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Social Theory and Agent Foundations

L5 · ResearcherResearchLessWrong AI· 10/8/2026

Bridges sociology with AI agent theory for researchers working on rational agent foundations.

AI Summary

Explores connections between sociological theories and agent foundations research, focusing on rational social/political behavior beyond economic rationality.

Excerpt

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about the sociopolitical considerations that economic-style reasoning misses. I view this work as continuous with my agent foundations research; in this post, I lay out some of the connections I see between sociology and agent foundations. I’ll particularly focus on attempts to pin down theories of rational social and political behavior, as an extension to (or replacement of) the theory of rational economic behavior originally laid out by Von Neumann and Morgenster

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