This was referenced in the recent discussion of ad-blockers. The title isn't terribly informative if you don't already know what the article is about, so I'll explain.
Moloch (the name of an ancient Near Eastern god, to whom children were allegedly sacrificed) is used in one of Alan Ginsberg's poems as a metaphor for, well, actually it's not entirely clear, but something responsible for all kinds of societal failures.
Scott Alexander (author of the article linked here) riffs off this, using Moloch as a metaphor for coordination problems like the famous "tragedy of the commons", where the result of lots of individuals optimizing things is a grossly suboptimal overall outcome. Everyone works longer hours than is actually productive, because anyone who doesn't will be condemned as a slacker? Moloch. Every product in some category is substandard because customers can't readily measure quality and any business trying to do better would be outcompeted? Moloch. Ten companies making near-identical products spend a lot of money on advertising, the end result of which is the same as if there were no advertising? Moloch. Etc.
And it turns out there's rather a lot to be said about this and related ideas, and Scott Alexander duly says rather a lot about them. Also featuring: Las Vegas, Discordianism, artificial intelligence, Rudyard Kipling, H P Lovecraft, transhumanism.
(Pretty much everything else in his blog is well worth reading too.)
Moloch (the name of an ancient Near Eastern god, to whom children were allegedly sacrificed) is used in one of Alan Ginsberg's poems as a metaphor for, well, actually it's not entirely clear, but something responsible for all kinds of societal failures.
Scott Alexander (author of the article linked here) riffs off this, using Moloch as a metaphor for coordination problems like the famous "tragedy of the commons", where the result of lots of individuals optimizing things is a grossly suboptimal overall outcome. Everyone works longer hours than is actually productive, because anyone who doesn't will be condemned as a slacker? Moloch. Every product in some category is substandard because customers can't readily measure quality and any business trying to do better would be outcompeted? Moloch. Ten companies making near-identical products spend a lot of money on advertising, the end result of which is the same as if there were no advertising? Moloch. Etc.
And it turns out there's rather a lot to be said about this and related ideas, and Scott Alexander duly says rather a lot about them. Also featuring: Las Vegas, Discordianism, artificial intelligence, Rudyard Kipling, H P Lovecraft, transhumanism.
(Pretty much everything else in his blog is well worth reading too.)