Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the things we do, and try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the countries not at war, present it to the countries, and note that all countries would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the protocols?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how much larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)

Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the things we do, and try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the countries not at war, present it to the countries, and note that all countries would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the new arrangement?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how much larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)

Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the things we do, and try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the factions not at war, present it to the factions, and note that all factions would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the new arrangement?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how much larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)

Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the things we do, and try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the factions not at war, present it to the factions, and note that all factions would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the new arrangement?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)

Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the same things we do, who try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the factions not at war, present it to the factions, and note that all factions would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the new arrangement?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)