Inadequate Equilibria

Excellent wisdom, writing not so much. In true Yudkowsky fashion, this book comes with some good mental handles—things like the distinction between “efficiency”, “unexploitability”, and “inadequacy.” The gist is that most inadequate systems are that way because they are unexploitable—that is to say, that an outsider can't make money by coming in and putting things right.

He makes an analogy to hungry agents, running around eating up free energy. Thus, if you're in a domain where you'd expect a lot of agents eating up free energy, you shouldn't expect to do any better than average, since you will require a PARTICULAR, SPECIFIC ADVANTAGE in order to beat all the other smart agents who are eating up the free energy.

What I like most about the book is the stuff against modesty but I realize I shouldn't have started writing this review because it's late and I should go to bed because my thoughts here are jumbled. GOODNIGHT