LW - Unlocking Solutions by James Stephen Brown

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Unlocking Solutions, published by James Stephen Brown on July 28, 2024 on LessWrong.
Understanding Coordination Problems
The following is a post introducing coordination problems, using the examples of poaching, civilisational development, drug addiction and affirmative action. It draws on my experience as a documentary filmmaker. The post is available for free in its original format at nonzerosum.games.
When I was eleven, I disassembled the lock to our back door, and as I opened the housing… it exploded, scattering six tiny brass pellets on to the floor.
I discovered (too late) that a lock of this type contained spring-loaded cylinders of different heights corresponding to the teeth of the key.
I struggled for hours trying to get the little buggers back in, but it was futile - eventually, my long suffering parents called a locksmith.
The reason fixing the lock was so difficult was not only because it was spring-loaded but because I had to find the right combination and hold them all in balance as I put it back together. I just couldn't coordinate everything.
Coordination Problems
We sometimes run into problems where a number of factors have to be addressed simultaneously in order for them to be effective at all. One weak link can ruin it for the rest. These are called Coordination Problems. The fact that they are so much more difficult to solve than other problems means that many of the problems remaining in the world today, end up being coordination problems.
Poaching
An example of a system requiring more than one problem to be solved at once, is poaching. If you police poaching behavior but don't address the buyers you are left with the perpetual cost of policing, because the demand remains. If you address the buyers, the poachers, who are likely living in poverty may just move on to some other criminal behavior. Daniel Schmachtenberger tells the story of eliminating elephant poaching in one particular region in Africa:
"The first one I noticed when I was a kid was trying to solve an elephant poaching issue in one particular region of Africa that didn't address the poverty of the people, that had no mechanism other than black market on poaching, didn't address people's mindset towards animals, didn't address the macro-economy that created poverty at scale.
So when the laws were put in place and the fences were put in place to protect those elephants in that area better, the poachers moved to poaching other animals, particularly in that situation, rhinos and gorillas that were both more endangered than the elephants had been." - Daniel Schmachtenberger
Schmachtenberger explores this concept on a much grander scale with the issue of the meta-crisis, which we have touched on briefly in Humanity's Alignment Problem, and, to which, we will dedicate a future post.
The Anna Karenina Principle
Another illustration of a coordination problem comes from the opening line of the novel, Anna Karenina:
"Every happy family is the same, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"
The point being made here is that (according to Tolstoy) a happy family needs to have everything aligned, so all such families share many traits, but for a family to be unhappy only one major problem is required. So, an unhappy family can have wealth, but also have an abusive family member, another might have love but no money, or they could have a strong social network, but one that is toxic and unhealthy, they could be strong and healthy but loveless.
Now, the unhappy families above include the traits of; love, financial security, health and strong social bonds-but it makes no sense to say that this means that those characteristics are failed strategies for a happy family. If a family has all of those attributes they'll probably be pretty gosh-darned happy. In this way a happy family is a coordi...