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 Morgenstern.

This post will of course be far from exhaustive. However, it's worth noting that attempts to develop big-picture frameworks for social theory have grown surprisingly sparse. Berger describes the field as being deformed from two directions since the mid-1900s: on one side, by the “methodological fetishism” of “sociologists using increasingly sophisticated methods to study increasingly trivial topics”; and on the other side, by the “cultural revolution [that] sought to transform sociology from a science into an instrument of ideological advocacy”. Hence many of the thinkers I’ll be discussing were officially based in economics or political science departments.

This post has three sections, each focused on a different topic: social and game-theoretic equilibria; the internalization of norms and values; and collective behavior. [...]

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Outline:

(01:42) Social equilibria vs game-theoretic equilibria

(07:20) Internalizing norms

(13:54) Collective behavior

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 8th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DwHvtm8vLipAQPest/social-theory-and-agent-foundations

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Social Theory and Agent Foundations” by Richard_Ngo

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Social Theory and Agent Foundations” by Richard_Ngo