Maybe you should fix that!
* Decide how much of the money you want to use to reward each of the people you want to reward.

(_Note_: giving away something as powerful as money carries risks of breeding dependence and resentment if such gifts come to be expected! If people _know_ that you've been going through a crisis and anyone so much as _hints_ that _they_ think _they_ deserve an award, that person is _missing the point_ and therefore does not deserve an award.)

* Privately go to each of the people, explain all this, and give them the amount of money you decided to give them. Make it _very clear_ that this is a special unilateral one-time award made for decision-theoretic reasons and that it's very important that they accept it in the service of your mutual [coherent extrapolated volition](https://arbital.com/p/cev/) in accordance with the Bayes-structure of the universe. Refuse to accept words of thanks (it's not about you; it's not about me; it's about _credit-assignment_). If they try to refuse the money, explain that you will _literally_ burn that much money in paper currency if they don't take it. (Shredding instead of burning is also acceptable.)
* Ask if they'd like to be publicly named and praised as having received an award as part of the credit-assignment ritual. (Remember that it's quite possible and understandable and good that they might want to accept the money, but _not_ be publicly praised by you. After all, if you're the sort of person who is considering actually doing this, you're probably kind of weird! Maybe people don't want to be associated with you!)
* To complete the ritual, publish a blog post naming the people and the the awards they received. People who prefered not to be named should be credited as Anonymous Friend A, B, C, _&c_. Also list the amount of money you burned or shredded if anyone foolishly rejected their award in defiance of the Bayes-structure of the universe. Do _not_ explain the nature of the crisis or how the named people helped you. (You might want to tell the story in a _different_ post, but that's not part of the ritual, which is about credit-assignment.)