I think you may have waded into the trees here, before taking stock of the forest. By which I mean that this problem could definitely use some formalization, and may be much more important than we expect it to be. I’ve been studying the ancient Mongols recently; their conquests tested this, and their empire had the potential to be a locked-in dystopia type of apocalypse, but they failed to create a stable internal organizational structure. Thus, a culture that optimizes for both conquest & control, at the expense of everything else, could be an existential threat to the future of humanity. I think that merits rationalist research.
So, in a superfight of Rationalists vs Barbarians, with equal resources, we can steelman the opposition by substituting in that “Barbarians” means a society 100% optimized toward conquering others & taking all their stuff, at the expense of not being optimized toward anything else. In this case, what would the “Rationalist” society be, and how could they win? Or at least not lose?
I am going to go check if there are other articles which have developed this thought experiment already.
I think you may have waded into the trees here, before taking stock of the forest. By which I mean that this problem could definitely use some formalization, and may be much more important than we expect it to be. I’ve been studying the ancient Mongols recently; their conquests tested this, and their empire had the potential to be a locked-in dystopia type of apocalypse, but they failed to create a stable internal organizational structure. Thus, a culture that optimizes for both conquest & control, at the expense of everything else, could be an existential threat to the future of humanity. I think that merits rationalist research.
So, in a superfight of Rationalists vs Barbarians, with equal resources, we can steelman the opposition by substituting in that “Barbarians” means a society 100% optimized toward conquering others & taking all their stuff, at the expense of not being optimized toward anything else. In this case, what would the “Rationalist” society be, and how could they win? Or at least not lose?
I am going to go check if there are other articles which have developed this thought experiment already.