Are you free to choose which community to join? Will there be a rationalist community in your area?
Is a community free to reject some people who want to join it?
Could we organize the entire society as a hierarchical group of groups (of groups… as many levels as needed) like this? That would allow us to pool money for larger projects (organized by groups of higher order).
In brief: Yes; If you want to start one; Maybe; It’s not something that I’ve thought about, could you tell me more about what you would have in mind?
You can freely join and leave any group you want. I’m of two minds about preventing people from joining a group. On one hand if they don’t like outsides, that probably a good sign outsides don’t want to be there. On the other I’m not a big fan of making it easier to exclude people and hide away. If they black guy wants to join the KKK group, I feel like he should have the right. What do you think?
How do you imagine this russian nesting doll of groups to work? I love the idea, I just want to hear more!
We have a cultural taboo against excluding people, but there are situations where even one person can ruin the experience for many.
One disruptive child in a classroom can make the educational experience unpleasant for the entire class including the teacher.
One person yelling at night or blasting loud music can wake up the entire house.
One drug dealer can bring lots of crime to the neighborhood.
We have a cultural taboo against talking about these things. It is not a coincidence that your example of exclusion is a black guy vs KKK. When talking about exclusion, we are primed to think about the group that wants to exclude someone as the bad guys, and the one to be excluded as an innocent victim. Yes, sometimes it is exactly that. But sometimes it is the other way round. Try to imagine a community that includes one violent crazy person, one rapist, one thief, one drug dealer… and a few nice and decent people, but they are not allowed to get rid of the problematic ones, because inclusion is the buzzword of the day. Will those nice people feel happy participating at the community events?
These are dramatic examples, but the same happens at lower stakes. Try to have a rationality meetup, but also there are five visitors who can’t stop talking about some conspiracy theory they believe, or five religious fanatics that can’t stop trying to convert everyone. The discussion is derailed. The only way to have the kind of community you want is to exclude them.
(Also, if the group size is limited, inclusion is exclusion. Suppose the community already has 49 out of 50 members allowed, and you want your friend to join, but someone else joins faster. Oops, the group is full, your friend cannot join anymore.)
However, there is the fact that if groups are allowed to exclude people, some people will end up without a group. That is also a problem with my hierarchical idea, that some groups may be excluded from higher-level groups; for example, if you live in a religious country, you may join an atheist group, but it will be excluded from the religious group-of-groups.
I don’t have a specific idea about the hierarchical system, it was just a quick “if we propose this system for individuals, why not go all the way up?”. It would solve the problem of “what if I want to do some group activity that requires more that 50 people?”. But it opens many additional questions.
That makes sense to me! Perhaps a good way to do it would be that there’s not systematic way to keep people out, but there are options for kicking people out if the group votes against them. That way it takes active effort to maintain exclusivity, as opposed to allowing people to do it by active default.
One other thought on it: since people NEED access to these groups to be entitled to their UBI benefits, everyone has be allowed in each one. That being said, ya, a child molester in a group with a bunch of parents might not be a good idea.
So the question becomes is it better to distribute the problem cases across society, where hopefully there is more pressure to improve and better role models, or stick them in a group with all the other worst people and let them be a cesspool of misery?
Church often becomes so important to many homeless people precisely because it’s one of the last communities willing to have them, even when they are rejected everywhere else by the rest of society. Although even here in our imaginary world with CUBI, churches will not cease to exist, they will just be better funded since most likely they will spring up around communities.
As for the group size thing: I had said 50 to 250 to be circling around Dunbar’s number, then as it’s get to it’s upper limit, it’s time to split the group in two. I imagine this will be often be a drama filled affair, but it seems like a good idea since it allows for successful groups to very naturally continue to grow (think of cell division). Both groups would start off with the same polices of the previous whole group, then they can continue to evolve on their own parallel branches.
By the way, I suspect that we are reinventing some “anarcho-something-ism” here...
Thinking about the people at the bottom is a difficult trade-off: it would be better if they didn’t stay abandoned, but for everyone else it is better to stay far away from them.
Traditional solution: ignore them, or kill them if they become annoying
Religious solution: promise Heaven to those who volunteer to spend time with them
Socialist solution: put them in a mental institution and don’t talk about the topic anymore
Woke solution: leave them on the streets, don’t talk about the topic and attack those who do
...sorry for politics, but I tried to list all the solutions I am aware of.
I was thinking more of rift on UBI, not a fundamental reordering of society. Iceland has a system where you can declare you’re religious instantiation and money goes to it there, people have used that to have more community funded even non religious groups.
So this would be a combo of UBI and Sóknargjald (“congregation fee”). The main addition here is to make it fully non-religious and cap it at a size where you can actually know everyone else involved.
As for the what to do with people at the bottom question: Houston has done a better job than most with it’s housing first policies. The best programs to me are ones that aim to really prevent people from become homeless in the first place, once you’re mind has been ruined by a couple years of living outside and drugs it’s seem almost impossible to functionally reintegrate people into society.
Even if homeless circles, clearly forming community’s and pooling resources does work. For a good example of this I think of Camp Resolution in Sacramento. This, of course, does come with problems, so I understand why cops choose to break up these encampments, but I think it does cause a real damage to communities they destroy. If they could somehow get enough money (say through a program like the one I’m proposing) to at least do group aparments or something like that, I think it would go someway to allowing the more functional homeless people to reintegrate into society. I’ve worked a decent amount with the homeless, and there are a group who are certainly beyond help, but there at also a lot of people who I think still could be real productive members of society.
So, when a community will reach 240, it will have an incentive to don’t grow to don’t have drama and decrease of efficiency because of economies of scale? How would you prevent it?
I probably should have made it clear: this is not a replacement of capitalism. As the title suggest, this is an alternative to UBI. I think thinking of better ways to do UBI becomes more and more important as AI gets better and better. Already, this would be more efficient along economies of scale line than traditional UBI since it goes from a single person, to a community.
As for getting up to the cap: here’s what I was thinking. Once you get to arround ~150 ish, so around Dunbar’s number, it’s time to starting splitting, the extra is just to make it so it’s less likely for you to hit any hard caps before you reach it.
As for incentivizing communities to not grow: that seems counter productive. If there’s some sort of organization that’s working really well and everyone want’s to join we want it to start replicating and this would be a good mechanism for that to happen. Out with the old, in with the new.
Are you free to choose which community to join? Will there be a rationalist community in your area?
Is a community free to reject some people who want to join it?
Could we organize the entire society as a hierarchical group of groups (of groups… as many levels as needed) like this? That would allow us to pool money for larger projects (organized by groups of higher order).
In brief: Yes; If you want to start one; Maybe; It’s not something that I’ve thought about, could you tell me more about what you would have in mind?
You can freely join and leave any group you want. I’m of two minds about preventing people from joining a group. On one hand if they don’t like outsides, that probably a good sign outsides don’t want to be there. On the other I’m not a big fan of making it easier to exclude people and hide away. If they black guy wants to join the KKK group, I feel like he should have the right. What do you think?
How do you imagine this russian nesting doll of groups to work? I love the idea, I just want to hear more!
We have a cultural taboo against excluding people, but there are situations where even one person can ruin the experience for many.
One disruptive child in a classroom can make the educational experience unpleasant for the entire class including the teacher.
One person yelling at night or blasting loud music can wake up the entire house.
One drug dealer can bring lots of crime to the neighborhood.
We have a cultural taboo against talking about these things. It is not a coincidence that your example of exclusion is a black guy vs KKK. When talking about exclusion, we are primed to think about the group that wants to exclude someone as the bad guys, and the one to be excluded as an innocent victim. Yes, sometimes it is exactly that. But sometimes it is the other way round. Try to imagine a community that includes one violent crazy person, one rapist, one thief, one drug dealer… and a few nice and decent people, but they are not allowed to get rid of the problematic ones, because inclusion is the buzzword of the day. Will those nice people feel happy participating at the community events?
These are dramatic examples, but the same happens at lower stakes. Try to have a rationality meetup, but also there are five visitors who can’t stop talking about some conspiracy theory they believe, or five religious fanatics that can’t stop trying to convert everyone. The discussion is derailed. The only way to have the kind of community you want is to exclude them.
(Also, if the group size is limited, inclusion is exclusion. Suppose the community already has 49 out of 50 members allowed, and you want your friend to join, but someone else joins faster. Oops, the group is full, your friend cannot join anymore.)
However, there is the fact that if groups are allowed to exclude people, some people will end up without a group. That is also a problem with my hierarchical idea, that some groups may be excluded from higher-level groups; for example, if you live in a religious country, you may join an atheist group, but it will be excluded from the religious group-of-groups.
I don’t have a specific idea about the hierarchical system, it was just a quick “if we propose this system for individuals, why not go all the way up?”. It would solve the problem of “what if I want to do some group activity that requires more that 50 people?”. But it opens many additional questions.
That makes sense to me! Perhaps a good way to do it would be that there’s not systematic way to keep people out, but there are options for kicking people out if the group votes against them. That way it takes active effort to maintain exclusivity, as opposed to allowing people to do it by active default.
One other thought on it: since people NEED access to these groups to be entitled to their UBI benefits, everyone has be allowed in each one. That being said, ya, a child molester in a group with a bunch of parents might not be a good idea.
So the question becomes is it better to distribute the problem cases across society, where hopefully there is more pressure to improve and better role models, or stick them in a group with all the other worst people and let them be a cesspool of misery?
Church often becomes so important to many homeless people precisely because it’s one of the last communities willing to have them, even when they are rejected everywhere else by the rest of society. Although even here in our imaginary world with CUBI, churches will not cease to exist, they will just be better funded since most likely they will spring up around communities.
As for the group size thing: I had said 50 to 250 to be circling around Dunbar’s number, then as it’s get to it’s upper limit, it’s time to split the group in two. I imagine this will be often be a drama filled affair, but it seems like a good idea since it allows for successful groups to very naturally continue to grow (think of cell division). Both groups would start off with the same polices of the previous whole group, then they can continue to evolve on their own parallel branches.
By the way, I suspect that we are reinventing some “anarcho-something-ism” here...
Thinking about the people at the bottom is a difficult trade-off: it would be better if they didn’t stay abandoned, but for everyone else it is better to stay far away from them.
Traditional solution: ignore them, or kill them if they become annoying
Religious solution: promise Heaven to those who volunteer to spend time with them
Socialist solution: put them in a mental institution and don’t talk about the topic anymore
Woke solution: leave them on the streets, don’t talk about the topic and attack those who do
...sorry for politics, but I tried to list all the solutions I am aware of.
I was thinking more of rift on UBI, not a fundamental reordering of society. Iceland has a system where you can declare you’re religious instantiation and money goes to it there, people have used that to have more community funded even non religious groups.
So this would be a combo of UBI and Sóknargjald (“congregation fee”). The main addition here is to make it fully non-religious and cap it at a size where you can actually know everyone else involved.
As for the what to do with people at the bottom question: Houston has done a better job than most with it’s housing first policies. The best programs to me are ones that aim to really prevent people from become homeless in the first place, once you’re mind has been ruined by a couple years of living outside and drugs it’s seem almost impossible to functionally reintegrate people into society.
Even if homeless circles, clearly forming community’s and pooling resources does work. For a good example of this I think of Camp Resolution in Sacramento. This, of course, does come with problems, so I understand why cops choose to break up these encampments, but I think it does cause a real damage to communities they destroy. If they could somehow get enough money (say through a program like the one I’m proposing) to at least do group aparments or something like that, I think it would go someway to allowing the more functional homeless people to reintegrate into society. I’ve worked a decent amount with the homeless, and there are a group who are certainly beyond help, but there at also a lot of people who I think still could be real productive members of society.
So, when a community will reach 240, it will have an incentive to don’t grow to don’t have drama and decrease of efficiency because of economies of scale? How would you prevent it?
I probably should have made it clear: this is not a replacement of capitalism. As the title suggest, this is an alternative to UBI. I think thinking of better ways to do UBI becomes more and more important as AI gets better and better. Already, this would be more efficient along economies of scale line than traditional UBI since it goes from a single person, to a community.
As for getting up to the cap: here’s what I was thinking. Once you get to arround ~150 ish, so around Dunbar’s number, it’s time to starting splitting, the extra is just to make it so it’s less likely for you to hit any hard caps before you reach it.
As for incentivizing communities to not grow: that seems counter productive. If there’s some sort of organization that’s working really well and everyone want’s to join we want it to start replicating and this would be a good mechanism for that to happen. Out with the old, in with the new.