Meditations on Moloch made such an impact on me, that I routinely say aloud "Moloch" when I spot circumstances of competition leading to otherwise irrationally bad outcomes. Sort of in a religious way. :)
I went to comments exactly to see if anyone mentioned it already.
BTW. The efficiency (specialization) vs redundancy (genericity) is a kind of jing-jang, fractal thing and is part of how the universe ... dances... I'd say (inspired by Alan Watts lectures). Systems have cycles where they build specilization up until it becomes so fragile and unstable that it blows up and genericity takes over again. I don't know if that's like some law of cybernetics or something.
Similar to how stability on one level of analysis leads to instability in the one above it (well described in Taleb's book).
I went to comments exactly to see if anyone mentioned it already.
BTW. The efficiency (specialization) vs redundancy (genericity) is a kind of jing-jang, fractal thing and is part of how the universe ... dances... I'd say (inspired by Alan Watts lectures). Systems have cycles where they build specilization up until it becomes so fragile and unstable that it blows up and genericity takes over again. I don't know if that's like some law of cybernetics or something.
Similar to how stability on one level of analysis leads to instability in the one above it (well described in Taleb's book).