The point of games is the games themselves, and “games” are wider than “winning”. That which restricts goodhart’s law is a holistic perspective (because it’s not a single factor, at least in a way).
If you play for personal enjoyment, then the optimal strategy for yourself is also subjective, which adds a sort of diversity (playstyles and tendencies) rather than converging towards a handful of strategies (meta-gaming)
To generalize, the problem with Mollock is how society degenerates, losing its humanity as everything tends towards mathematical rules. If you think logically enough, these rules will bind you, you will have no choice but making the optimal choice. If you’re unluckly, you possess enough self-awareness to see that the summation of locally optimal choices results in (or tends towards) a terrible global state.
Funnilly enough, while this problem is unsolvable, there’s still a way to avoid it. All it takes is for one to not be aware of the problem in the first place! There’s a correspondence between problems and solutions, following newton’s third law. The real solution is to throw out the problem, not solving it. A sort of Buddhist “Letting go” of a conflict (what you resist, persists)
Edit: Perhaps I should explain: If most people present are trying to have a good time rather than just optimizing, then there will be no pressure for you to optimize either. These issues were less common in the past because we were more ignorant. An example is how we could enjoy vanilla World of Warcraft because the strategies weren’t well-known to most users. Information is too redibly available nowadays, so I’m not sure that these old gaming communities can come to exist again.
The point of games is the games themselves, and “games” are wider than “winning”. That which restricts goodhart’s law is a holistic perspective (because it’s not a single factor, at least in a way).
If you play for personal enjoyment, then the optimal strategy for yourself is also subjective, which adds a sort of diversity (playstyles and tendencies) rather than converging towards a handful of strategies (meta-gaming)
To generalize, the problem with Mollock is how society degenerates, losing its humanity as everything tends towards mathematical rules. If you think logically enough, these rules will bind you, you will have no choice but making the optimal choice. If you’re unluckly, you possess enough self-awareness to see that the summation of locally optimal choices results in (or tends towards) a terrible global state.
Funnilly enough, while this problem is unsolvable, there’s still a way to avoid it. All it takes is for one to not be aware of the problem in the first place! There’s a correspondence between problems and solutions, following newton’s third law. The real solution is to throw out the problem, not solving it. A sort of Buddhist “Letting go” of a conflict (what you resist, persists)
Edit: Perhaps I should explain: If most people present are trying to have a good time rather than just optimizing, then there will be no pressure for you to optimize either. These issues were less common in the past because we were more ignorant. An example is how we could enjoy vanilla World of Warcraft because the strategies weren’t well-known to most users. Information is too redibly available nowadays, so I’m not sure that these old gaming communities can come to exist again.