Long post Possibly a good idea in here somewhere. I need to learn brevity
In short: Humans have complex and highly varying preferences. Designing a Utopia is highly meta. Don’t expect any short object level description of a world everyone would value to exist. The constants of all humans values are things like “most peoples preferences care more about humans than about paperclips”, ie invisible background frameworks.
Who says the system has to be stable, or even at an equilibrium? Human social dynamics are almost certainly chaotic. Almost any circumstance where we can design a utopia to last for aeons is one where we have pretty much got FAI. The AI can be used to control and regulate the system, you don’t need it to be stable on its own. It can use everything from overwhelming hard power (send in the robots to lock them up, or the nanobots to override nervous systems) to subtle soft social manipulation. If most people want to be near the top of the social pecking order, options include creating new minds that don’t mind being pecked. (sentient or not)
An age based system could be extremely frustrating to bright young minds. It could also encourage total laziness, if all metrics of social worth are based on age, not experience, some people will start thumb twiddling. Of course, some people like thumb twiddling. Many of the proposed utopias I’ve read about look dull, or unpleasant, or not for everyone. What we need is lots of different utopias next to each other, so people can move about and see whats for them. Options include
Back to nature Utopia. Like what a caveman would imagine as the perfect world. The fruit is always abundant, the weather always nice, ect.
Scifi Ripoff Utopia All the tech is covered in glowing dials, the robots are humans in funny suits.
Rationality Utopia, Eleizer’s already written about this one. Might be near Science Utopia, with its brilliant equipment, and researchers given free reign to study anything interesting.
Wirehead Utopia? Catgirl Utopia? Religous fundamentalist Utopia, now with extra prayer. Steampunk utopia. A bookworm utopia that consists almost exclusively of libraries. The list goes on and on. Any attempt at a simple one size fits all seems like it won’t fit everyone.
This is basically the same as the Libertarian Archipelago idea. Actually, the ideas mentioned here are the planet of hats type. Utopias with one defining feature. Some will have many complex features that add up to a nice place to live. Some people will want more of a mix of several themes. Some parts will be weird. Some will be high grade transhumanism. Some will be granny knitting group utopias, and not weird at all. Not everyone likes weird. Some will be exciting, some will be calm. The space of utopias would stretch as wide as the space of human scocieties and cultures, although generally moved in the nicer direction. To a truly alien mind, they would have strong similarities, almost all the utopias are focused around humanlike entities. But to see the similarities, you would need to see your humanity as a special case. To an individual human, there will be worlds that trigger almost any emotional reaction. (but not usually the really bad ones, although some prudes would be revolted at orgy world, some hippies would find cyborg world abhorrent, ect)
Another issue is where you draw the line between unusual preferences and mental illness. If someone deliberately bangs their head against walls, do we give them “headbanging utopia with extra walls” or do we treat them, and stop them banging their head? Would it matter if they were otherwise fully functional?
Long post Possibly a good idea in here somewhere. I need to learn brevity
In short: Humans have complex and highly varying preferences. Designing a Utopia is highly meta. Don’t expect any short object level description of a world everyone would value to exist. The constants of all humans values are things like “most peoples preferences care more about humans than about paperclips”, ie invisible background frameworks.
Who says the system has to be stable, or even at an equilibrium? Human social dynamics are almost certainly chaotic. Almost any circumstance where we can design a utopia to last for aeons is one where we have pretty much got FAI. The AI can be used to control and regulate the system, you don’t need it to be stable on its own. It can use everything from overwhelming hard power (send in the robots to lock them up, or the nanobots to override nervous systems) to subtle soft social manipulation. If most people want to be near the top of the social pecking order, options include creating new minds that don’t mind being pecked. (sentient or not)
An age based system could be extremely frustrating to bright young minds. It could also encourage total laziness, if all metrics of social worth are based on age, not experience, some people will start thumb twiddling. Of course, some people like thumb twiddling. Many of the proposed utopias I’ve read about look dull, or unpleasant, or not for everyone. What we need is lots of different utopias next to each other, so people can move about and see whats for them. Options include
Back to nature Utopia. Like what a caveman would imagine as the perfect world. The fruit is always abundant, the weather always nice, ect.
Scifi Ripoff Utopia All the tech is covered in glowing dials, the robots are humans in funny suits.
Rationality Utopia, Eleizer’s already written about this one. Might be near Science Utopia, with its brilliant equipment, and researchers given free reign to study anything interesting.
Wirehead Utopia? Catgirl Utopia? Religous fundamentalist Utopia, now with extra prayer. Steampunk utopia. A bookworm utopia that consists almost exclusively of libraries. The list goes on and on. Any attempt at a simple one size fits all seems like it won’t fit everyone.
This is basically the same as the Libertarian Archipelago idea. Actually, the ideas mentioned here are the planet of hats type. Utopias with one defining feature. Some will have many complex features that add up to a nice place to live. Some people will want more of a mix of several themes. Some parts will be weird. Some will be high grade transhumanism. Some will be granny knitting group utopias, and not weird at all. Not everyone likes weird. Some will be exciting, some will be calm. The space of utopias would stretch as wide as the space of human scocieties and cultures, although generally moved in the nicer direction. To a truly alien mind, they would have strong similarities, almost all the utopias are focused around humanlike entities. But to see the similarities, you would need to see your humanity as a special case. To an individual human, there will be worlds that trigger almost any emotional reaction. (but not usually the really bad ones, although some prudes would be revolted at orgy world, some hippies would find cyborg world abhorrent, ect)
Another issue is where you draw the line between unusual preferences and mental illness. If someone deliberately bangs their head against walls, do we give them “headbanging utopia with extra walls” or do we treat them, and stop them banging their head? Would it matter if they were otherwise fully functional?