Beyond the Limitation Game
Beyond the Limitation Game
What happens to a society when scarcity ceases to be an evolutionary constraint?
In his latest book, Nick Bostrom raises deep questions about purpose, work, and the role of humans in a world of increasingly sophisticated machines doing most of the work. Bostrom tackles the problem from a philosophical point of view. In other words, he asks about the meaning of life in a world of abundance.
Bostrom is not my kind of philosopher. He is a pessimist. Papers like “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis”, where he asks questions like whether “there is a level of technology at which civilization gets destroyed by default?” don’t resonate with me. What’s the purpose of pessimism? Doesn’t the data show that humans can handle progress, that common sense and positive outcomes prevail even in the darkest times during wars, totalitarian domination, or mass hysteria? Bostrom asks relevant questions, but he frames them in a way that doesn’t offer much wiggle room. His analysis provokes fears about totalitarian fanatics learning how to design malicious viruses or getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. Those fears are warranted. But they must not translate into a moratorium on scientific research.
Now, to be fair, Bostrom is not calling for one. But his pessimistic view of the world suggests that something is wrong with technological progress. The Germans have a word for that: "gefühlt," which means it’s not a fact, but it feels like that. Bostrom’s arguments are “gefühlt” pessimistic, and that's why he rallies naysayers.
My goal in this essay is to refute the argument of pessimism about technological progress. First, I discuss the idea of abundance and argue that abundance doesn’t mean there won’t be jobs. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Abundance means more jobs for humans, and even better, more humane jobs for humans. Machines will take over menial work and leave humans with much more interesting humane jobs. Second, I discuss the argument that humans cannot reach abundance because we consider wealth relative to one another. Wealth is tightly related to status, and the relationship follows something like a modified s-curve where the x-axis is wealth and the y-axis is a person’s perception of their status.
In this chart, the marginal utility of wealth decreases, which incentivizes the rich to prevent society from continuously generating wealth. If this is true, abundance cannot happen because the rich will make sure their status remains high and oppose wealth creation beyond a certain point.
There is ample evidence for this behavior by the wealthy elites. For example, US elite universities, where offsprings of the rich typically go to college, are endorsing left-wing ideologies. I used to scratch my head about this. Why would wealthy kids, with all their privilege and entitlement, support collectivistic and/or socialist programs? In fact, there is a simple explanation for this. Most socialist policies in the Western world are not meant to help the poor or disenfranchised. Their purpose is to solidify the position of the elites by putting hurdles in the way of upward mobility.
However, I argue third that there is a case to be made for peak ostentation. In other words, humans might actually step beyond the limitation game and evolve into a species where status doesn’t matter, or, to put it in more technical terms, where status seizes to be an evolutionary classifier. It’s possible that the relationship between wealth and status is not hardwired in humans. Rapid technological development might alter the relationship between wealth and status because abundance renders the latter useless. Humans have been evolving for millennia under the threat of scarcity and have developed an innate appreciation of status as a signal for wealth, fertility, and resourcefulness. In a world with physical abundance, those feelings might change. Humans might actually develop a more healthy relationship with wealth and not care so much about status. Ironically, this idea was inspired by Nick Bostrom himself, which shows what a great thinker he is.
What should humans do when machines do all the work? This is the wrong question. Humans will never run out of work. Machines will increasingly take over menial jobs, whether it’s digging holes, cleaning floors, or writing marketing collateral. Those are menial jobs in the sense that they don’t require creativity or risk-taking. I argue that the latter two factors are what distinguish humans from each other and from machines. Human intelligence has evolved to enable creativity and risk-taking. Unfortunately, our education system currently doesn’t optimize for these factors. It actually discourages them. That’s because our education system is antiquated. It was designed in the mid-19th century by nation-states like Bismarckian Germany or its main competitor, France. Workers and soldiers were needed, and kids were educated to fill those roles. Later innovations, such as the assembly line or the computer, increased the scope of menial work, but still, human flourishing has been bound by repetitive tasks for most of their existence.
This is about to change. Repetition, precision, reliability, obedience, and compliance are not going to be as important anymore because machines will take over most tasks requiring these skills. Humans will specialize in what makes them unique, which is humanity, creativity, and risk-taking. Those factors will not be mastered by machines anytime soon. Robots can help in healthcare, but humans will be needed to comfort patients and help them deal with illness. Creativity will be increasingly valuable for jobs in marketing, sales, and design, while machines will do the menial execution of tasks. Another human specialty is risk-taking. My cat has no concept of risk-taking. I have.
It’s conceivable that machines also learn how to take risks. In fact, maybe Alpha Go Zero took a risk with move 37. We don’t know. Elon Musk took a risk with a five-billion-dollar Gigafactory or when he decided to equip every Tesla with the hardware for FSD. Jeff Bezos took a risk when he decided to rewrite all Amazon software for distributed computing, which eventually morphed into AWS. Picasso took a risk when he painted three-dimensional faces and called it cubism, and Einstein took a risk when he conjectured that Newton’s physics were not precise enough. All these people dared to make a move 37, which first looked like a mistake and later turned out to be genius. I believe that machines will learn how to take risks, but it will take time, and humans will prevail in this contest for a long time.
If the purpose of skepticism is prudence, then what is the purpose of optimism? I see optimism as an extension of hope. And hope is important for people who engage in move 37 type activities. Those are the activities that eventually bring humanity further along on the path of progress. Pessimism is a necessary constraint on hope and optimism. Hope without pessimism wouldn’t make sense. They are two sides of the same coin. Whether Bostrom rides the wave of pessimism because he believes in it or because it sells is irrelevant. What matters is the counterbalance. David Deutsch offers a coherent answer to Bostrom’s argumentation. Why should human progress suddenly stop now? We’ve been innovating since we turned the hostile environment of East African planes into the habitable spaceship earth we live on today. Nothing in the history of humanity suggests that we should stop now and destroy ourselves. Proof of that is our shier existence. We didn't destroy ourselves when we discovered fire, the wheel, or the printing press. So why should we now?
One answer to that question is that contemporary technologies, such as nuclear power or AI, are much more powerful. While this is true, highly developed societies also possess greater knowledge on how to prevent catastrophes.
I argue that technological progress will lead to abundance and generate many more jobs. Human existence hinges on progress because we are hardwired to solve problems. And most crucially, I argue that our tendency to optimize for status, ostentatious behavior, and rent-seeking will recede with abundance. It won’t make any evolutionary sense to signal wealth when mates, whether female or male, know that survival and genetic proliferation don’t depend on access to resources.
Peak Ostentation
Ever wondered why men flex their muscles or drive expensive sports cars? Why do Americans spend exorbitant amounts of money on private universities when public education is often as good, if not better? Why pay three times more for the house on the right side of the highway?
Status is deeply engraved in our DNA. Or so it seems. What is the purpose of status? Why do people care so much about signaling status?
From an evolutionary perspective, status is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it sends positive signals such as wealth, access to resources, and success. This should, in principle, attract mates. On the other hand, however, it’s also a sign of weakness. Vanity and waste are traits that, in the long run, will not end well for the gene carrier.
When people pay up to three times more for an inferior electric BMW than a Tesla Model Y just because it signals status, something is wrong. They are wasting resources. And if they are ready to waste resources on cars, they probably waste them elsewhere, too. Status-driven societies often fail. Pre-communist Cuba was notorious for its culture of ostentatious consumption (Cubans in Miami still are). People proudly flaunted their wealth until the green uniforms of Castro took it from them. Lebanon was and still is full of ostentatious behavior. People carried iPhones back in the day when the local mobile provider didn’t even support iPhones just to signal wealth and superiority. Lebanon has been torn apart by civil war and unrest for decades. My point is that status-driven societies don’t survive in the long run. Contrast that with Sweden, Switzerland, or the Bay Area. Despite being some of the wealthiest places on earth, people don’t flaunt their wealth. In Silicon Valley, you can sit in a coffee shop next to a woman dressed in flip-flops and Lululemon pants, and your friend might whisper, “Hey, this is X; she just raised a billion dollars for her startup," while she drives away in her Tesla Model 3.
Status is a double-edged sword. The trait is deeply ingrained in our DNA. This makes sense in principle, as discussed above. Humans have been resource-constrained for millennia. In the Stone Age, female mates gravitated toward strong men with biceps and wide shoulders because they could protect them from predators. During the Italian Renaissance, cities like Florence and Venice flourished economically through trade and finance. One of the consequences was the emergence of a culture of fine clothing among the wealthy. Fashion is a powerful signaling tool in densely populated cities. Even today, this pattern is visible in places like New York or Hong Kong, which are much more fashionable than California or Texas. When the consumer-driven society emerged after World War II, objects took over the role of wealth signaling, such as Ferraris, yachts, or Rolex watches. Today, in the US, the richest place on earth, we might be reaching peak ostentation, with parents spending up to a million dollars per child on private schooling, even though equivalent, if not better, public education is available in most places.
What is the marginal utility of wealth? Is there such a thing as peak wealth? Or peak ostentation? There is strong evidence that there is such a thing. When Elon Musk became the richest man on earth, he wasted 50 billion dollars on Twitter. Bill Gates is pursuing questionable vaccine projects around the world, and Jeff Bezos enjoys sunsets in the Mediterranean on overpriced yachts. At some point, people stop paying attention to the efficient use of money, and wealth dissipates. John Rockefeller wasted a substantial portion of his wealth on family members who sucked intensely on the Standard Oil money tap. There is a saying that money typically lasts for three generations until it gets wasted away.
Some might cheer about this aspect of wealth and even consider it some sort of natural fairness equalizer. Rich kids are more stupid than kids with hard working parents. Maybe? But there is a negative aspect to this. What if there is peak wealth and we create an economy of abundance? Are we all going to turn into vegetables? Is universal basic income a recipe for disaster? What happens to a society where low cost computers and AI do most work?
Beyond the limitation game
Humans have been trapped in the limitation game of exclusion and status signaling for millennia because scarcity has been the predominant evolutionary classifier. But what happens when boundaries suddenly expand in a world of abundance? What if scarcity ceases to be an evolutionary constraint? This is much more than just a nice problem to have. It’s serious. Despite his pessimism, I think Bostrom’s questions are crucial, and we must take them seriously.
There are two paths to wealth creation. First, the one we are on right now, which is where we keep adding wealth and, by doing so, increasing inequality. This is a direct consequence of the limitation game. In this world, wealth is relative, and no matter how much upward mobility people enjoy, the rich will always make sure to exclude a majority of people from access. Some of that is real, such as oceanfront villas or access to higher education. Some of it is fabricated, such as paintings of modern art that often resemble drawings of five-year-olds but somehow reach million-dollar price tags.
The other, more desirable path is where people actually stop caring about relative wealth because abundance offers new horizons. Relative wealth, according to Bostrom, is a consequence of millennia of evolution. It’s possible that humans will actually refrain from ostentatious consumption in a world of abundance because such behavior will increasingly look stupid. Signaling wealth and superiority could, in principle, become a force for good. For example, people could spend more time with their family, raise their kids with love, and teach them kindness. Nasty people lack evolutionary advantage in a world of abundance.
If this has a Marxian undertone, then that’s because it is Marxian. The German predicted this kind of society 200 years ago. Maybe he just got his timing wrong? Bostrom’s argument that people evolved the urge for status signaling is plausible. And a world of abundance might actually reduce the need for such behavior the same way machines reduce the utility of large muscle men.
So, what comes after the limitation game? What are the fundamental drivers that define society in the absence of scarcity? Let’s find out.