In classic LessWrong fashion this post entirely ignores everything human about society while simultaneously making a complete mockery of rationality. Consider

In classic LessWrong fashion this post entirely ignores everything human about society while simultaneously making a complete mockery of rationality. Consider the Folk Theorem. It's not a theorem. It's an arbitrary definition pretending to rationality. The author is simply asserting something without bothering to explain what any of the preconditions actually mean. The "Folk Theorem" uses four (undefined, lol) terms. None of these terms reasonably describe human behavior. Even worse, none of these terms describe human behavior that would necessarily result in a better world. So the assumptions are neither descriptive NOR prescriptive! 1. Rationality. Humans aren't always rational. And when they are rational they aren't always good; humans will rationalize even horrific evils such as racialized eugenics. So "rational" isn't a good model of all human behavior and it's also not a model of necessarily good human behavior! 2. "Self-modifying agent" Humans are bad modifying human behavior. Just ask anyone who is overweight why they don't simply work out more and eat healthier, or a smoker why they don't stop, or an abuser why they aren't nicer. And when humans are able to modify human behavior the results are not always good (eg, adtech and propaganda). So "self-modifying agent" is not a good model of all human behavior and it's also not a model of necessarily good human behavior! 3. "the marginal benefit of investing" is a nonsensical way to think about the effect human effort, both because humans are not robots and also because predicting the impact of one's labor is not always straight-forward. I suppose if "employee"/"robot"/"non-rich-western human"/"$$$" are interchangeable in your brain and you've got MBA-level brain damage about the measurability and predictability of knowledge work then this makes sense... 4. "resources" is undefined and prone to various types of "lump of ___" fallacies. My general impression is that this entire genre functions as an excuse for the upper and upper-middle class to never have to look income inequality in the eyes and feel the human impact of the social structures their lifestyles depend upon. Maybe if the wealthy spend more time in homeless shelters the shape of society would slowly shift toward distributions that result in fewer homeless shelters, and the downtrodden wouldn't need to depend upon acts of blogpost-inspired generosity. In any case, I firmly believe that writing an article like this one is almost certainly less useful to society than helping out in a soup kitchen.