When should you think that you may be able to do something unusually well? Inadequate Equilibria explores the central question of when we can (and can’t) expect to spot systemic inefficiencies, and exploit them. It's a sharp and lively guidebook for anyone questioning when and how they can know better, and do better, than the status quo.

Hey Product Hunt! I’m Malo, COO at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. @eliezeryudkowsky is known for being one of the early voices raising awareness of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence. One thing he definitely isn’t known for, though, is his modesty :) Eliezer has a new book out arguing for an alternative to “modest epistemology,” a view that can be crudely summarized as: “You can’t expect to be able to do X that isn’t usually done, since you could just be deluding yourself into thinking you’re better than other people.” The book, “Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck,” introduces inadequacy analysis, a tool to help answer the question: “When should I think that I may be able to do something unusually well?” A lot of people here are trying to outperform the status quo, and do/build great things. I hope/expect this book will be a valuable read for many of you. It definitely was for me. You can read the full book online on the website at equilibriabook.com, or if reading on your iPad or Kindle is more your style, it’s also available for Kindle, on iBooks, or as a “pay-what-you-want” digital download (in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats). And for those of you who love a physical book, there’s a dead tree version on Amazon as well. We’re excited to hear your thoughts!

You should definitely read this book.

Pros:

The best explanation I've ever read of why some things in society are nowhere near as good as they could be.

Cons:

Some of the later chapters are a bit less compelling.

@nbashaw, glad to hear you enjoyed the book! I'm curious if you think the book would be a good fit for Hardbound. Seems like it might be hard to communicate the core ideas of the book in a 5 minute illustrated story, but if you think it would be a good fit, I'd be interested in chatting about it.

Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

A new exploration of systemic failure and uncommon success.

A new exploration of systemic failure and uncommon success.

Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

A new exploration of systemic failure and uncommon success.

A new exploration of systemic failure and uncommon success.

Do you use Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, by Eliezer Yudkowsky?

Do you use Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, by Eliezer Yudkowsky?