It feels like most outcomes are decided top down instead of emerging bottom up.
- It feels like most outcomes are decided top down instead of emerging bottom up.
- But that's an illusion because only the top down outcomes can be thought of as "decisions".
- We think naturally in narrative so top down decisions compress way easier and thus feel more obvious and tidy.
- The bottom up outcomes can't be compressed as easily with "this agent had this goal and made this decision".
- Also even bottom up things could look like top down.
- An agent makes a locally optimal decision which unbeknownst to them pushes the emergent outcome past a critical point.
- That would look like that one agent's decision changing the whole system, but really those decisions are externalities.