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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Inadequate Equilibria is a little gem of a book: wise, funny, and best of all useful. Eliezer Yudkowsky and I haven't always agreed about
everything, but on the subject of bureaucracies and how they fail, his insights are gold. This book is one of the finest things he's written. It
helped me reflect on my own choices in life, and it will help you reflect on yours."--Scott AaronsonDavid J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of
Computer Science at the University of Texas Author, "Quantum Computing Since Democritus"

From the Author

Inadequate Equilibria is a book about a generalized notion of efficient markets, and how we can use this notion to guess where society will or
won't be effective at pursuing some widely desired goal.An efficient market is one where smart individuals should generally doubt that they can
spot overpriced or underpriced assets. We can ask an analogous question, however, about the "efficiency" of other human endeavors.Suppose,
for example, that someone thinks they can easily build a much better and more profitable social network than Facebook, or easily come up with

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939311225/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX9V23NN4AS57ZQNY2XJ_0 2/7
18.10.2022, 17:45 Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck: Yudkowsky, Eliezer: 9781939311221: Amazon.com: Books
a new treatment for a widespread medical condition. Should they question whatever clever reasoning led them to that conclusion, in the same
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way that most smart individuals should question any clever reasoning that causes them to think AAPL stock is underpriced? Should they
$144.99
question whether they can "beat the market" in these areas, or whether they can even spot major in-principle improvements to the status quo?
How "efficient," or adequate, should we expect civilization to be at various tasks?There will be, as always, good ways and bad ways to reason
about these questions; this book is about both.--Eliezer Yudkowsky

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Best Sellers Rank: #62,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#13 in Microeconomics (Books)
Customer Reviews: 163 ratings

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Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decision theorist and computer scientist at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley,
California who is known for his work in technological forecasting. His publications include the Cambridge Handbook of
Artificial Intelligence chapter “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” co-authored with Nick Bostrom. Yudkowsky’s writings
have helped spark a number of ongoing academic and public debates about the long-term impact of AI, and he has written a

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4.4 out of 5
Top reviews from the United States
163 global ratings

5 star

61% DJ

4 star

22%
A ramble filled with important ideas
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2022
3 star

14% Verified Purchase
The ideas and interconnections in Inadequate Equilibria are thought-provoking and
2 star

1%
important. Unfortunately the presentation (essentially, just posts lifted from LessWrong) is
1 star

3% filled with inside baseball, complex concepts assumed or explained superficially or
awkwardly, and examples that are frequently esoteric. For just one example, not everyone
How customer reviews and ratings work who might find this valuable is steeped in Bayesian reasoning; thus the unexplained phrase
"update hard" would be baffling. I was able to get through it, partly with some
extracurricular effort and partly because I do have some exposure to these notions. Anyway,
be ready to work for it if you don't read LessWrong regularly.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939311225/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX9V23NN4AS57ZQNY2XJ_0 3/7
18.10.2022, 17:45 Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck: Yudkowsky, Eliezer: 9781939311221: Amazon.com: Books

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Also worth mentioning is that maybe half the book is about what the title suggests, the
$144.99
other half about how to think about your own knowledge and ability to make a difference.
These two are connected, of course, but just be ready for a lot of lifehacking advice.

I recommend the book with those caveats.

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Ben

Noticeably changed my thinking about trying new projects, as well as
damn fun and easy to read. Great epistemic advice.
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2017
Verified Purchase
Some of the useful things inside:

- Microeconomic tools for judging the epistemic incentives of groups of experts

- Concise and useful explanations for how major insitutions (academia, medicine, politics,
venture capitalism) break

- Case studies in how to successful use Aumman's agreement theorem in real life

The most valuable part of this book by far is chapter 3, which is an extended dialogue
between a cynical conventional economist ("C.C.E" or 'Cecie') and a visitor from a different
world, trying to explain why a particular institution is killing babies. The example is a real
one - the FDA hasn't approved a simple set of fats for intravenous baby food, causing severe
brain damage in something like dozens of babies per year. And the explanation is a
whirlwind tour of how our institutions work and how they break, with many concepts that
I've been able to use elsewhere to great benefit.

Above
Readall,
morethis book has changed the way I think about learning from experts. I'll end my
37 people found this helpful

Helpful Report abuse

Zachary Vance

Poor binding
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2022
Verified Purchase

I ordered a physical copy of this book, and I would say about 20 out of the 80 pages pulled
out when I read those pages. Very poor binding quality.

The written contents were okay. More original ideas and better reasoning than "The Dark
Lord's Answer" which I got at the same time, but with less emphasis on solutions. A little
rambling, more like a collection of essays than a book. It will be more interesting if you
haven't already read "Meditations on Moloch". Continues his usual theme of "arguing against
common errors the author encounters (that I may or may not see often myself)".

Helpful Report abuse

Jan Dziekan

Incoherent Evocations
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2020
Verified Purchase

The premise of the title is really interesting. Eliezer Yudkowsky tries to explain how the
actions of individuals acting rationally in self-interest result in failures of groups. By
“inadequate equilibria” the author means systems which are inefficient, yet there is not
much hope of improving them - as those systems are held in place by perpetuated actions
of participants; with examples from healthcare, education and research. Opposed to them is
the “adequate” stock market, efficient in pricing by the virtue of participants having
understandable financial incentives.

Unfortunately, it would have been a much more engaging book had the author a better skill
in forming comprehensible narration. The language is cryptic and depends too much on
negations chained one after another within single sentences. The systemic flaw given the
most floor in the book - US healthcare providing potentially harmful lipids for babies in
need of parenteral feeding - is not explained in a compelling way. “Why isn't the society
saving babies?”, the question is repeated page after page, but the answer is an outstretched
conclusion
Read more from a few valid points themselves spread far and wide. Ultimately, the wobbly

16 people found this helpful

Helpful Report abuse

Tron

Ditch the default reliance on safe, modest epistemology

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939311225/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX9V23NN4AS57ZQNY2XJ_0 4/7
18.10.2022, 17:45 Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck: Yudkowsky, Eliezer: 9781939311221: Amazon.com: Books
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2021
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Verified Purchase
$144.99
This book contains some interesting ideas and models for identifying and evaluating
opportunities one can pursue. There are some useful sections of the book that I will
probably re-read. I found the overall flow of the writing to be uneven in some sections, but
it was still worth it to plow through the rambling examples and parenthetical thoughts to
find the nuggets of clarity. It's an overall quick read, so even if you get lost in some sections,
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Amazon Customer

Need to read it at least twice
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2018
Verified Purchase

On a first read-through this book is obviously stimulating, but it is not entirely obvious that
the argument stacks up. It is written in what seems to be a very Californian start-up stream-
of-conscious style that - to this reader - was rather more irritating than engaging. However
what the author is saying is interesting enough that I started to read more quickly than is
my wont in order to get an overview of the scheme of the thesis, and then went back to the
beginning and started all over again, by which time I was more familiar with the style and
more aware of what might be coming up next. Then it all made more sense. In fact I will
read it again. The book does assume a certain familiarity with a few key concepts that would
be benefit hugely from a explanatory appendices. For example the difference between a
likelihood function and significance testing, and why it's OK to multiply likelihoods. And
how to go about updating priors based on experience when taking a Bayesian approach.

4 people found this helpful

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Dr. Ian Pitchford

Invaluable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2017
Verified Purchase
For many years I have been puzzled about the perennial failures of our research, innovation
and political decision-making systems. Although I had a vague intuition that the concept of
‘efficient markets’ was likely to be central to the solution a working model has eluded me.
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s ‘Inadequate Equilibria’ now provides a framework for thinking - and for
making practical decisions - about these failures.

2 people found this helpful

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Oisín

More than adequate book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is an excellent book. For various reasons authors tend to make books longer than they
need to be but that is not the case here. This short and incredibly astute book explains why
things can get so messed up, even by seemingly reasonable people. It is all available for free
online but at this price it's hard to resist getting the physical copy and makes a great
spontaneous gift to anyone interested in humans, society, civilization, science, healthcare,
etc.

Report abuse

johnlawrenceaspden

Important New Ideas about Why Everything Sucks
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is a wonderful and important book, very cleverly and wittily written.

Report abuse

Amazon Customer

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939311225/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX9V23NN4AS57ZQNY2XJ_0 5/7
18.10.2022, 17:45
Read Antifragile instead
Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck: Yudkowsky, Eliezer: 9781939311221: Amazon.com: Books
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2019
$144.99
Verified Purchase
Very derivative, marginal and obvious. Read taleb's work or Case against education and
don't waste your time

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