Cooperation at scale
The mechanisms that sustain cooperation, and where each one stops working.
Cooperation at scale
Every mechanism here has a scale at which it stops working. Arranged roughly by the size of group it can hold together.
Small groups
- Mancur Olson — Selective incentives, Latent group, Privileged group
- Folk theorem and Shadow of the future
- Punishment and the cost of enforcing
- Robert Axelrod, Tit for tat, Martin Nowak, Spatial games
Beyond the village
Where observation and punishment fail, something else has to carry the load.
- The state and Thomas Hobbes — Churchill on war as the human default
- Coase theorem, Pigouvian tax, Property rights — changing the payoffs
- Thomas Schelling, Focal point, Credible commitment
- Polycentricity
The limit
- Scale limit — why repetition, observation and punishment need people who know each other
- Aschenbrenner on the few who matter — Aschenbrenner on pausing AI
