It confuses me that it has significant mind-share among AI safety people, e.g. @ryan_greenblatthere, despite the world in general, and technological races in particular, obviously not being zero-sum.
FWIW, I find it useful to think about strategy stealing, and don’t think it has too much mindshare. Not really sure how to productive it is to argue about that though because “too much or little mindshare” seems hard to settle.
despite the world in general, and technological races in particular, obviously not being zero-sum
Just to respond to this in particular: Some situations are close to being zero-sum, and when they’re not, I think it’s often useful to explicitly track the reason why they’re not zero-sum and how that changes the dynamics.
My impression of people invoking strategy stealing is not that they’re actually assuming it holds without argument, but instead interested in specific reasons to believe it fails in a given situation, and (if they agree those reasons are real) often interested in quantifying how significant those reasons are. Ryan’s linked comment seems like an example of this.
FWIW, I find it useful to think about strategy stealing, and don’t think it has too much mindshare. Not really sure how to productive it is to argue about that though because “too much or little mindshare” seems hard to settle.
Just to respond to this in particular: Some situations are close to being zero-sum, and when they’re not, I think it’s often useful to explicitly track the reason why they’re not zero-sum and how that changes the dynamics.
My impression of people invoking strategy stealing is not that they’re actually assuming it holds without argument, but instead interested in specific reasons to believe it fails in a given situation, and (if they agree those reasons are real) often interested in quantifying how significant those reasons are. Ryan’s linked comment seems like an example of this.