We live in a world filled with Moloch traps. That’s why so many aspects of our lives seem to be getting worse.
A Moloch trap is a situation where individual self-interested behavior at scale leads to terrible outcomes for everyone.
Here is a simple example.
Let’s say that fishermen living around a lake earn a fee for every fish they catch. It makes sense for each fisherman to maximize their income by catching as many fish as they can. But if all fishermen catch as many as they can, the fish population gets decimated, and eventually nobody can catch any fish. As an individual fisherman, I might see that and decide I will only catch a few fish a day, since that is all I need, but the other fishermen will catch more than I do, and will live much better than I do, and the fish population will still be decimated. I might talk to the other fishermen and convince a few that we should stop fishing for a while to let the fish stock replenish, but all the fishermen who don’t stop will be thriving, and the end result will still be the same; eventually no fish left in the lake. Until then, those other fishermen will thrive and my followers and their families will be worse off. The Moloch trap is that everyone tries to catch as many fish as they can, until there are no fish, and so the situation gets worse for everyone.
In the short term, a Moloch trap is characterized by a mindset: every one else is doing this, and if I don’t I am only hurting myself.
Moloch was a god of the Canaanites about 4,500 years ago. To be successful, you needed to burn or boil alive one of your children to Moloch. There is some evidence that people thought that the more children they sacrificed, the more Moloch would be appeased. Moloch is mentioned in Leviticus, “Do not allow any of your children to be offered to Moloch.”
Game theory borrowed the name Moloch to refer to a Moloch trap as a game where multiple self-interested parties are compelled to act against their collective interest, which results in negative outcomes or perhaps even destruction. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is often sited as an example. Tragedy of the commons, Multi-polar traps, unhealthy competition, inadequate equilibria, or inadequate Nash equilibria are other terms for these phenomena.
We see Moloch traps in healthcare, education, elections, income inequality, wars, taxes, pollution, labor markets, investment, materialism, basically everywhere we look.
Moloch traps stem from poorly designed incentives, generally with short term benefits that result in long term harm.
Many times, the people who make day to day decisions in these traps have little to gain, and in fact may lose out personally if they do what is better in the long term, or if they do what is necessary to help others. Imagine a service situation where the service providers are evaluated or paid based on the number of people they service per hour.
Often the people who act or make decisions do not have a way to get and validate information that is needed to make a good decision. Perhaps they are reliant on faulty information, and even if they had access to good information, they would have no way to determine if that information was better than the information sources they were using, or where they were encouraged to use some sources and discouraged from using others. Depending on which side of the political spectrum you choose, you probably regard followers of either Fox News or the New York Times as examples (or both).
Generally the system is self-protecting, so when an individual actor tries to resist or change, they become worse off. For example, a teacher who does not teach to the test will sometimes get penalized by the system.
There are very often power imbalances in these systems, where the power dynamics create a short term benefit for those with power and resources, helplessness for those without power, and eventually long term negative outcomes for all. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, will fight tooth and nail against all efforts to reign in drug prices.
The race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) involves all of these. The parties view the establishment of AGI as a race. If they slow down to take into account ethical practices, hhey are going to be beaten by those who are not encumbered. Financial incentives award first to market with the most powerful systems. The public and potential governing bodies do not have access to the information they need to make reasonable trade-offs and decisions. The largest players have the most power and control. And the potential consequences for “bad” decisions could seriously effect nations, companies, individuals, and the entire species.
As Donella Meadows pointed out, if you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.
Although it is tempting to blame neoliberalism and Western civilization, capitalism is not the root of Moloch traps. . All systems and all organizations set up and build unhealthy incentives. Systems and organizations that arise to overcome some challenge become self-perpetuating, creating their own impediments to equity and change. It’s easy to point to all the traps that exist in Western nations today and argue that they persist because of capitalism, but that would be false.
What can we do?
There is no straightforward predictable way to nudge systems out of Moloch traps. The path to new, adequate equilibria is complex, and often involves periods of chaos and pain. Generally, there are four phases, and each phase is an iterative process of trial, error, and learning.
The first phase, though, is to recognize that the Moloch trap exists. Reaching this realization is often uncomfortable, since it involves challenging biases and assumptions.
A second phase is define aspirations, goals, and stories about possible desired new states along with methods to reach it. One method for exploring, generating, formulating, and communicating future states is Episodic Future Thinking (EFT).
Activism and intervention aiming to increase visibility and disrupt the status quo are phase three. These might include organizing activities such as protesting, lobbying, boycotts, or strikes. This work generally begins on the fringes. The goals are to bring in new actors, shift the power balance, deploy new technologies which can empower those previously unempowered.
The fourth state is to actually make long term changes: changing rules, structures, and incentives despite continued resistance by the existing organizations, systems, communications mechanisms, and power structures.
We are a world of almost 8 billion people. As individuals, we are generally focused on achieving our short-term goals. Through Moloch traps, the aggregation of these efforts seems to be leading to consequences that are harmful to humanity’s long-term welfare, prosperity, or existence.
In the fishing example, the fourth phase would be achieved only if the entire community of fishermen collaborate to establish and follow ceilings. This would create a sustainable eco-system.
That would start with awareness. And maybe Mindshifting.
Note: image generated by ChatGPT