[01] The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Title Card
YouTube Link
Status
Released
Transcription
![[01] The Prisoner's Dilemma.docx](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F99a00784-dfcd-41d5-8941-002db8ff69be%2Fddf365bb-c545-48fc-babb-c861ef90d4cd%2F01_The_Prisoners_Dilemma.docx?table=block&id=98d04957-6c59-41ac-b9f1-87369fedfd1d&cache=v2)
Air Date
Sep 12, 2023
Target: 30-45 minutes // Cap: 60 minutes
Script
Intro
<<dual screen, background visible>> Shift+1
ZFi: GM and welcome to Moloch Traps, a new podcast from the two of us here at From Aa to Zzz. I’m ZFi, this Zombie Shepherd, and we are excited to be bringing you this new show in collaboration (again) with BanklessDAO and its Audio/Visual team. To be clear, opinions in this series expressed by either of us are our own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of BanklessDAO at large.
In this series, we would like to study and discuss the first section of the "Meditations on Moloch" essay, written by Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex. The essay discusses the concept of Moloch as a representation of systems and incentives that lead to sub-optimal outcomes for both individuals and societies. The essay delves into various examples from history, biology, and economics to illustrate how competition often results in collective harm.
Now, for those unfamiliar with Moloch, I can provide this brief introduction. In ancient Canaanite tradition, Moloch was a deity symbolizing child sacrifice. According to the writings, children were offered to what was described as the opened mouth of a horned bronze statue that was heated with fire, from which they could not escape.
Today, Moloch becomes a metaphor for modern society's all-consuming forces, drawing a haunting parallel between historical ritual sacrifices and the metaphorical sacrifices demanded by today's industrialized and capitalist world.
Each episode of this series will discuss these encounters with Moloch. We will begin with a reading from Meditations On Moloch, and follow up with discussion. Listeners, we encourage you to share your commentary, stories, and perspectives so that we can collaborate in our efforts to detect and avoid the many types of Moloch Traps that we find ourselves in each day.
Let’s begin by jumping right into a reading from Howl, Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch, and an excerpt from the Meditations essay itself.
Segment 1 — The Reading
<<dramatic Zombie solo frame>> Shift+4
Zombie Shepherd:
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
<<dramatic ZFi solo frame>> mouse click to swap primary frames
ZFi:
Alexander then begins his thoughts on this poem.
(reading from Meditations)
What’s always impressed me about this poem is its conception of civilization as an individual entity. You can almost see him, with his fingers of armies and his skyscraper-window eyes.
A lot of the commentators say Moloch represents capitalism. This is definitely a piece of it, even a big piece. But it doesn’t quite fit. Capitalism, whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen? Capitalism in whom I am a consciousness without a body? Capitalism, therefore granite cocks?
Moloch is introduced as the answer to a question – C. S. Lewis’ question in Hierarchy Of Philosophers – what does it? Earth could be fair, and all men glad and wise. Instead we have prisons, smokestacks, asylums. What sphinx of cement and aluminum breaks open their skulls and eats up their imagination?
And Ginsberg answers: Moloch does it.
Alexander continues.
(reading from Meditations)
There’s a passage in the Principia Discordia where Malaclypse complains to the Goddess about the evils of human society. “Everyone is hurting each other, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.”
The Goddess answers: “What is the matter with that, if it’s what you want to do?”
Malaclypse: “But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!”
Goddess: “Oh. Well, then stop.”
The implicit question is – if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it? And Ginsberg answers: “Moloch”. It’s powerful not because it’s correct – nobody literally thinks an ancient demon causes everything – but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent.
Alexander writes further.
(reading from Meditations)
The philosopher Nick Bostrom makes an offhanded reference of the possibility of a dictatorless dystopia, one that every single citizen including the leadership hates but which nevertheless endures unconquered. It’s easy enough to imagine such a state. Picture a country with two rules: first, every person must spend eight hours a day giving themselves strong electric shocks. Second, if anyone fails to follow a rule (including this one), or speaks out against it, or fails to enforce it, all citizens must unite to kill that person. Suppose these rules were well-enough established by tradition that everyone expected them to be enforced.
So you shock yourself for eight hours a day, because you know if you don’t everyone else will kill you, because if they don’t, everyone else will kill them, and so on. Every single citizen hates the system, but for lack of a good coordination mechanism it endures. From a god’s-eye-view, we can optimize the system to “everyone agrees to stop doing this at once”, but no one within the system is able to effect the transition without great risk to themselves.
<<dual screen, full frame>> Shift+2
…Pretty dark. Alexander admits this example is a bit contrived, but he continues in the essay with a slew of real world examples of similar multipolar traps to emphasize its importance. In today’s episode we’ll start with his first example, the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Segment 2 — The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Zombie Shepherd:
Scott Alexander sets up the first example as follows.
(reading from Meditations)
The Prisoner’s Dilemma, as played by two very dumb libertarians who keep ending up on defect-defect. There’s a much better outcome available if they could figure out the coordination, but coordination is hard. From a god’s-eye-view, we can agree that cooperate-cooperate is a better outcome than defect-defect, but neither prisoner within the system can make it happen.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory where two individuals, faced with the choice to cooperate or betray each other, often end up choosing betrayal to maximize their own benefit, even though mutual cooperation would have resulted in a better outcome for both.
Segment 3 — Open Discussion
Zombie Shepherd notes:
Defecting is the best possible outcome in a single game
Tit for Tat - cooperate until your opponent defects, retaliate if they defect
Forgiving Tit for Tat - don’t retaliate every time they defect
Aggressive strategy - defecting at a cooperative opponent until they begin defecting then you cooperate with them.
Be nice (don’t defect first), forgiving (don’t defect forever), Be provokeable (defect when necessary)
ZFi notes:
if you’re going to team up to do crime, also team up to do the time… because when you do it together, you can get back to crimeimg together sooner!
additionally, don’t team up to do a one-time crime with a one-time crime partner, or you’re bound to get rekt by the defekt.
also, maybe try not to crime? society as a whole works better without crime. cooperate-cooperate.
Conclusion
<<dual screen with background visible>> Shift+1
Zombie Shepherd: (start and then hand off as appropriate)
Where did we identify a Moloch trap?
👉
How can one avoid it?
👉
What would YOU do? @listener?
Outro
Zombie Shepherd:
Thanks for watching today’s episode of Moloch Traps. We hope you enjoy this series. As always, none of what we say is legal or financial advice, and we encourage listeners to do their own research in these areas before making any related decisions.
If you find our content informational, educational, or entertaining, and would like to support us, please collect these episodes on Lens. 18% of proceeds go back to BanklessDAO, 2% supports Lenstube for hosting our videos, and the rest helps to make From Aa to Zzz productions possible.
To stay on top of our weekly series, subscribe to us on the BanklessDAO YouTube. Don’t forget to like and comment while you’re there!
We’ll see you next time, frens!
Clickbait Titles and Descriptions