The Nonlinear Library LW - The Byronic Hero Always Loses by Cole Wyeth
Feb 23, 2024
Explore the appeal of villains and anti-heroes as the podcast delves into their independent pursuit of goals compared to heroes. It discusses character motivations and agency, highlighting the allure of agentic villains and conflicted heroes.
03:51
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Byronic Hero Always Loses, published by Cole Wyeth on February 23, 2024 on LessWrong.
Why do we root for the antiheroes?
Walter White, Light Yagami, Lucifer Morningstar, Doctor Frankenstein... It seems to be natural to root for the bad guys, and perhaps even more natural for rationalists.
"I must confess I have always had some sympathy with villains. Heroism makes fine entertainment but sooner or later someone has to get things done." - Bayaz, Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy.
I think this is the reason, at least for me. Villains (particularly the most beloved villains) are agentic. They know what they want and they attempt to obtain it through their own actions. Sometimes those actions are even reasonable.
This is notable because it's usually untrue of heroes. Heroes tend to be called to adventure, accepting a goal thrust upon them by circumstances or a bearded stranger or both. Then they pursue it, but often alongside a handful of other eclectic goals which cause internal conflict when they can't all be satisfied (getting distracted rescuing some civilians when the fate of the world is at stake).
There's also something fairly un-agentic about following an absolute "honor" code, which is much more common among heroes than villains. Finally, heroes have teams of friends instead of minions, and are often forced to go out of their way to help their friends. A hero's friendships might even change his terminal values!
So, why do we often find villains so fascinating?
I think it's the same reason that rationalists don't run the world.
Being highly agentic just isn't easy in real life, because it's inherently individualistic. Individuals tend to be outcompeted by large organizations. Large organizations are approximately agentic, but the people making up a large organization don't necessarily have to be. In fact, it might be better if they aren't!
The military seems to optimize much more strongly for loyalty and discipline than agency - in fact, an army of agents with diverse goals seems tricky to control, since most will instrumentally value their own survival (though an army of agents with one cohesive goal may be even more formidable).
In industry, principles of comparative advantage can imply that it is best for each employee to become highly specialized, which seems opposed to developing their agency. A more capable agent might generalize (building the type of skill set that a startup found might need, including "executive nature" as in Competent Elites). Though agentic employees can create a lot of value, I think it is typically more cost effective to create additional cogs in the machine than it is to increase agency.
I think this is also why politicians are not very clever (epistemic status: I don't know any politicians). The things we value in a leader include costly trustworthiness signals (see https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/). In fact, the risk of an actively corrupt leader may be great enough that some would prefer a candidate with actively irrational beliefs (say, expecting moral judgement in the afterlife).
I would almost go so far as to say that the idea of becoming a Machiavellian scheming mastermind and changing the world (for better or worse) through sheer cleverness is a childish fantasy. Maybe that's not a bad thing; children might be naive, but at least they aren't bitter.
Perhaps it's just my American upbringing, but I think I want to live in a world where agents can get what they want, even with the world set against them, if only they are clever and persistent enough. So when I read about another despicable villain sacrificing it all and throwing the natural order out of balance in the name of cursed immortality or to avenge their family or to grasp untold riches, I can't help but root for them a little.
In a way, Milton's Lucifer is the ...
Why do we root for the antiheroes?
Walter White, Light Yagami, Lucifer Morningstar, Doctor Frankenstein... It seems to be natural to root for the bad guys, and perhaps even more natural for rationalists.
"I must confess I have always had some sympathy with villains. Heroism makes fine entertainment but sooner or later someone has to get things done." - Bayaz, Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy.
I think this is the reason, at least for me. Villains (particularly the most beloved villains) are agentic. They know what they want and they attempt to obtain it through their own actions. Sometimes those actions are even reasonable.
This is notable because it's usually untrue of heroes. Heroes tend to be called to adventure, accepting a goal thrust upon them by circumstances or a bearded stranger or both. Then they pursue it, but often alongside a handful of other eclectic goals which cause internal conflict when they can't all be satisfied (getting distracted rescuing some civilians when the fate of the world is at stake).
There's also something fairly un-agentic about following an absolute "honor" code, which is much more common among heroes than villains. Finally, heroes have teams of friends instead of minions, and are often forced to go out of their way to help their friends. A hero's friendships might even change his terminal values!
So, why do we often find villains so fascinating?
I think it's the same reason that rationalists don't run the world.
Being highly agentic just isn't easy in real life, because it's inherently individualistic. Individuals tend to be outcompeted by large organizations. Large organizations are approximately agentic, but the people making up a large organization don't necessarily have to be. In fact, it might be better if they aren't!
The military seems to optimize much more strongly for loyalty and discipline than agency - in fact, an army of agents with diverse goals seems tricky to control, since most will instrumentally value their own survival (though an army of agents with one cohesive goal may be even more formidable).
In industry, principles of comparative advantage can imply that it is best for each employee to become highly specialized, which seems opposed to developing their agency. A more capable agent might generalize (building the type of skill set that a startup found might need, including "executive nature" as in Competent Elites). Though agentic employees can create a lot of value, I think it is typically more cost effective to create additional cogs in the machine than it is to increase agency.
I think this is also why politicians are not very clever (epistemic status: I don't know any politicians). The things we value in a leader include costly trustworthiness signals (see https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/). In fact, the risk of an actively corrupt leader may be great enough that some would prefer a candidate with actively irrational beliefs (say, expecting moral judgement in the afterlife).
I would almost go so far as to say that the idea of becoming a Machiavellian scheming mastermind and changing the world (for better or worse) through sheer cleverness is a childish fantasy. Maybe that's not a bad thing; children might be naive, but at least they aren't bitter.
Perhaps it's just my American upbringing, but I think I want to live in a world where agents can get what they want, even with the world set against them, if only they are clever and persistent enough. So when I read about another despicable villain sacrificing it all and throwing the natural order out of balance in the name of cursed immortality or to avenge their family or to grasp untold riches, I can't help but root for them a little.
In a way, Milton's Lucifer is the ...