Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck. This item is unavailable.Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck

When should you think that you may be able to do something unusually well? Whether you're trying to outperform in science, or in business, or just in finding good deals shopping on eBay, it's important that you have a sober understanding of your relative competencies. The story only ends there, however, if you're fortunate enough to live in an adequate civilization. Eliezer Yudkowsky's Inadequate Equilibria is a sharp and lively guidebook for anyone questioning when and how they can know better, and do better, than the status quo. Freely mixing debates on the foundations of rational decision-making with tips for everyday life, Yudkowsky explores the central question of when we can (and can't) expect to spot systemic inefficiencies, and exploit them.

Inadequate Equilibria is a book about a generalized notion of efficient markets, and how we can use this notion to guess where society will or won't be effective at pursuing some widely desired goal.An efficient market is one where smart individuals should generally doubt that they can spot overpriced or underpriced assets. We can ask an analogous question, however, about the "efficiency" of other human endeavors.Suppose, for example, that someone thinks they can easily build a much better and more profitable social network than Facebook, or easily come up with a new treatment for a widespread medical condition. Should they question whatever clever reasoning led them to that conclusion, in the same way that most smart individuals should question any clever reasoning that causes them to think AAPL stock is underpriced? Should they question whether they can "beat the market" in these areas, or whether they can even spot major in-principle improvements to the status quo? How "efficient," or adequate, should we expect civilization to be at various tasks?There will be, as always, good ways and bad ways to reason about these questions; this book is about both.--Eliezer Yudkowsky