# Problem We want to establish [[Alignment between humans/Archived/Cooperation norm/Cooperation norm|Cooperation norm]], a norm that is beneficial to everyone. There are two difficulties when it comes to establishing that norm: 1. [[Alignment between humans/Archived/Cooperation norm/Definitions/Collective action problem|Collective action problem]]: 1. If everyone acts according to the norm, everyone's utility will be higher. 2. But acting according to the norm is detrimental to a single person, so nobody will act according to the norm. 2. Awareness of the norm: 1. You have access only to a limited number of people in the world. Imagine that you can somehow convince any person to act according to the norm. Even if you know how to convince people to act according to the norm, you are not able to convince everyone because you have limited reach (you don't have a contact to all people in the world). # Strategy I will write solutions to the collective action problem and the problem of awareness. Then, I will sum it up in one solution. ## Collective action problem The following are the solutions to the collective action problem. ### Rewarding initial participation Collective action problem can be solved by rewarding people to take the cooperative action, for example with money. If the reward is large enough, then the cooperative action stops being detrimental to the individual that takes that cooperative action. But where does the money for rewards come from? It can come from investors. But what will the investors get out of that? If the norm is beneficial for collective, then there is some surplus - a positive difference between the collective utility with the norm and the collective utility without the norm. Part of that surplus can be distributed to investors. For example, the investors can get slightly more favorable treatment from the norm or get some money (if there's money involved), and there's still will be some surplus left for the rest, so it's possible to do it so that it's a win for everyone. ### Participation declaration Participation declaration is the idea that before taking the action, the people declare that they are going to take the action. For example, let's suppose that people want to play five-a-side football and they need 10 players. If any single player randomly goes to the football pitch, then it will be detrimental to them because they won't find sufficient number of players and they will have to go home. But instead, they can try and collect a group of 10 players who declare their interest in participating in the game. Once they have 10 people who declared interest, they can go and play together. There are two kinds of participation declaration: non-binding and binding. #### Non-binding In that kind, the declaration is not binding. For example, people can declare that they will go and play, but then they might not arrive to the football pitch. Non-binding declaration doesn't fully solve the collective action problem. Because people can simply declare to do something and then not do it. #### Binding In that kind, the people don't just declare, but they take an action that forces them to take the cooperative action, if a sufficient number of other people do the same. For example, let's suppose that you want to make a company that needs $1 billion to create a product that is valuable to people. If they manage to raise $1 billion, then they will make a profit. But if they don't manage to raise $1 billion, then the invested money will be lost. Raising funds for that company is a collective action problem. Because if a sufficient amount of investors invests money in that company, then all investors will benefit from the deal. But if they don't invest a sufficient amount, then the investors who invest will lose their money. That can be solved in the following way. Have a website where people can invest in that company. That website needs to have a "conditional investment" feature that works as follows. It allows to invest X money under the condition that other investors invest or declare to invest Y money. The investor can choose the value of X and Y. For example, an investor can invest $1 000 under the condition that other investors invest or conditionally invest at least $1 billion. Then, another million investors can do the same, which results in $1 billion being conditionally invested. Once $1 billion is conditionally invested, all conditional investments that had condition that at least $1 billion must be invested or conditionally invested are triggered to execute - they become a normal investment. That way, investors can invest money without the risk that the company will not raise enough money to become successful. Binding participation declaration solves the collective action problem. But it might seem that it can't be always applied. If the cooperative action is to invest money, then it can be solved as above. But what if the cooperative action is not to invest money, but for example to comply with a norm? In such case, you can connect participation declaration with rewarding initial participation - raise a lot of money using participation declaration and then use that money to somehow reward those who helped to establish the norm. ### Precedent building This is not a strategy, this is just an observation. The people have some interest in taking the cooperative action because by doing so, they build a precedent of taking the cooperative action. By building a precedent like that, they also build expectation that other people will take the cooperative action which increases the probability of success (the probability that sufficient number of people will take the cooperative action). So, for that reason, people have some interest in taking the cooperative action. However, often that benefit is not strong enough to outweigh the cost of taking the cooperative action. Then, you need to rely on other strategies. ### Gradual precedent building In gradual precedent building, the people initially take the cooperative action to a small extent and then gradually increase the extent to which they take the cooperative action. Eventually, everyone takes the cooperative action to the optimal extent. That solution solves the problem because the benefit of taking the cooperative action is building a precedent that increases the probability of everyone else taking the action which eventually results in everyone taking the action to full extent at some point. There is always small enough extent to which the person can take the cooperative action for that benefit to outweigh the cost (the smaller the extent, the smaller the cost). The only time when it doesn't work is when the person doesn't value the future enough for the benefit of solving the collective action problem to be large enough to outweigh the cost of taking the cooperative action. The downside of this strategy is that solving the collective action problem this way can take a lot of time. ## Awareness The awareness of the norm can be simply solved by rewarding the recommendation of the norm. So, there can be a recommendation system such that, if you tell your friends or audience (if someone is an influencer) about the norm and they subscribe somewhere adding you as a referrer, then you receive something in return. In this way, people will tell the people that they know about the norm, and then those people will tell other people about the norm and so on... ## Final plan Therefore, the final plan how to establish a norm is as follows: 1. Create a fund to which people can give money. 2. The fund will spend the money according to the norm. 1. How will the fund spend money exactly? The fund will increase collective utility by doing the following: 1. Reward the people who did something good for the world that didn't generate profit for them (for example, writing and publicly sharing a paper related to artificial intelligence safety is good for the world, but it doesn't generate profit). 2. Invest money in the companies/individuals that do something good for the world and generate profit. 3. Donate money to the companies/individuals that intend to do something good for the world which doesn't generate profit (for example, decentralized artificial intelligence might be good for the world, but it doesn't generate profit due to lack of moat). 4. Give money to the people who have less resources than others, excluding the people who violated the Cooperation norm (to the extent to which they violated it), i.e. the people who didn't share their resources with others, for example by giving part of their money to the fund. 2. Regarding rewards, investments and donations, [[Alignment between humans/Archived/Cooperation norm/How to democratically decide how the fund should spend money|how to democratically decide how the fund should spend money?]] 3. Redistributing resources to achieve greater equality requires knowledge about how many resources people have. Because the people who have more resources are expected to share more of their resources. [[Alignment between humans/Archived/Cooperation norm/How will the fund know how many resources people have]] 3. How the fund spends money will be publicly shared so that if the fund spends money in a way that is not in alignment with the fund purpose, then people can decide to give money to a different fund. 4. Investors will invest gradually more and more money as they have more and more confidence that the idea will work. 5. Use part of the money from the fund to reward people for telling about the initiative to others. 6. Make a website where people can give money into that fund using a conditional investment. 7. Use part of the money from the fund to reward the people who helped to establish the norm (e.g. the investors). Also, there can be many funds that compete with each other so that if one fund goes off the rails (i.e. people who own it start to spend money in ways that are favorable to them), then people can invest in another fund. But if there is one fund, but the ownership of it is highly distributed, then it's also okay. Perhaps, if the ownership is not distributed, it's also okay, as long as there is overall equality (if the people who have less shares in the fund have more of other resources).