I like the terminology. I have the opposite conclusion though, at least if “king power” means the power to convince others to do things. There’s a property to a world that determines whether wizard or king power is stronger and it’s something like the variance or skew of ability*. In worlds where one person can accomplish, on their own, as much physical change as hundreds or thousands of others, wizard power is superior to king power. A powerful wizard with their magic will do more than a king with his army. In worlds where there is low variance in ability, king power is superior.
Many magical or anime worlds have high ability variance and training gains are linear or exponential instead of logarithmic or some other plateau function. Our world appears to have low variance in ability. For all the Chuck Norris memes, there is really no one who stands a chance against an army. In unarmed combat, I’d guess that we cap out around 10x, even the best fighter in the world couldn’t fight more than 10 average men simultaneously. Other fields may have different ratios, but in general it seems easier to convince/pay a team of smart people to do X than to do it yourself.
If I could take Eliezer’s or Nick Bostrom’s belief about the importance of AI safety/alignment and transfer it to Trump, I would.
*technically the ratio of this and a convinceability factor, but most fictional worlds don’t tend to alter convinceability.
I like the terminology. I have the opposite conclusion though, at least if “king power” means the power to convince others to do things. There’s a property to a world that determines whether wizard or king power is stronger and it’s something like the variance or skew of ability*. In worlds where one person can accomplish, on their own, as much physical change as hundreds or thousands of others, wizard power is superior to king power. A powerful wizard with their magic will do more than a king with his army. In worlds where there is low variance in ability, king power is superior.
Many magical or anime worlds have high ability variance and training gains are linear or exponential instead of logarithmic or some other plateau function. Our world appears to have low variance in ability. For all the Chuck Norris memes, there is really no one who stands a chance against an army. In unarmed combat, I’d guess that we cap out around 10x, even the best fighter in the world couldn’t fight more than 10 average men simultaneously. Other fields may have different ratios, but in general it seems easier to convince/pay a team of smart people to do X than to do it yourself.
If I could take Eliezer’s or Nick Bostrom’s belief about the importance of AI safety/alignment and transfer it to Trump, I would.
*technically the ratio of this and a convinceability factor, but most fictional worlds don’t tend to alter convinceability.