I expect that one of the arguments contra that you will see (I do not subscribe to it) is that highly-capable individuals are just too dangerous. Basically, power can be used not only to separate oneself from the society you don’t like, but also to hurt the society you don’t like. The contemporary technological society is fragile and a competent malcontent can do terrible damage to it.
Individuals yup. That is the failure mode to guard against.
I want to ask if it is possible to get a safe advanced society with things like mutual inspection for defection and creating technology sharing groups with other pro-social people. Such that anti-social people do not get a strategic decisive advantage (or much advantage at all).
What’s “pro-social” and “anti-social”? In particular, what if you’re pro-social, but pro-a-different-social? Consider your standard revolutionaries of different kinds.
Pro- and anti-social are not immutable characteristics. People change.
If access to technology/power is going to be gated by conformity, the whole autonomy premise goes out of the window right away
Pro-social is not trying to take over the entire world or threatening . It is agreeing to mainly non-violent competition. Anti-social is genocide/pogroms, biocide, mind crimes, bio/nano warfare.
I’d rather no gating, but some gating might be required at different times.
Heh. If you think there’s any such thing as “non-violent competition”, you’re not seeing through some levels of abstraction. All resource allocation is violent or has the threat of violence behind it.
Poor competitors fail to reproduce, and that is the ultimate violence.
If the competition stops a person reproducing then sure it is a little violent. If it stops an idea reproducing, then I am not so sure I care about stopping all violence.
Poor competitors fail to reproduce, and that is the ultimate violence.
Failure to reproduce is not the ultimate violence. Killing someone and killing everyone vaguely related to them (including the bacteria that share a genetic code), destroying their culture and all its traces is far more violent.
If it stops an idea reproducing, then I am not so sure I care about stopping all violence.
Ideas have no agency. Agents competing for control/use of resources contain violence. I probably should back up a step and say “denial of goals is the ultimate violence”. If you have a different definition (preferably something more complete than “no hitting”), please share it.
Let’s take something old, say the French Revolution. Which side is pro-social? Both, neither?
Let’s take a hypothetical, say there is a group in Iran which calls the current regime “medieval theocracy” and wants to change the society to be considerably more Western-style. Are they pro-social?
By “humans” you mean “individuals”, right?
I expect that one of the arguments contra that you will see (I do not subscribe to it) is that highly-capable individuals are just too dangerous. Basically, power can be used not only to separate oneself from the society you don’t like, but also to hurt the society you don’t like. The contemporary technological society is fragile and a competent malcontent can do terrible damage to it.
Individuals yup. That is the failure mode to guard against.
I want to ask if it is possible to get a safe advanced society with things like mutual inspection for defection and creating technology sharing groups with other pro-social people. Such that anti-social people do not get a strategic decisive advantage (or much advantage at all).
A few issues immediately come to mind.
What’s “pro-social” and “anti-social”? In particular, what if you’re pro-social, but pro-a-different-social? Consider your standard revolutionaries of different kinds.
Pro- and anti-social are not immutable characteristics. People change.
If access to technology/power is going to be gated by conformity, the whole autonomy premise goes out of the window right away
Pro-social is not trying to take over the entire world or threatening . It is agreeing to mainly non-violent competition. Anti-social is genocide/pogroms, biocide, mind crimes, bio/nano warfare.
I’d rather no gating, but some gating might be required at different times.
Heh. If you think there’s any such thing as “non-violent competition”, you’re not seeing through some levels of abstraction. All resource allocation is violent or has the threat of violence behind it.
Poor competitors fail to reproduce, and that is the ultimate violence.
If the competition stops a person reproducing then sure it is a little violent. If it stops an idea reproducing, then I am not so sure I care about stopping all violence.
Failure to reproduce is not the ultimate violence. Killing someone and killing everyone vaguely related to them (including the bacteria that share a genetic code), destroying their culture and all its traces is far more violent.
Ideas have no agency. Agents competing for control/use of resources contain violence. I probably should back up a step and say “denial of goals is the ultimate violence”. If you have a different definition (preferably something more complete than “no hitting”), please share it.
There was a reason I mentioned revolutionaries.
Let’s take something old, say the French Revolution. Which side is pro-social? Both, neither?
Let’s take a hypothetical, say there is a group in Iran which calls the current regime “medieval theocracy” and wants to change the society to be considerably more Western-style. Are they pro-social?