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

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3 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 11:35 PM

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.

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!

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.