It seems to me that the greatest winners in real life are the people who spend their actual effort on getting as large part of the pie as possible, while convincing everyone around them that the virtuous thing is growing the pie. Imagine someone like Sam Altman—convince lots of smart people with technical skills to create an “open” AI to benefit the entire humanity… then stab them in the back and make the AI company closed and profit-oriented.
In my experience, this seems more like a rule than an exception. This is how people get to the top. You need to talk a lot about growing the pie… if you can’t inspire enough people to do it, the pie won’t grow large enough. But while everyone around you is busy growing the pie, you set up the mechanism that will allow you to take it all.
Now, we have some mechanisms to prevent this kind of traps. There are free software licenses, which prevent the project leader from simply kicking out the developers after they have completed their work, and capturing the long-term value. There are cooperatives, which prevent the boss from capturing the long-term value of the company and kicking out the early employees who burned out working for him. But of course, the people who plan to capture the value will try to discourage others from using these solutions. “Just trust me, bro.”
I mean, I am totally in favor of cooperation, but optimism alone is not enough. Sometimes, if you spend 5 seconds—not even minutes—thinking about it, you can predict who will get the pie and how, because it is often trivial. It typically only requires them to say “I don’t need you anymore” after the pie is ready.
But I am mostly thinking about how powerful meta move is it to invent mechanisms that prevent pies from being confiscated. Something like GNU GPL that helped create the entire ecosystem of free software. I can easily imagine a parallel universe where this license does not exist, and people not only can’t imagine it, but many of them signal cleverness by economical arguments why something like this is impossible in principle.
What other anti-pie-grabbing mechanisms exist in parallel universes but not in ours?
It seems to me that the greatest winners in real life are the people who spend their actual effort on getting as large part of the pie as possible, while convincing everyone around them that the virtuous thing is growing the pie. Imagine someone like Sam Altman—convince lots of smart people with technical skills to create an “open” AI to benefit the entire humanity… then stab them in the back and make the AI company closed and profit-oriented.
In my experience, this seems more like a rule than an exception. This is how people get to the top. You need to talk a lot about growing the pie… if you can’t inspire enough people to do it, the pie won’t grow large enough. But while everyone around you is busy growing the pie, you set up the mechanism that will allow you to take it all.
Now, we have some mechanisms to prevent this kind of traps. There are free software licenses, which prevent the project leader from simply kicking out the developers after they have completed their work, and capturing the long-term value. There are cooperatives, which prevent the boss from capturing the long-term value of the company and kicking out the early employees who burned out working for him. But of course, the people who plan to capture the value will try to discourage others from using these solutions. “Just trust me, bro.”
I mean, I am totally in favor of cooperation, but optimism alone is not enough. Sometimes, if you spend 5 seconds—not even minutes—thinking about it, you can predict who will get the pie and how, because it is often trivial. It typically only requires them to say “I don’t need you anymore” after the pie is ready.
Please don’t be exploited by Sam Altman. Also, please don’t be Sam Altman. You should not be Sam Altman.
Okay, I’ll try.
But I am mostly thinking about how powerful meta move is it to invent mechanisms that prevent pies from being confiscated. Something like GNU GPL that helped create the entire ecosystem of free software. I can easily imagine a parallel universe where this license does not exist, and people not only can’t imagine it, but many of them signal cleverness by economical arguments why something like this is impossible in principle.
What other anti-pie-grabbing mechanisms exist in parallel universes but not in ours?