“Meditations on Moloch” is not your typical internet post, it’s not your typical SlateStar post. Like a giant granite cock, it towers above the rest. There are several ways a post can get permanently lodged into memory. One way is to present an idea so foundational that after you read it, you wonder how on earth anybody ever thinks differently. Making beliefs pay rent is the main example of this kind. Another way is to cast the net of ideas so far out there that you come back to it again and again to get new nuggets of wisdom.

I recommend reading it first (it’s 10000 words+) and then this (3000 words+). If you intend to get through everything in one sitting I recommend getting comfy with some Pink Floyd on the background. Note, the warning in front of Meditations also applies here. I am going to be throwing ideas about Eldrich Abominations at you at about 100 miles per hour, many of which are experimental and untested and probably not meant to be read by anyone.



First thing first, Moloch, according to Scott and Neoreaction is the union of 4 blind idiot gods that rule over our lives – Azathoth evolution, Cthulhu memetics, Ares war, Mamon capitalism.



I think they are missing one. Hedonism - YogSothoth Shub-Niggurath. (Somebody on reddit familiar with LoveCraft pointed out that Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, is a better diety to pick here.) Hedonism, although a product of evolution, can be seen a separate process. When ether somebody decides to binge eat a bucket of ice cream or spend entire day playing hearthstone, this isn’t a call of evolution. This is “adaptation execution”, not “fitness maximization.” Many of your impulses are indeed quite helpful in protecting you from harm, however this are times when it will lead you astray. This is similar to the idea that many ways to earn money involve generating something of value for society, but some do not.



Why add a new one? Primarily because the now 5 stages of Moloch (evolution, hedonism, memetics, violence and capitalism) match up nicely with the 5 skandhas of Buddhism (form, sensation, conception, volition and consciousness). 5 skandhas, so the story goes, unite together to create the self (or the illusion of the self) and one’s liberation can be seen through the progress through all the skandhas – creation of a healthy body free from sickness for form, addictions / desires for sensation, unwanted thoughts for conception, removal of unethical impulses in volition and to be completely honest, I am still working out what the consciousness bit means in that context.

The recommendation is to free yourself from the skandhas in that general order, but that’s a longer story.



Ok, you guys, Capitalism is actually kind of cool

Despite the general praise for the post, I do have a few gripes with how he somewhat carelessly handles the word “capitalism.” Generally speaking, when people complain about capitalism they are complaining about “competition” or “inequality” or a “a particular system of producing goods that relies on money.” Sometimes it is simply signaling and there is no underlying reality behind the complaint.

Generally speaking, when anarcho-capitalists praise “capitalism,” they are praising the “set of all things that are not first-strike violence”. Violence in this case is viewed as everything the government / mafia and other organizations of the sort do. So donating to charity, dating and lots of other things that don’t involve money are seen as “capitalism” by ancaps, as long as they involve “consent.” So a good synonym for this is “consent culture” or “pacifism.”



This is not a trivial disagreement about how to use the word.



When I read some of my Dad’s stories about life in the Soviet Union, I get fairly depressed. “This one summer a kid hurt his foot and it wouldn’t heal because there was an ongoing shoe deficit and he had to walk barefoot. Oh and by the way this other woman’s husband was in sent to the gulags, but her son managed to snag a prestigious spot in the university, so maybe he can escape towards the city life.” – kind of stuff.



So when I read complains about capitalism, mind generally translates into statement of the form: “Consent” / “peace” are bad somehow. Now it’s one thing when somebody bites the violence bullet, accepts the definition and begins to say that yes, violence is bad, but some problems might demand it and then utilitarianism over-rides deontological pacifist considerations. (SlateStar is doing so in a different post). I still disagree, but at least it’s intellectually honest.



It’s completely different story when somebody denies capitalism = pacifism equation and begins to push that the definition is different. Yes, their definition is somehow different, but the general belief that “systems that complain about capitalism are generally more prone to violence / collapse” pays more rent than most other historical beliefs. And you can see it coming from a mile away.



I want to point out that there are two stances on capitalism:



Strong stance (anarcho-capitalist / deontological):

Capitalism is inherently right the same way slavery is inherently wrong. Moral frameworks are either subjective, or nihilistic / so hard to express verbally, which creates an even further uncertainty about pushing one side of the argument with force.



Weak stance (everybody else on the right):

In the face of lots of uncertainty and lack of strong evidence, it’s worth doing a fallback on the things that people consent to naturally and people that have been shown to work in the past. Even if a particular piece of government can make things better, it’s worth having the government be able to focus on only a few things so it can do them well. Particular instances on usage of coercion can be justified, but the burden of proof is always on the person using violence, rather than the other way around.



I support both, but the weak stance is *obviously* correct and even that gets argued against.



I get the idea that a granite cock might not be the best usage of society’s money, although it’s not necessarily obvious if there is enough people involved for whom it gives pleasure to offset the counterfactual QALYs elsewhere. However, if we are not careful in distinguishing complaining about process vs outcomes, careful view of which metrics one might use to distinguish / measure policies, then we will swing straight from granite cocks into absence of toilet paper.



Let’s go back to Moloch.

The actual key insight is not about the so-called excesses of capitalism, but the idea that Moloch is present elsewhere, in particular memetics.

Scott is being careful here, and his caution is warranted. In my experience this is a touchy subject.

The problems with memetics are best explained in “Toxoplasma of Rage” as well in Robin Hanson’s signaling ideas. The thing that drives news media, re-sharing on social media sites are things like controversy and signaling. True and important insights do not get comments and engagement.



I don’t even have to go as far as toxoplasma of rage to warn about dangers of memetics. In an intense battle for one’s attention, all that matters is the ability of the meme to spread itself. If it can sacrifice truth, positive impact and relative importance in favor of ability to self-replicate, it will. Memes that do not do this will be simply out-competed by one’s that do. Think about that the next time you use words and stuff.



Moloch has designed this language on which you implement this thought.



There does not exist a “dictator / president / government” violently forcing discussions to go in a particular direction in any of the same way that there exist governments pushing trade in a particular direction. One could *in theory* imagine if un-incentivized benevolent dictator of usage of discussion space mandated to every single human being on the planet what can and can’t be talked about, then our discussions would be different.



One can easily imagine how the current discourse could be improved. With a benevolent dictator It is likely that we would hear a lot more about humanity’s united frontal assault on malaria. The strategies would be known, the battle plans would be critiqued, Against Malaria Foundation would not have any room for more funding. The maps designating where the evil of the parasite still remains would be displayed on the news daily. Those on the front lines would be hailed as true heroes. There are of course other issues, but it’s an example of something that a truly utilitarian dictator could *force* humanity to discuss.

You don’t have to have a dictator. Perhaps there could be some democratic decision making process on tabooing certain types of discussions or mandating a % of yearly words for each person to be directed to particular societal goals whether they like this or not.



<Sacrasm> In other words, if we applied complete or partial violent control over all conversations, we would enter a glorious future of prosperity and immortality. </sarcasm>



No, of course, there are problems. Dictators can’t be trusted. Controlling everyone has overhead. People get upset due to loss of freedoms even if there was some sort of vote. The same problems that actually occur when trade / labor are taxed and regulated.



#LeaveMamonAloneRightNow #NotAllEldrichAbominations



In absence of such a dictator our discussion is left to the mercy of Cthulhu. Truth and importance take a back seat, so we are left with debates about Peter Thiel’s funding of a lawsuit about somebody’s sex tape, instead of say … just about anything else.

Speaking of memes. There is a meme in the rationality circles that has arisen as a result of this post, which goes something along the lines of: “let’s slay Moloch dead,” to which I want to scream on top of my lungs.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE MOLOCH!



Moloch Has You



The general idea I am trying to convey particularly with the inclusion of Hedonism as one of the 5 is that there is nothing OUTSIDE of moloch, despite the constant desire to assert that there is. Your body is a product of evolution, you are excited to read this post in part for the pretty pictures, in part of desire to catch up on new information. Status, signaling and belonging and driving many of your actions. All of this is powered by some giant tech company.

Moloch is everywhere, even now on this very blog.

You, me, this post, Tumblr are all part of Moloch.

Especially Tumblr.

Many attempts to stand “outside” of Moloch or “defeat Moloch” are simply shifting power from one correlated with ultimate value, but ultimately unfriendly optimization process to another correlated with ultimate value, but ultimately unfriendly optimization process (most commonly Cthulhu / Ares memetics / signalling / status /violence).



The prison example is telling. Lots of people complain about private prisons because they see that the gradient of the prison incentives is to have more people in prison and they are not comfortable with that. Scott is right to complain about the idea that putting the pressure of “being tough on crime” on politicians is putting the gradient of democratic / voting / status incentives in the same direction. Along with the drug war, “tough on crime” and “jail them all mentality” are responsible for a far bigger share of the ballooning prison population than the private prisons. This idea does get tossed around, but it is not the automatic response in the reddit threads about private prisons.

Let’s look at the so-called “human values” that Scott lists:

Art, science, love, philosophy, consciousness itself

A) art

First of all, is a popular video game like hearthstone art? If you have to ponder this question for even a millisecond longer than the question of “is Mona Lisa art?” this is evidence you do not consider a popular video game a central example of “Art.”

What is the difference between the Mona Lisa and hearthstone? Mona Lisa is exclusive.

This reminds of the time a journalist wandered into an EA meeting with an agenda of complaining that saving lives is “ignoring art.” Upon reflection and some reading of Robin Hanson, it seems that EA is threatening because it is ignoring the usual signals of high status and replacing them with something completely foreign.

In other words, kids these days and their conspicuous life-saving.

Far being from a human “value”, art is simply one of the expressions of a zero-sum status game subject to Molochian forces.

On a good day art gives some pleasure and inspiration, on a bad day it becomes a lost purpose disconnected even from those. In fact, isn’t a granite cock art as well?



The image above is stolen from the internet. The caption is original. I too, am an artist.

b) Science was already fairly bad-mouthed in the post itself. People certainly say they fucking love science, as long as they don’t have to do any of this really hard statistics, hypothesis testing, baysean rationality, and the other things associated with good science. Science is “at best” an instrumental value, and elevating it to status of a terminal value is strange stretch.

c) Love

Ok, love does sound like the closest so far to “actual human values.” Love is a great and wonderful and awesome. Probably not advisable to pronounce it on the first date unless you want to sound *very* weird. If un-reciprocated, can be a significant cause of suffering, which makes this an unusual thing to value intrinsically compared to even something as basic as sex. If you had a button which when being pushed would make you “fall in love” with everyone in the world, would you push it? Love is an obvious product of evolution, and should probably be best classified under Hedonism with other addictions.

d) Philosophy

An important thing to get right this time before the whole General AI gets it wrong. Also a favorite past time of white guys in ivory towers with lots of free time. Philosophy does not get a free pass from the memetic forces that it is implemented on. Its usefulness is still super-ceded with how easily it spreads.

e) consciousness. The last thing to free oneself from according to Buddhism.

I don’t mean to be too much of a downer here. I enjoy being conscious, love, art, science and philosophy. (translation: I maintain a body temperature roughly in the 90’s and I am relatively high status).

It’s just that to say that Moloch is threatening those values is missing the point.

Those values *are* not Elua’s values. They are Moloch’s values; they seem like Elua’s because that’s what high status humans can say they value in the current memetic environment.



I am not that afraid that a Molochian Artificial General Intelligence will destroy art, science or philosophy.



I am more afraid of them tiling the universe with Mona Lisas, science papers, dank memes or simulations of trolley problems.



The things Scott says are “values” are still not the thing “that is safe to maximize at the expense of all else.” The thing that satisfies THAT criteria is Elua’s actual value.



When looking from sides of the buildings onto granite cocks built by humans, when judging the in-effectiveness of tumblr conversations carried out by humans, when contemplating the failures of human political schemes that failed to take the outside view, it is important to take the outside view. The sense of “outsideness” of being above the optimization processes of “other people” is perhaps Moloch’s greatest illusion. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is to convince others anything else exists.

Emptiness

Just in case you are not depressed yet, let’s go over how empty it all is.

People have complained that capitalism is empty. It is empty because that’s not the goal, it’s a means to an end. Still when you look at people working day and night to accumulate stuff you wonder if they misunderstood it’s instrumental and non-terminal nature. People are obviously right to complain that violence is empty since really what is the point of it besides causing suffering all around.



Memetics is empty as it is fundamentally driven by desire to signal high status and tribal affiliation. Many people are working day and night to be excited to see certain memes propagate. Journalists, tech companies, everybody raising awareness for stuff look from outside like they are working for memes, instead of the other way around. We slave away to get the right memes into the right emails, saving them many times on the right hard-drives and saving money for “education,” which is forcefully pushing the same memeplexes of dubious usefulness on the next generation of kids.



That’s lifting Moloch to the heavens.



Evolution seems empty after all because why have kids if their lives are all about the above.



There is, of course, something depressing in it all. In some ways Hedonism as a goal seems like the least empty of them all and implementing some form of it sounds ok.

Hedonism with least possible neg-entropy does not sound *that* awful, compared to alternatives. Still, “just fucking wirehead” doesn’t sound correct either.



Each individual component of Moloch is “empty”, as in “empty of real goal content”, but there is nothing outside of Moloch, so the “outside” is empty of real goal content either. The multitude of forces that make up the actions of the illusion of the self are all “Molochian” forces.



Non-Emptiness

As Eliezer once said, Yes, nothing is real, but how does “nothing” work?



So, on one hand, Elua is elusive and attempts to define it are likely to fail. On the other hand, some world states are better than others. Some futures are a More Nice place to live than other futures. All is Moloch, but some suboptimal equilibria points are more sub-optimal than others. Information encoding a notion of “better” and “worse” requires non-zero amount of bits to implement it. Thus, despite the pronouncement that *everything is Moloch*, Elua *must* exist.

.

What is Elua? Or more correctly, what algorithm implements Elua today? I have a few thoughts, but not quite certain about any of them.



a) Elua is just happiness / long -term hedonism. Evolution, our pain / pleasure receptors, mirror neurons and general reasoning ability combine to implement a quasi-utilitarian framework of long-term total happiness / self-reflective pleasure maximization. This is sometimes modified through a caveat that one might care about the “Truth” as well or about the level of entanglement of one’s brain state with reality. This sounds like the default possibility that many people arrive at, which is also why Hedonism is not generally included as a Molochian stage, even though has the same Moloch-nature as the other 4.

b) Elua arises when Moloch runs into limits. An example of this is: evolution can’t implement an *actual* long-term planning genetic fitness maximizer, so creates adaptations that can then combine into a different goal, such as love, altruism, kindness and all the other good stuff.

A more horrifying example in Meditations on Moloch includes slavemasters not being cruel “because the body has certain physical limitations that limit how mean you can get away with being.”

This is points to a very weird possibility that I have difficulty wrapping my head around. The computation that is “opposing” Molochian forces is then not completely situated in the brain, but is a combined brain / environment computation that causes the worst Molochian abuses to stop due to simply running out of energy. This theory predicts the Resource Curse. This is also the scariest possibility because it predicts that given unlimited energy, the overall level of world suffering will get worse, unless the parameters of optimization are drastically changed.



c) Elua is a meta-algorithm that triages between the 5 stages of Moloch in some-sort of weighted-sum like thing. This seems too simplistic, since this meta-algorithm would still be implemented in the human mind and therefore a by-product of evolution.



Where does this leave us?

At the end of the day, malaria still needs to be defeated. In the space of artificial minds, most still don’t give a shit about you to such an extent that you are going to wish to deal with Moloch instead. So Friendly AI still needs solving. Ideas about the virtues of pacifism are still worth reinforcing. Meditation still has health benefits and some foods will make you feel better than others. Some rationality techniques might still be helpful in making your happier. You get the idea. There is still a non-empty vision that you already understand that is pointing in a direction of particular world outcomes saying “go there, there is actually better.”

