Yesterday in NYC, we had a meetup delving into a few recent-ish blogposts about why Social Dynamics are So Complicated, and why nerd attempts to change them end up looking like this: Drama

Collectively, I feel like these essays add up to a new rationality-sequence.

Melting Asphalt Personhood: A Game for Two or More Players
Guess culture screens for trying to cooperate
Deserving trust / grokking Newcomb’s problem | Andrew Critch
The Social Substrate (Powerpoint) - Generative modeling of minds as a hypothesis for the complexities of social dynamics.
A summary of various ideas accumulated from Brent Dill, which I'd summarize as:
1. Every system has an overt purpose (that looks moral/virtuous), and a covert purpose (which is the things that the stakeholders want for themselves), and the system will tend to end up producing the things the stakeholders want no matter what, and the best you can do is make "keeping up appearances" expensive and necessary.
2. You may not believe in Dominance Hierarchies, but they believe in you
3. In the moment, people tend to do whatever is social expedient (or maybe more generally), and tend not to notice various ways this conflicts with their self-image, promises, etc.

Sequence: Why Social Dynamics are So Complicated