Moloch
A meme derived from Scott Alexander’s “Meditations on Moloch” (2014) and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, used in web3 circles to describe coordination failures — specifically, multi-polar traps in which rational actors, pursuing self-interest, collectively generate outcomes that none of them desire. The classic example is the nuclear arms race: no individual nation can unilaterally disarm, so all nations arm despite collective preference for disarmament. “It’s all coordination” is the companion premise: most of our generation’s problems are reframed not as the result of evil intent but of insufficient coordination infrastructure.
This meme is treated critically in these texts. While acknowledging its value as a design orientation that bypasses partisan blame and promotes positive-sum thinking, these writings argue that the Moloch frame overextends itself: it cannot address a class of problems whose roots are axiomatic — pre-rational ontological assumptions that define the game board and the players themselves rather than the game being played on it.
Drawing on the Afropessimist tradition (Orlando Patterson, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Jared Sexton), the critique holds that some coordination failures are not solvable through better game theory because the very constitution of agents is underwritten by ontological violence (white supremacy as a foundational example). “The game of white supremacy can’t be solved without appeal to the ontological ground on which it is played.” (— On the Ontological Stakes of the Moloch Meme) The antidote to the deeper Moloch is not a credibly neutral arbiter (a better I AM), but an open-ended intelligence — procedures and design practices capable of self-reflexively interrogating the ontological assumptions animating its own terms.