Top Highlights

• The Dunning-Kruger effect shows that unskilled individuals often rate their own skill very highly.
• Moloch’s Toolbox There’s a toolbox of reusable concepts for analyzing systems I would call “inadequate”—the causes of civilizational failure, some of which correspond to local opportunities to do better yourself. I shall, somewhat arbitrarily, sort these concepts into three larger categories: Decisionmakers who are not beneficiaries; Asymmetric inf...
• goes to Craigslist, because that’s their individually best move given that everyone else is going to Craigslist.
• A “Pareto optimum” is any situation where it’s impossible to make every actor better off simultaneously,
• Being stuck in an inferior Nash equilibrium is how I’d describe the frustrating aspect of the two-factor market of buyers and sellers that can’t switch from Craigslist to Danslist. The scenario where everyone is using Danslist would be a stable Nash equilibrium, and a better Nash equilibrium. We just can’t get there from here. There’s no one actor ...