Introduction:

What if the same processes that maximize productivity in markets also gradually undermine the systems they emerge from?

This post explores a model of "systemic drift"—how repeated optimization within any economic or incentive-driven system leads to fragility over time, often invisible until failure occurs. While not a new idea, I attempt to formalize it using a rationalist lens, drawing from cybernetics, evolutionary pressure, and real-world examples, to argue that most systems under free optimization accumulate invisible costs until constrained externally or collapse.

I believe this framework has implications for AI safety, economic stability, and institutional trust decay, and I’m curious to hear counterarguments from the LessWrong community, especially if this has been better modeled elsewhere.

1. Optimization as Directional Drift

Let’s begin by considering what happens when an optimization process lacks countervailing pressures. A factory streamlining labour to increase productivity begins eliminating redundancy, pushing for lean efficiency. In the short term, this increases output. Over time, however, this process results in a system finely tuned for one type of scenario, with no margin for shocks.

This resembles evolution under extreme selective pressure. Useful adaptations are preserved only as long as the environment is stable. Once conditions change—even slightly—the highly adapted system collapses faster than a more redundant one.

In economic terms: the market “rewards” short-term gains, often ignoring long-term robustness.

2. Systems With No Opposing Force Collapse Into Their Local Maxima

In control theory and cybernetics, feedback loops are used to maintain equilibrium. But human systems often optimise toward a goal without internal correction. An investment firm might maximise quarterly profits by outsourcing talent, building derivatives, or engaging in high-frequency trades—until the market environment changes (e.g., 2008 financial crisis). By then, the system has no slack, no antifragility, and no internal levers to resist collapse.

Question: Are there models in LessWrong or other rationalist circles that capture this phenomenon with better terminology?

If not, I propose calling this drift the Invisible Trade-off Principle (ITP):

"Any system optimizing for X without accounting for impact on Y will degrade Y until it becomes the constraint."

T...

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