87. Big Frontiers 🔗

By analogy to “Big Data is when it’s cheaper to store data than decide what to do with it,” (George Dyson)

you could say

“Big Frontier is when it’s cheaper to experiment with something than determine if it’s a scam”

It’s the flip side of brandolini bullshit asymmetry principle: takes 10x effort to refute it than produce it. The solution is to not try: just cap downsides of buying into bullshit and let the upside from legit things swamp it out.

The biggest risk in civilizational cores is being scammed. The biggest risk in frontiers is not playing.

In cores, the only winning move is not playing. In frontiers the only losing move is not playing.

Cores distribute unpriced negative externalities in proportion to inability to resist. Frontiers distribute them in proportion to unwillingness to play.

Core or frontier, the world is never fair. Yes there are people who will get screwed over at both loci. Quite frequently by people pretending to champion their cause.

One of my medium-confidence conjectures is that intelligence is actually maladaptive on sufficiently rich frontiers. Due to various effects like the double morton effect that lead to survival of the stupidest... for a while Survival Of The Stupidest | Science 2.0

In civ cores, intelligence is adaptive because because uncaptured upside things are rare to non-existent by definition, so spotting scams is a net benefit by limiting losses. Intelligence also helps you win by "not playing" stable rigged games of zero-sum extraction.

I'm mostly a creature of the core, but I realized long ago that successfully spotting and avoiding all the zillion exploitation traps at best adds up to not losing ground. You don't gain any. Cores are set up to reproduce starting positions generation after generation.

A stagnant core has rising inequality precisely because 90% people are slowly losing ground through failing to avoid being extracted, 9% are maintaining position by "not playing", and a 1% minority is gaining ground.

A frontier is essentially a social equivalent of a random number generator crossed with an amnesia machine. Inherited core advantages are sharply devalued, intelligence turns somewhat maladaptive, and mostly outcomes depend on being bold enough to play dumb luck games

The outcome is still inequality, but it is not strongly reproduced inequality. The 90-9-1 distribution is not a strong function of the corresponding core distribution of the core that the frontier draws its population from.

This isn't "merit" but it isn't faithful reproduction of inherited wealth and privilege either. There is effectively a bunch of social mobility due to the random-amnesia machine.