Would it be possible to embed a seed of dath ilan or a social system like that in our existing society to grow it? If death ilan works that should be possible. It should outcompete Inadequate Equilibria, right? But: When does Be the change that you want to see in the world and Fake it till you make it work? What are the requirements? Higher intelligence?
I have written about embedding better social systems here and here before.
I think there are LOTS of small “seeds” of better-functioning group decision-making. Most families work better than society at large. Many clubs, some businesses, some religious organizations, and other groups provide examples that are gentler and more cooperative than the overall world seems to be.
I suspect that there are two VERY strong forces preventing the more pleasant examples from scaling out.
Most of them exclude (or just don’t deal with) the actual hard problem of differential capability and motivation. There are a whole lot of humans who are not engaging in long-term thinking, strategy, or empathetic behavior in order to produce value for others. Whether they’re capable of such is unknown, but they’re not doing it now, and historically there’s always been significant numbers of people in this category.
The better examples are based on bonds stronger than “fellow human”. The day-to-day efforts tend to be based on groups that are a small multiple of Dunbar’s number, more often much smaller. The vast majority of humans care very differentially about other humans, based on what I tend to think of as the square of empathetic distance (it’s probably not that, but it’s a fun comparison to physical forces).
I never got into the Dath Ilan fiction, it just never caught my imagination right, so I don’t know if it addresses either of these points. In any case, it’s fiction, so “if Dath Ilan works” is not a useful condition. It’s not clear that a more pleasant, rationalist (not to say rational, as that gets caught up in goal definitions), rigorously logical subgroup would outcompete the current path-dependent evolved equilibrium.
It’s certainly still worth trying, and it’s worth finding the more pleasant and fitting-to-your-preferences-and-capabilities subsets of the current society, and working to expand their scope. Don’t go all EMH and say “well, it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s impossible”. But recognize the hard parts and decide when and whether to address them head-on, rather than imagining they don’t exist.
Would it be possible to embed a seed of dath ilan or a social system like that in our existing society to grow it? If death ilan works that should be possible. It should outcompete Inadequate Equilibria, right? But: When does Be the change that you want to see in the world and Fake it till you make it work? What are the requirements? Higher intelligence?
I have written about embedding better social systems here and here before.
I think there are LOTS of small “seeds” of better-functioning group decision-making. Most families work better than society at large. Many clubs, some businesses, some religious organizations, and other groups provide examples that are gentler and more cooperative than the overall world seems to be.
I suspect that there are two VERY strong forces preventing the more pleasant examples from scaling out.
Most of them exclude (or just don’t deal with) the actual hard problem of differential capability and motivation. There are a whole lot of humans who are not engaging in long-term thinking, strategy, or empathetic behavior in order to produce value for others. Whether they’re capable of such is unknown, but they’re not doing it now, and historically there’s always been significant numbers of people in this category.
The better examples are based on bonds stronger than “fellow human”. The day-to-day efforts tend to be based on groups that are a small multiple of Dunbar’s number, more often much smaller. The vast majority of humans care very differentially about other humans, based on what I tend to think of as the square of empathetic distance (it’s probably not that, but it’s a fun comparison to physical forces).
I never got into the Dath Ilan fiction, it just never caught my imagination right, so I don’t know if it addresses either of these points. In any case, it’s fiction, so “if Dath Ilan works” is not a useful condition. It’s not clear that a more pleasant, rationalist (not to say rational, as that gets caught up in goal definitions), rigorously logical subgroup would outcompete the current path-dependent evolved equilibrium.
It’s certainly still worth trying, and it’s worth finding the more pleasant and fitting-to-your-preferences-and-capabilities subsets of the current society, and working to expand their scope. Don’t go all EMH and say “well, it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s impossible”. But recognize the hard parts and decide when and whether to address them head-on, rather than imagining they don’t exist.