Max Tegmark

The right thing to do is change the whole incentive structure instead.

And this is not an old, maybe I should say one more thing about this, because Moloch has been around as humanity's number one or number two enemy since the beginning of civilization.

And we came up with some really cool countermeasures.

First of all, already over 100,000 years ago, evolution realized that it was very unhelpful that people kept killing each other all the time.

So it genetically gave us compassion.

and made it so that if you get two drunk dudes getting into a pointless bar fight, they might give each other black eyes, but they have a lot of inhibition towards just killing each other.

And similarly, if you find a baby lying on the street when you go out for your morning jog tomorrow, you're gonna stop and pick it up, right?

Even though it may make you late for your next podcast.

So evolution gave us these genes that make our own egoistic incentives more aligned with what's good for the greater group we're part of, right?

And then as we got a bit more sophisticated and developed language, we invented gossip, which is also a fantastic anti-Moloch, right?

Because now it really discourages people

liars, moochers, cheaters, because their own incentive now is not to do this because word quickly gets around and then suddenly people aren't going to invite them to their dinners anymore or trust them.

And then when we got still more sophisticated in bigger societies, you know, invented the legal system where even strangers who couldn't rely on gossip and things like this would treat each other, would have an incentive.

Now those guys in the bar fight, even if someone is so drunk that he...

actually wants to kill the other guy.

He also has a little thought in the back of his head that, you know, do I really wanna spend the next 10 years eating like really crappy food in a small room?

I'm just gonna chill out, you know?

And we similarly have tried to give these incentives to our corporations by having regulation and all sorts of oversight so that their incentives are aligned with the greater good.

We tried really hard.

And the big problem that we're failing now is not that we haven't tried before, but it's just that the tech is growing much, is developing much faster than the regulators have been able to keep up, right?