Say I run into someone at a party who angrily demands an apology for some perceived slight. It seems like you're arguing against thinking:
But I think I got that lesson long ago and what tends to pop up in my mind is instead a mixture of:
Curious if I correctly got the point you're trying to make, and if so do you have any further thoughts on the topic (such as which of 2-4 is most correct or if I should be thinking something else instead).
Expanding a bit on gallabytes's comment: The language around Moloch often assumes a Nash equilibrium, i.e. a situation in which a rational agent implementing causal decision theory couldn't do better. Sometimes the agents aren't general intelligences, but are simpler evolutionarily fit processes responding to feedback.
I'm perhaps a bit of an outlier in that I see less difference among powerful optimization processes (evolution and humans being the only real examples I know of, and both extend to artificial versions) than most.
Over sufficient time periods, evolution is subject to the same constraints and tradeoffs as intelligent world-modeling agents are. Evolution is slow enough that it can bypass some of the identity problems that agents have, but it's also only going to find viable equilibria.
Lookahead is unnecessary if you can actually perform the iterations. There is some subtlety around path-dependency and needing to survive the iterations in order to arrive at the equilibrium, but for simple cases like this one, it just doesn't matter. The strategy will be found whether the intermediate states are imagined hypothetically by an intelligence, or just executed physically by a patient experimenter.
Simple cases like the ants or like toy problems where humans usually get the right answer (and some where we don't). In cases where iterated reasoning can come up with a solution, evolution will be MUCH slower but will come up with answers as good as any modeled reasoning engine.
(note: I'm overstating this by quite a lot. The effects of path-dependency and search breadth for evolution and of modeling limitations and limited capacity for brains can make orders of magnitude difference in the solutions found. In simple theory, though, they're roughly equivalent.)
The fact that evolution is adequate to produce ants doesn't really have much bearing on anything here, unless there's also reason to believe that lookahead can't do better than ants, which is clearly absurd. Even if the moon were a rich source of calories (say, by having comparatively unimpeded access to sunlight), evolution just doesn't know how to get there and can't figure it out by iteration. Humans clearly can in principle, it's hard for us but obviously within our reach as a species, and not by natural selection for flight.
Some strctures less complex than brains might be selected for "look ahead" like benefit. For example the evolution of sex. Also having features coded in multiple ways in DNA. Some of the DNA encodings might be selected for "evolvability". Making things like epigenetic switches and in general control genes can be seen as a modelling layer a bit more abstract than concrete features.
The thesis seems to be to caution against automatically blaming those who might've benefited from a disaster, as often enough things don't happen in a goal-directed fashion. ("To fathom a strange plot, one technique is to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.") Not sure this is a widespread enough heuristic to be worth reining in in the form of an unconditional advice.
I… don’t think I would’ve guessed that “post not cross-posted but just linked” means “post is not very ‘lesswrong’”.
If that mapping is unclear (and it will be unclear if authors do not consistently use this convention—which, as far as I am aware, they do not), then the effect is merely to waste my time by making me click through to the linked page.
Perhaps you might note the “non-lesswrongy” nature of the linked post in the body text? This would make your intent clear, and would allow Less Wrong readers to make a properly informed decision about whether to click through and read the post.
Slaver ants would make "warrior prowness" comment relevant. Even with slaver ants it unlilkey that all nests are enslaved all the time. Too much slavers and they need to fight each other or run out of slave refreshments. With adequate distance between slavers some of the nests will be enslaved late or never.
It also could be very plausible that a colony could actually burn the extra calories and benefit form it for example in the form of extra drones and queens.
If they actually had been better off to not notice there would be a dominant strategy to intentionally not notice. Them not being there is a different thing than them being there and not noticing them.
Ants in fact make supercolonies. They (atleast some) choose PvE strategies over PvP mechanics.
The existence of ants has had a big evolutionary pressure on other species. There are a lot of species that produce sugar that ants collect and ants act to defend these resource sources (which can be understood as a mutually beneficial transaction like mechanic). This kind of symbiosis needed to kick off from somewhere even if there is a feedback loop keeping it stable. One of the plausible stories is that another insect provided free food and ants started to regard those insects more as a resource rather than a piece of background. Once they do this they can favour more generous candymen to more stingy ones.
A lot of the colonies of eusocial insects keep a reduced population over winter. The ones that collect food during good times might not ever consume it during harsh times. Because they have a different insentive strcture it's unlikely a worker ant would save itself at the cost of the colony "colony was screwed, but I survived" is an unlikely ant thought. They have behaviours like the oldest members being the ones that take on activities furthest away from the nest (guess which individuals are nearest to mortal danger).
A parable on the difference between motives and ecological niches.