Thread by @eriktorenberg

0/ Here's my high level reading/summary of @robertwrighter's book, Nonzero.

Fascinating & wide-ranging book. Get the book here: amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-…

1/Today civilization is more “civilized”—in the everyday, nontechnical sense of the word—than ancient civilizations.

We have less violence than ever before.

Why? Writing & money; Information systems & markets.

Or, more precisely, underpinning this: The rise of non-zero-sumness

2/ What’s non-zero-sumness (NZS)?

The evolution of culture toward deeper and vaster social complexity--an increasing intertwining of our fates.

In other words, the growing extent to which we become interdependent.

3/ History rhymes - rulers & dynasties & ppl may change, but all seem locked into the same endless cycle of conquest and expansion, fragmentation and collapse.

The rise of NZS characterizes ancient history in a nutshell: onward and upward, to higher levels of social complexity.

4/ NZS stems from game theory.

In NZS games, there can be "win-win" outcomes, but not “win-lose”—their fates aren’t inversely correlated, like tennis or chess.

If the players grasp this fact and play their cards right, they can cooperate to their mutual benefit.

5/ How does NZS occur?

New technologies arise that encourage new & richer forms of non-zero-sum interaction.

Then, social structures evolve that realize this rich potential—that convert non-zero-sum situations into positive sums, benefitting society in the process.

6/ The story of the Middle Ages is the story of new technologies of non-zero-sumness restructuring society in their image.

Their upshot ran counter to, + prevailed over, the imperial ambitions of ancient regimes.

Free markets would clash recurrently with old regimes--and win.

7/ Once the synergistic power of these technologies crystallized in the form of capitalism, they would allow the entire populace—including descendants of slaves and serfs—to play complex non-zero-sum games with people they would never meet.

8/ This basic drama—centralizing instincts of the powerful versus the decentralizing tendencies of technology—would play out again and again.

In short, both organic + human history involve the playing of ever-more-numerous, ever-larger, + ever-more-elaborate NZS games.

9/ To be sure, NZS doesn’t necessarily mean cooperation.

I have a non-zero-sum relationship with the people in Japan who built my Honda minivan, but neither I nor they ever chose to cooperate with each other.

10/ Still less do individual genes on my chromosomes think of themselves as cooperating with one another, though they behave in accordance with non-zero-sum logic.

11/ NZS also doesn’t mean potential energy, which is inherently limited.

In other words, when you tap potential energy—when you, say, nudge a bowling ball off a cliff—you’ve reduced the amount of potential energy in the world.

12/ NZS, in contrast, is self-regenerating.

NZS compounds on itself, bringing us from a world that only has bacteria to a world that has iPhones, Marie Kondo, and the United Nations.

13/ Why non-zero sum, instead of positive sum, which I’ve been using frequently:

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1105556875611795456

Because sometimes in NZS the object of the game isn’t to reap positive sums but simply to avoid negative sums (e.g. nuclear disarmament, climate change, AI)

14/ Paradox:

Economic transactions are NZS behaviors that create surplus, leading to zero-sum behaviors *within* the non-zero sum context.

This is why capitalism is so hard to understand - you’re fighting to redistribute the *surplus* that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

15/ One example: To compete for high social status is to play a zero-sum game, since status is scarce by definition

Yet one way to successfully earn status is to invent technologies that create new non-zero-sum games.

16/ Another example: War.

War is zero sum as it gets, with clear winner and clear loser. And yet: War is so bad that people invent nonzero sum technologies and social structures partly to escape the zero-sum game of war.

17/ If two nearby societies are in contact for any length of time, they will either trade or fight. The first is non-zero-sum social integration, and the second ultimately brings it.

18/ Population density, in this view, drives technological and social development not by creating opportunities, but by creating problems—that we have to then fix.

19/ it takes only one person to invent something that the whole group can then adopt (since information is a “non-rival” good).

So the more possible inventors—the larger the group—the higher its collective rate of innovation.

This is why there’s so much innovation in cities.

20/ Biology too: Even if the relationship between mitochondria and the larger cell was initially full of strife and bitter recrimination, today they are locked into an essentially non-zero-sum game, and both play the game well, to their mutual benefit.

21/ The underlying reason that NZS games wind up being played well is the same in bio evolution as in cultural evolution.

Whether you're a bunch of genes or a bunch of memes, if you’re all in the same boat you’ll tend to perish unless you're conducive to productive coordination.

22/ Rise of NZS mostly accelerates the good things, but also the bad things

•Viruses

•Harmful ideologies (e.g terrorism)

•Quicker economic downturns

23/ These zero-sum events, like wars before them, help us create greater nonzero sum institutions that help us fend these off (e.g focus on curing aging, focus on global gov’t

24/ Once we reap the nonzero sum benefits from certain zero sum behaviors, we can stop them (i.e, we don’t have war as much anymore)

We can get rid of other things too (e.g etho-nationalism, desire for revenge) that used to serve us but have outlived their usefulness.

25/ Nature recognized NZS by giving us desire for reciprocity. This was evolution’s way to make playing non-zero-sum games profitable.

BUT those incentives assume scarce world.

Today we have more complex ways of playing NZS games that don’t rely on reciprocity all the time.

26/ Indeed, we can get rid of other behaviors that were wired in but outlived usefulness

- Revenge
- Jealousy
- Social anxiety
- The desire to induce these in others
- Whatever enjoyment people have of watching car crashes or beheadings

27/ Summary:

"The more complex societies get + the more complex the networks of interdependence within + beyond community + national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find NZS solutions.

That is, win-win solutions instead of win-lose solutions”

28/ So maybe we will find our own victories in other people's victories, because it's in our interest to--our increasing interdependence forces us to seek non-zero-sum solutions.

29/ Success is far from guaranteed--and it will depend on moral progress.

History has forced people to either expand their moral compass—or pay the price.

Onwards and upwards for more non-zero-sumness….