“
In effect, we know from Darwin that there are only four characteristics necessary in order to get adaptive evolution, right? If you have reproduction, variation, differential success, and an environment of limited resources, you're going to get adaptive evolution.
When we set up an economic system, or a political system...*it evolves*. Things evolve within it. And if we don't anticipate that what we write down in our documents about what we're trying to accomplish does not have the capacity to overwhelm whatever niche we have set up and that we will ultimately see the creatures that are supported by the environment that we created, then we will never get this right. Because we will always be fooled by our own intentions, and we will create structures that create predators of an arbitrary kind.
So we need to start thinking evolutionarily, because that's the mechanism for shaping society into something of a desirable type rather than a monstrous type.
[...]
So let's say we're talking about a political structure...and we know we don't like corruption...and we're going to set a penalty for attempting to corrupt the system. OK, now what you've done is you've built a structure in which evolution is going to explore the questions, 'What kind of corruptions are invisible?' and 'What kinds of penalties are tolerable from the point of view of discovering how to alter policy in the direction of some private interest?' Once you've set that up, if you let it run, evolutionarily it will create a genius corruptor, right? It will generate something that is capable of altering the functioning of the system without being spotted, and with being only slightly penalized -- and then you'll have no hope of confronting it, because it's going to be better at shifting policy than you will be at shifting it back.
So what you have to do is, you have to build a system in which there *is no selection* that allows for this process to explore mechanisms for corrupting the system, right? You may have to turn the penalties up much higher than you would think, so that any attempt to corrupt the system is ruinous to the thing that attempts it. So the thing never evolves to the next stage, because it keeps going extinct, right? That's a system that is resistant to the evolution of corruption, but you have to understand that it's an evolutionary puzzle in the first place in order to accomplish that goal.
[...]
We sort of have this idea that we inherited from the wisdom of the 50s that genes are these powerful things lurking inside of us that shift all of this stuff that we can't imagine they would have control over, and there's some truth in it. But the larger truth is that so much of what we are is built into the software layer, and the software layer is there because it is rapidly changeable. That's why evolution shifted things in that direction within humans. And we need to take advantage of that. We need to be responsible for altering things carefully in the software, intentionally, in order to solve problems and basically liberate people and make life better for as many people as possible, rather than basically throw up our hands because we are going to claim that these things live at the genetic layer and therefore what can we do?
”
”