Some counterexamples to your naive-seeming political assertions
I am not claiming that these are all true (most are true to a certain extent, as far as I can tell—but that’s not relevant here), simply that these are features often believed about democracies, and are good starting points to think about.
Anyway, I think a smarter approach would be to figure out possible forms of self-organization suitable for the Em-world, starting from scratch.
I think an analysis of what kinds of democracies work or don’t work for Ems is a first step before the designing from scratch (we can also toss in a few other current models of governments), as this will help isolate the key features of the Em world. This is often better than starting from scratch, as it reduces premature commitment to a fantastic-sounding idea.
This is often better than starting from scratch, as it reduces premature commitment to a fantastic-sounding idea.
Yes, there is a danger of that, certainly. On the other hand, if you start from what works for meat beings then there is a danger of being stuck in a local optimum. Probably both ought to be explored, and I am not sure if one or the other ought to have precedence. My personal opinion, admittedly not rigorously quantified, is that failure of imagination is a worse sin than reinventing the basics when dealing with predictions. But then in my physics studies I learned the importance of always being able to rederive the conclusions from the first principles, not just from half-processed expressions with potentially a lot of hidden or forgotten assumptions built in.
I am not claiming that these are all true (most are true to a certain extent, as far as I can tell—but that’s not relevant here), simply that these are features often believed about democracies, and are good starting points to think about.
I think an analysis of what kinds of democracies work or don’t work for Ems is a first step before the designing from scratch (we can also toss in a few other current models of governments), as this will help isolate the key features of the Em world. This is often better than starting from scratch, as it reduces premature commitment to a fantastic-sounding idea.
Yes, there is a danger of that, certainly. On the other hand, if you start from what works for meat beings then there is a danger of being stuck in a local optimum. Probably both ought to be explored, and I am not sure if one or the other ought to have precedence. My personal opinion, admittedly not rigorously quantified, is that failure of imagination is a worse sin than reinventing the basics when dealing with predictions. But then in my physics studies I learned the importance of always being able to rederive the conclusions from the first principles, not just from half-processed expressions with potentially a lot of hidden or forgotten assumptions built in.