1226

LESSWRONG
LW

1225
ArtMolochSlack
Personal Blog

91

A Taijitu symbol for Moloch and Slack

by B Jacobs
25th May 2020
1 min read
3

91

91

A Taijitu symbol for Moloch and Slack
4Ben Pace
4kithpendragon
4Mati_Roy
New Comment
3 comments, sorted by
top scoring
Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 3:20 AM
[-]Ben Pace5y40

I just came back to this, and realized I didn’t say it the first time. This is great, I really like it, and I may chat with you about using it sometime.

Reply
[-]kithpendragon5y40

Beautiful! I love that pair of concepts that each have seemingly limitless dimension to explore can be represented together so elegantly by a single curve!

Reply
[-]Mati_Roy5y40

I like symbols!

I see Moloch as Speed / Acceleration, and it's complement as Direction / Alignment; so not quiet the same way as you described.

Reply
Moderation Log
More from B Jacobs
View more
Curated and popular this week
3Comments
ArtMolochSlack
Personal Blog

There is a balance between Moloch (which I think of as the forces of exploitation) and Slack (which I think of as the forces of exploration).

Scott Alexander writes:

Think of slack as a paradox – the Taoist art of winning competitions by not trying too hard at them. Moloch and Slack are opposites and complements, like yin and yang. Neither is stronger than the other, but their interplay creates the ten thousand things.

LW is mostly not a design website, but Scott's post inspired me to make a symbol for this concept. It's a Taijitu of Moloch and Slack as created by the inadequate equilibria and the hillock:





You can find a higher resolution image and a svg-file of this symbol here