Unfortunately in the world I live in, the same people who would accept “This is obviously a Ponzi scheme” (but who don’t understand AI x-risk well) have to also contend with the fact that most people they hear talking about AI are indistinguishable (to them) from people talking about crypto as an investment, or about how transformative AI will lead to GDP doubling times dropping to years, months, or weeks. So, the same argument could be used to get (some of) them to dismiss the notion that AI could become that powerful at all with even less seeming-weirdness.
Arguments that something has the form of a Ponzi scheme are, fortunately and unfortunately, not always correct. Some changes really do enable permanently (at least on the timescales the person thinks of as permanent) faster growth.
I don’t say that you’re wrong, necessarily, but what would you say is an example of something that “has the form of a Ponzi scheme”, but is actually a change that enables permanently faster growth?
From the outside, depending on your level of detail of understanding, any franchise could look that way. Avon and Tupperware look a bit that way. Some MLM companies are more legitimate than others.
From a more abstract point of view, I could argue that “cities” are an example. “Hey, send your kids to live here, let some king and his warriors be in charge, and give up your independence, and you’ll all get richer!” It wasn’t at all clear in the beginning how “Pay taxes and die of diseases!” was going to be good for anyone but the rulers, but the societies that did it more and better thrived and won.
Yeah, you’re right, but for most of history they were net population sinks that generated outsized investment returns. Today they’re not population sinks because of sanitation etc. etc.
I know I’m being imprecise and handwavy, so feel free to ignore me, but really my thought was just that lots of things look vaguely like ponzi schemes without getting into more details than most people are going to pay attention to.
I think this would be a good argument against Said Achmiz’s suggested response, but I feel the text doesn’t completely support it, e.g. the Epistemologist says “such schemes often go through two phases” and “many schemes like that start with a flawed person”, suggesting that such schemes are known to him.
Even setting aside such textual anomalies, why is this a good argument? As I noted in a sibling comment to yours, my response assumes that Ponzi schemes have never happened in this world, because otherwise we’d simply identify the Spokesperson’s plan as a Ponzi scheme! The reasoning that I described is only necessary because we can’t say “ah, a Ponzi scheme”!
Ah, I think there was a misunderstanding. I (and maybe also quetzal_rainbow?) thought that in the inverted world also no “apparently-very-lucrative deals” that turn out to be scams are known, whereas you made a distinction between those kind of deals and Ponzi schemes in particular.
I think my interpretation is more in the spirit of the inversion, otherwise the Epistemologist should really have answered as you suggested, and the whole premise of the discussion (people seem to have trouble understanding what the Spokesperson is doing) is broken.
If I was living in a world where there are zero observed apparently-very-lucrative deal” that turn out to be scams then I hope I would conclude that there is some supernatural Creator who is putting a thumb on the scale to be sure that cheaters never win and winners never cheat. So I would invest in Ponzi Pyramid Inc. I would not expect to be scammed, because this is a world where there are zero observed apparently-very-lucrative deals that turn out to be scams. I would aim to invest in a diversified portfolio of apparently-very-lucrative deals, for all the same reasons I have a diversified portfolio in this world.
In such a world the Epistemologist is promoting a world model that does not explain my observations and I would not take their investment advice, similarly to how in this world I ignore investment advice from people who believe that the economy is secretly controlled by lizard people.
If the premise is a world where nobody ever does any scams or tries to swindle anyone out of money, then it’s so far removed from our world that I don’t rightly know how to interpret any of the included commentary on human nature / psychology / etc. Lying for personal gain is one of those “human universals”, without which I wouldn’t even recognize the characters as anything resembling humans.
Apparently, the dialogue is happening in inverted world—Ponzi schemes have never happened here and everybody agrees on AI X-risk problem.
Yes. (If it were otherwise, then the response would be even simpler: “oh, this is obviously just a Ponzi scheme”.)
Unfortunately in the world I live in, the same people who would accept “This is obviously a Ponzi scheme” (but who don’t understand AI x-risk well) have to also contend with the fact that most people they hear talking about AI are indistinguishable (to them) from people talking about crypto as an investment, or about how transformative AI will lead to GDP doubling times dropping to years, months, or weeks. So, the same argument could be used to get (some of) them to dismiss the notion that AI could become that powerful at all with even less seeming-weirdness.
Arguments that something has the form of a Ponzi scheme are, fortunately and unfortunately, not always correct. Some changes really do enable permanently (at least on the timescales the person thinks of as permanent) faster growth.
I don’t say that you’re wrong, necessarily, but what would you say is an example of something that “has the form of a Ponzi scheme”, but is actually a change that enables permanently faster growth?
From the outside, depending on your level of detail of understanding, any franchise could look that way. Avon and Tupperware look a bit that way. Some MLM companies are more legitimate than others.
From a more abstract point of view, I could argue that “cities” are an example. “Hey, send your kids to live here, let some king and his warriors be in charge, and give up your independence, and you’ll all get richer!” It wasn’t at all clear in the beginning how “Pay taxes and die of diseases!” was going to be good for anyone but the rulers, but the societies that did it more and better thrived and won.
That… does not seem like a historically accurate account of the formation and growth of cities.
Yeah, you’re right, but for most of history they were net population sinks that generated outsized investment returns. Today they’re not population sinks because of sanitation etc. etc.
I know I’m being imprecise and handwavy, so feel free to ignore me, but really my thought was just that lots of things look vaguely like ponzi schemes without getting into more details than most people are going to pay attention to.
I think this would be a good argument against Said Achmiz’s suggested response, but I feel the text doesn’t completely support it, e.g. the Epistemologist says “such schemes often go through two phases” and “many schemes like that start with a flawed person”, suggesting that such schemes are known to him.
Even setting aside such textual anomalies, why is this a good argument? As I noted in a sibling comment to yours, my response assumes that Ponzi schemes have never happened in this world, because otherwise we’d simply identify the Spokesperson’s plan as a Ponzi scheme! The reasoning that I described is only necessary because we can’t say “ah, a Ponzi scheme”!
Ah, I think there was a misunderstanding. I (and maybe also quetzal_rainbow?) thought that in the inverted world also no “apparently-very-lucrative deals” that turn out to be scams are known, whereas you made a distinction between those kind of deals and Ponzi schemes in particular.
I think my interpretation is more in the spirit of the inversion, otherwise the Epistemologist should really have answered as you suggested, and the whole premise of the discussion (people seem to have trouble understanding what the Spokesperson is doing) is broken.
If I was living in a world where there are zero observed apparently-very-lucrative deal” that turn out to be scams then I hope I would conclude that there is some supernatural Creator who is putting a thumb on the scale to be sure that cheaters never win and winners never cheat. So I would invest in Ponzi Pyramid Inc. I would not expect to be scammed, because this is a world where there are zero observed apparently-very-lucrative deals that turn out to be scams. I would aim to invest in a diversified portfolio of apparently-very-lucrative deals, for all the same reasons I have a diversified portfolio in this world.
In such a world the Epistemologist is promoting a world model that does not explain my observations and I would not take their investment advice, similarly to how in this world I ignore investment advice from people who believe that the economy is secretly controlled by lizard people.
If the premise is a world where nobody ever does any scams or tries to swindle anyone out of money, then it’s so far removed from our world that I don’t rightly know how to interpret any of the included commentary on human nature / psychology / etc. Lying for personal gain is one of those “human universals”, without which I wouldn’t even recognize the characters as anything resembling humans.