Rational _Atlas Shrugged_ plot outline: Dagny Taggart as an alternate Google cofounder, whos been pushing hard on robotic cars in order to reduce traffic accidents. Hank Rearden is an alternate Tesla cofounder, trying to produce electric cars to reduce carbon footprints (hes not building rockets because Elon Musk is too powerful a character for this story). Both of them were raised by different kinds of horrible parents who kept pushing altruism at them, and swore early on to live their lives for their own sake, nor ask any other to live their life for the sake of theirs. They studied game theory when they got to college and decided that the ideal of cooperating in iterated Prisoners Dilemmas with other selfish people seemed very beautiful. They are aware that the part where they advise other people to be selfish is not what a Bayesian selfishness maximizer would do, but they see no point to some kind of crazy idealistic purity in their utility function. Dagny and Hank are sick and tired of San Franciscos controls on new apartments making rents around them skyrocket and causing their employees to be hated, and they go around screaming IF WE MUST HAVE TAXES CANT WE HAVE LAND VALUE TAXES? and plotting a move to a charter city where they can have their all-electric all-robotic car grid and reasonable rents for their employees. They try to get together with alternate Amazon cofounder Eliott Wyatt to build the logistic systems they need, and Wyatt suggests movable housing. ...and thats when things start to go wrong. The key people they need for the project keep... disappearing. Francisco dAnconia is the alternate Skype cofounder who was previously trying to build a cryptoequity system and find a country to support it---Dagny remembers Francisco being so enthusiastic about what correct equity and correct finance could accomplish---and then Francisco mysteriously dropped that project and now seems to be actively opposing projects like theirs. Promising rationality theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky now seems to mainly be writing fanfiction, though nobody knows where hes uploading the stories from. John Galt is a sad, conflicted figure played by Michael Vassar (obvious). Galt convinced Scott Sumner to drop out of pushing NGDP level targeting, after Galt realized that faster world economic growth was just pushing along the timeline to unFriendly AI. Galt doesnt _like_ everything he does to keep the Great Stagnation in place, he certainly doesnt gloat about it, he just doesnt see anything else he can do. Galts Gulch was mainly funded by Peter Thiel and has all the things done correctly, as best they can at their relatively low tech level and with such poor economies of scale. Mathematicians who cant make it through the insane funding situations of academia have been coming to Galts Gulchs math monasteries, led by Eliezer Yudkowsky. They have the real social scientists who use Bayesian statistics, except for their plants in academia that publish frequentist articles to slow down the field. They have the real schools that rapid-test teaching units, which is how they produce their operatives that keep the Great Stagnation in place. They dont have any political power in the mainstream, all they have is a conspiracy. Their goal is not to cause a collapse but to just cause things to keep ticking along with slower economic growth, and to sabotage science that produces x-risks, though theyve had more success sabotaging biology and medicine than computer science. Overarching the entire story are newspapers and TV interviews with Tyler Cowen talking about the Great Stagnation, and the wild-haired conspiracy theorists screaming about how its all a plot by John Galt. Naturally Galt planted the conspiracy theorists to make sure the idea was disreputable and never got any public attention from people trying to look Serious. The real trick would be to have the story constantly exhibit the heroic Randian virtues of self-reliance, non-appeal to altruism, cooperative selfish people, defiance of the System, etcetera, while normatively repairing all the parts that talk about rationality and economics.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:09:06 +0000
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