Interview
David Friedman - Dating Markets, Legal Systems, Bitcoin, and Automation
- The dating market is expected to remain inefficient due to the inability to properly sort individuals with diverse values, with online platforms projected to stagnate or become less effective over time rather than improving sorting capabilities.
- Legalizing polygyny is predicted to increase the price of marriage, potentially benefiting women but harming ordinary monogamous men, while legalizing polyandry is expected to produce reverse economic effects of uncertain magnitude.
- Future research into matching characteristics is considered highly difficult to execute, though Dr. Friedman hopes it may eventually yield statistical data to improve pairing mechanisms.
- Search costs remain a central, unresolved problem in the dating market because current economic methods lack robust tools to handle them.
- It is considered uncertain whether the modern Western courtship system is more effective than traditional parental selection, as cultural structures in arranged marriages may discourage regret and increase happiness.
- In a future with strong privacy and encryption, contractual enforcement is expected to shift toward reputational mechanisms and online interactions, potentially reducing the impact of real-world social ostracization.
- The same privacy and encryption environment is anticipated to increase the feasibility of cyber-ransoming and crypto-kidnapping, creating significant downsides alongside potential upsides.
- Dr. Friedman estimates a near-zero probability of being alive thirty years from now under current circumstances.
- Solving the aging problem is hoped for to allow rejuvenation, though it is expected to bring negative features such as the prolonged rule of dictators unless bad actors are prevented from retaining power indefinitely.
- Without a solution to aging, the social security system is expected to face quick bankruptcy unless payments to the very old are stopped, creating political pressure to block anti-aging treatments.
- Bitcoin's instability is predicted to prevent it from being convenient for daily transactions, requiring the development of stablecoins linked to commodity bundles or baskets of currencies as a serious alternative.
- Setting up such stablecoins is viewed as doable but difficult due to the "oracle problem" of verifying real-world exchange rates.
- Prediction markets are expected to develop further to allow larger bets, enabling "smart money" to dominate over ideologues.
- Technological progress is anticipated to be difficult to stop by regulation due to the existence of independent countries, though the lack of challenge trials for COVID-19 vaccines within a two-month timeframe is noted as a disappointment.
- Global elites in regulatory agencies are expected to block technologies like nuclear power to maintain mutual approval, aligning with the theory that they are deeply imitative.
- Non-state legal systems, such as those of prison gangs or pirates, are expected to exhibit significantly more diversity than state-made legal systems, which are becoming increasingly uniform due to a global culture among law professors.
- The global uniformity of laws, such as the age of consent, is attributed to ideological campaigns and a single global culture among policymakers rather than functional necessity.
- Property right protections for the poor are expected to be lower due to fewer resources for conflict, though coalitions or "shields" are anticipated to form to protect the vulnerable.
- Technological change is predicted to make some people much wealthier while others become only slightly wealthier, expecting absolute income for the poor to generally increase despite growing relative inequality.
- Even if 90% of tasks are automated by AI, the remaining 10% involving personal service or entertainment are expected to retain a comparative advantage for humans.
- Participation in gift cultures is expected to aid in understanding non-monetary exchange, though a full economic explanation is currently lacking.
- A 20-year-old today would be tempted to enter independent computer programming to create simple products, though the field is anticipated to be overpopulated with high-IQ individuals.
- Writing novels is not expected to be a viable path due to a perceived lack of specific talent combining intuition with theory.