LIV BOEREE: Explaining Moloch, the mysterious game theory force breaking the world (plus a fix!)

Wild with Sarah Wilson

Liv Boeree (world poker champion; astrophysicist; game theorist) is on a mission to explain why we are all trapped in a zero-sum, race to the bottom…with climate, AI, social media and politics. Why do we keep digging up resources, consuming carbon, getting stuck in nasty online spats and building robots that could kill us? Why don’t we just STOP?? Why CAN’T we just STOP?!

It’s because of "moloch" – a game theory "force" that sees us do something we know is bad for us - because everyone else is doing it and if stop we’ll be disadvantaged - until we wind up ruining everything for everyone. I’ve been exploring this concept for a while and invited Liv to talk about her antidote to “competition gone wrong”, which I think will intuitively gel for many of you. In this chat we talk about the death spiral of beauty filters, why AI is repeating the nuclear arms race and the joy we share for steadfastly searching for a win-win solution that will see us in a race to the TOP.

SHOW NOTES

Subscribe to Liv’s Substack

Follow Liv on Instagram and via her YouTube Channel

Read my original Substack post about Moloch

Listen to the Wild episode with Meg Wheatley on civilisation collapse

Watch the beauty fillers video Liv produced The Moloch Trap of AI Beauty Filters and Is the Media Moloch Driving Us Mad?

Read Scott Alexander’s Moloch essay we talk about

If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life

Let’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8

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