Skip to content

Clarify pronoun reference in rational actor question #10

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
wants to merge 1 commit into
base: staging
Choose a base branch
from
Open

Clarify pronoun reference in rational actor question #10

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion src/content/the-last-economy/chapter-3.mdx
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -80,7 +80,7 @@ _If the best things in life are free, why is our economy designed to measure onl

**The Reality Check:** We are not rational actors in an impartial environment. We are biological creatures with predictable cognitive biases, and we now live in an environment that has been perfectly engineered to exploit those biases for profit. Every tech platform is an addiction machine, using variable ratio reinforcement and social validation loops to hijack our dopamine systems. We are not optimizing the system; the system is optimizing us to be perfect consumers.

_Who is the rational actor in a battle between a human mind and an algorithm that knows it better than it knows itself?_
_Who is the rational actor in a battle between a human mind and an algorithm that knows the human better than the human knows itself?_

**Why the Lie is Fatal:** In the age of AI, this asymmetry becomes absolute. AI can model our individual psychology, predict our desires, and generate personalized content to manipulate our behavior with superhuman effectiveness. The "rational actor" is not just a fiction; it is a defenseless target. Any economic or political theory based on consumer sovereignty or the "wisdom of the crowd" is now obsolete and dangerous.

Expand Down