Until a few months ago, I hadn’t given much thought to Moloch, the ancient figure associated in historical texts with extreme and costly sacrifices. But as I prepared for a conversation at SXSW with World Series of Poker champion turned game-theory evangelist Liv Boeree, I found myself going down a Moloch rabbit hole.
In her TED Talk and Win-Win Podcast, Boeree talks about something called “Moloch’s trap,” a concept that originates from Scott Alexander’s seminal 2014 essay “Meditations on Moloch.” In ancient accounts of Moloch, people are described as offering up things of immense value – most starkly, their own children! – not because such acts were desirable, but because they believed making such sacrifices would avert something far worse. Alexander uses Moloch as a metaphor for coordination failures: situations where individually rational, self-interested decisions by multiple actors collectively produce outcomes that are bad for everyone.
Boeree extends this metaphor further: Moloch’s trap is the name we give systems where no individual is the villain, yet everyone is complicit – and the consequences are severe. It is, importantly, distinct from simple greed or bad intent. It is a structural trap, where even well-intentioned, intelligent actors get pulled toward destructive outcomes because the incentive architecture leaves them no choice.…