I suspect your modeling of “the fairness instinct” is insufficient. Historically, there were many periods of time where slaves or mostly-powerless individuals were the significant majority. Even today, there are very limited questions where one-person-one-vote applies. Even in the few cases where that mechanism holds, ZERO allow any human (not even any embodied human) to vote. There are always pretty restrictive criteria of membership and accident of birth that limit the eligible vote population.
As I discuss in Part 1 A Sense of Fairness, societies have been becoming distinctly more egalitarian over the last few centuries. My suggestion is that having a large oppressed class has been becoming less viable as technology improved. As social and technological complexity increases, sabotage becomes more effective. This effect is going to become more and more the case as weapons of mass destruction become available to terrorists, revolutionaries, and anyone else sufficiently upset about their lot in life. A high-tech society needs to be egalitarian, because it can’t afford to have even small numbers of highly disaffected people with the technical skill to cause massive damage.
Sorry, kind of bounced off the part 1 - didn’t agree, but couldn’t find the handle to frame my disagreement or work toward a crux. Which makes it somewhat unfair (but still unfortunately the case) to disagree now.
I like the focus on power (to sabotage or defect) as a reason to give wider voice to the populace. I wonder if this applies to uploads. It seems likely that the troublemakers can just be powered down, or at least copied less often.
I suspect your modeling of “the fairness instinct” is insufficient. Historically, there were many periods of time where slaves or mostly-powerless individuals were the significant majority. Even today, there are very limited questions where one-person-one-vote applies. Even in the few cases where that mechanism holds, ZERO allow any human (not even any embodied human) to vote. There are always pretty restrictive criteria of membership and accident of birth that limit the eligible vote population.
As I discuss in Part 1 A Sense of Fairness, societies have been becoming distinctly more egalitarian over the last few centuries. My suggestion is that having a large oppressed class has been becoming less viable as technology improved. As social and technological complexity increases, sabotage becomes more effective. This effect is going to become more and more the case as weapons of mass destruction become available to terrorists, revolutionaries, and anyone else sufficiently upset about their lot in life. A high-tech society needs to be egalitarian, because it can’t afford to have even small numbers of highly disaffected people with the technical skill to cause massive damage.
Sorry, kind of bounced off the part 1 - didn’t agree, but couldn’t find the handle to frame my disagreement or work toward a crux. Which makes it somewhat unfair (but still unfortunately the case) to disagree now.
I like the focus on power (to sabotage or defect) as a reason to give wider voice to the populace. I wonder if this applies to uploads. It seems likely that the troublemakers can just be powered down, or at least copied less often.
So which aspect(s) of part 1 didn’t you agree with? (Maybe we should have a discussion there?)