That being said, Duncan is pointing at something crucial here—lots of people can’t even comprehend such a society, and they act as prions.
I think sharing raw data of how high trust societies work on youtube is a high leverage intervention. You are right that failure of imagination is huge, people tend to believe what they’ve seen work in practice.
On reflection, it’s me who was lacking imagination, or rather I failed to properly appreciate the scale you were thinking of. I was only thinking of ~western cultures where it’s quite easy to avoid starvation and get the basics needed to survive (albeit often in a demeaning way). Removing extreme poverty is pretty much a prerequisite for high trust groups to be able to form, and so easy access to cheap energy is certainly worth a lot of attention in that it helps bring people to the starting point.
I think sharing raw data of how high trust societies work on youtube is a high leverage intervention. You are right that failure of imagination is huge, people tend to believe what they’ve seen work in practice.
On reflection, it’s me who was lacking imagination, or rather I failed to properly appreciate the scale you were thinking of. I was only thinking of ~western cultures where it’s quite easy to avoid starvation and get the basics needed to survive (albeit often in a demeaning way). Removing extreme poverty is pretty much a prerequisite for high trust groups to be able to form, and so easy access to cheap energy is certainly worth a lot of attention in that it helps bring people to the starting point.
Glad we agree :)