Spontaneous Blogpost Discussion: Moloch vs. the Cats

We gather at Catzen Coffee, where the cats will supervise our attempt to outwit an ancient god of bad incentives. The text on the table is Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch.

The essay is famously sprawling (97 minutes if you read the whole thing), but let’s be humane: mandatory reading is just the opening through the “okay, this example is kind of contrived” passage. That’s about 6 minutes—enough to meet Moloch, sniff the brimstone, and still have time to pet the cats.

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Questions to Bat Around Like a Ball of Yarn
• Why does Alexander begin with Ginsberg’s poem Howl, where Moloch is invoked as “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!”? What does this metaphor capture that plain words can’t?
• If Moloch is the god of perverse incentives, how does he show up in our calendars—when schedules, deadlines, and productivity traps leave no room for what actually matters?
• Where do you see “Molochian” dynamics today—places where everyone’s rational choices still lead to collective nonsense?
• If incentives are the trap, what’s the equivalent of a cat knocking the chess pieces off the table to reset the game?
• Can we imagine a world beyond Moloch—or do we just need more cats prowling the system to keep him in check?

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So come for the caffeine, stay for the conversation, and let the Catzen cats remind us that sometimes ignoring the calendar is the wisest scheduling decision of all.