More than weirdtopia, this article shows to me how easy it is to make a shared dystopia, but how hard it is to make a shared utopia. All your dystopia examples sound horrible to me, but for the utopia, most of them are either “scary”, “sick” or “I wouldn’t like that”.
I would say it’s a side-effect of inferential gaps, I come from a different culture, I’ve a very different view about politics, economics, sexuality or Apple, … since the naive way of making utopia is taking what you consider positive and extending it, your utopia will look scary/sick/not desirable when those things are negative-sounding to me.
This gave me a bizarre idea for a General Weirdtopia, based on the idea of having a shared Utopia, and possibly Edward’s Double Blind democracy.
15 minutes of Fame Weirdtopia: Everyone has an unremovable networked armband computer. If you desire, every 15 minutes, you are entered into a drawing. At the end of that 15 minutes, if you are the randomly chosen winner, then approximately 1 day later, anyone you ask via armband communication is compelled to do whatever you want for the next 15 minutes, albeit after a brief delay for approval(see below). People can be given an order that takes longer than 15 minutes to execute, but you can’t give an order to multiple people at once. So if you desire as much money as possible, you can armband Bill Gates and say “Sell Microsoft and give me all of the proceeds.” And he will be compelled to do so (assuming it’s approved), even though unloading that many Microsoft shares could easily take far longer than 15 minutes. But if you say “Everyone in the world give me all of their money.” there is no effect.
Anyone can call up a list of actions indicating what commands all famous people have given and their status (Completed, In process, Delayed for voting approval) After all, they are famous. Those commands can be voted on by the 96 people who are going to be famous soon. (Because they will soon have the right to countermand your orders, but some orders are not reversible.) When those people block something, all but one millisecond of the time that order took is given back to you and you can do something else with it. You don’t know who those people are or how they voted, (after all, they aren’t famous yet.) just whether the command went through or not and even if somehow you find out before they become famous, you can’t order them to do anything. However, once they BECOME famous, their votes are public records (after all, they’re famous now!)
In essence, you can’t just start repeatedly armbanding people and asking them to commit suicide. The up and coming famous people can just countermand you repeatedly, and cops can still shoot/arrest you. (Remember, your orders, name, face and position are announced to everyone who cares to be listening, live. Your NEIGHBORS probably already have mobbed you, with requests that they would like you to make on their behalf.)
It’s also unlikely you would get a council of soon to be famous dicks to delay more reasonable wishes forever until your time runs out. They would have to countermand hundreds of thousands of orders, and would be recorded as doing so, and would be delaying their own turn in the limelight and everyone else’s, just because they voted to disapprove of the idea of you enjoying free pizza for the rest of your life. Needless to say, once that became public record when they were famous, that might go over poorly.
Don’t want to be famous? You don’t have to, it’s a voluntary lottery. You can opt in and opt out as much as you want. However, you still have to do what the famous person tells you if the soon to be famous people don’t block it.
Turns out to be a corrupt system which is utterly, utterly, horrible and needs to be disabled or changed? Well, if a famous person orders it changed or turned off, a majority of the soon to be famous agree, and a weeklong worldwide discussion/vote agrees then off it goes. This means the soon to be famous would be giving up their 15 minutes. So it probably wouldn’t be done trivially. But if failing to vote to turn it off means that a large majority people would in general be VERY ANGRY at you, remember that your actions, name, face and location are being recorded, and that since the system is still on, you can be armbanded later, and that the council of soon to be famous do not HAVE to countermand a famous person ordering your suicide, or you being ordered to report to prison for a life sentence.
More than weirdtopia, this article shows to me how easy it is to make a shared dystopia, but how hard it is to make a shared utopia. All your dystopia examples sound horrible to me, but for the utopia, most of them are either “scary”, “sick” or “I wouldn’t like that”.
I would say it’s a side-effect of inferential gaps, I come from a different culture, I’ve a very different view about politics, economics, sexuality or Apple, … since the naive way of making utopia is taking what you consider positive and extending it, your utopia will look scary/sick/not desirable when those things are negative-sounding to me.
This gave me a bizarre idea for a General Weirdtopia, based on the idea of having a shared Utopia, and possibly Edward’s Double Blind democracy.
15 minutes of Fame Weirdtopia: Everyone has an unremovable networked armband computer. If you desire, every 15 minutes, you are entered into a drawing. At the end of that 15 minutes, if you are the randomly chosen winner, then approximately 1 day later, anyone you ask via armband communication is compelled to do whatever you want for the next 15 minutes, albeit after a brief delay for approval(see below). People can be given an order that takes longer than 15 minutes to execute, but you can’t give an order to multiple people at once. So if you desire as much money as possible, you can armband Bill Gates and say “Sell Microsoft and give me all of the proceeds.” And he will be compelled to do so (assuming it’s approved), even though unloading that many Microsoft shares could easily take far longer than 15 minutes. But if you say “Everyone in the world give me all of their money.” there is no effect.
Anyone can call up a list of actions indicating what commands all famous people have given and their status (Completed, In process, Delayed for voting approval) After all, they are famous. Those commands can be voted on by the 96 people who are going to be famous soon. (Because they will soon have the right to countermand your orders, but some orders are not reversible.) When those people block something, all but one millisecond of the time that order took is given back to you and you can do something else with it. You don’t know who those people are or how they voted, (after all, they aren’t famous yet.) just whether the command went through or not and even if somehow you find out before they become famous, you can’t order them to do anything. However, once they BECOME famous, their votes are public records (after all, they’re famous now!)
In essence, you can’t just start repeatedly armbanding people and asking them to commit suicide. The up and coming famous people can just countermand you repeatedly, and cops can still shoot/arrest you. (Remember, your orders, name, face and position are announced to everyone who cares to be listening, live. Your NEIGHBORS probably already have mobbed you, with requests that they would like you to make on their behalf.)
It’s also unlikely you would get a council of soon to be famous dicks to delay more reasonable wishes forever until your time runs out. They would have to countermand hundreds of thousands of orders, and would be recorded as doing so, and would be delaying their own turn in the limelight and everyone else’s, just because they voted to disapprove of the idea of you enjoying free pizza for the rest of your life. Needless to say, once that became public record when they were famous, that might go over poorly.
Don’t want to be famous? You don’t have to, it’s a voluntary lottery. You can opt in and opt out as much as you want. However, you still have to do what the famous person tells you if the soon to be famous people don’t block it.
Turns out to be a corrupt system which is utterly, utterly, horrible and needs to be disabled or changed? Well, if a famous person orders it changed or turned off, a majority of the soon to be famous agree, and a weeklong worldwide discussion/vote agrees then off it goes. This means the soon to be famous would be giving up their 15 minutes. So it probably wouldn’t be done trivially. But if failing to vote to turn it off means that a large majority people would in general be VERY ANGRY at you, remember that your actions, name, face and location are being recorded, and that since the system is still on, you can be armbanded later, and that the council of soon to be famous do not HAVE to countermand a famous person ordering your suicide, or you being ordered to report to prison for a life sentence.