Yeah, sure, that’s why we’ll still need either really strong tradition or a system that maintains strict social control (“the Leviathan”) - whether said tradition or said system manifests itself as a government, a singleton like AGI, or something we can’t yet imagine. Even if there are no external scarce resources left for people to struggle over, they will still inevitably struggle over dominiance and status for its own sake.
And, like Konkvistador has recently pointed out, if you want to repress that struggle, you are to chose a proportion of “brainwashing” (tradition, or more intrusive influence) or “violence” (formal rigid system). With maximum brainwashing, you’d need no violence. With maximum violence, you’d need no brainwashing (but unlimited violence in human hands probably spells guaranteed disaster, especially if said violence can deliver economic control to its enforcer; IMO, that’s what Moldbug is in denial about when proposing his “patchwork” of absolute sovereigns; like any other “free” market, they could stop competing in niceness for citizens and unite under a treaty to enslave them).
Now, maximum brainwashing sounds even worse to most of us − 1984 springs to mind—but I’d say that, with research and a way to make the brainwasher incorruptible, it could maybe turn out pretty nice, maybe even like Banks’ Culture, where everyone is practically brainwashed from birth via a constructed language.
Of course, many people would say that the sanest option is a combination of the two. But, again, if we’ll somehow find a way to make one of the two nice and ethical, but not the other, then we might have to chose to maximize the one to eliminate the other.
So that’s the stick; if it works reliably, people might be made to stay content with the carrot (fake zero-sum social games).
UPD: if you downvoted the above primarily for me mentioning that argument against the Patchwork thing—whether you find it weak or just out-of-place and needlessly political/etc: please downvote this comment but remove your downvote from the parent.
(Everyone else, please don’t vote on this comment.)
Yeah, sure, that’s why we’ll still need either really strong tradition or a system that maintains strict social control (“the Leviathan”) - whether said tradition or said system manifests itself as a government, a singleton like AGI, or something we can’t yet imagine. Even if there are no external scarce resources left for people to struggle over, they will still inevitably struggle over dominiance and status for its own sake.
And, like Konkvistador has recently pointed out, if you want to repress that struggle, you are to chose a proportion of “brainwashing” (tradition, or more intrusive influence) or “violence” (formal rigid system). With maximum brainwashing, you’d need no violence. With maximum violence, you’d need no brainwashing (but unlimited violence in human hands probably spells guaranteed disaster, especially if said violence can deliver economic control to its enforcer; IMO, that’s what Moldbug is in denial about when proposing his “patchwork” of absolute sovereigns; like any other “free” market, they could stop competing in niceness for citizens and unite under a treaty to enslave them).
Now, maximum brainwashing sounds even worse to most of us − 1984 springs to mind—but I’d say that, with research and a way to make the brainwasher incorruptible, it could maybe turn out pretty nice, maybe even like Banks’ Culture, where everyone is practically brainwashed from birth via a constructed language.
Of course, many people would say that the sanest option is a combination of the two. But, again, if we’ll somehow find a way to make one of the two nice and ethical, but not the other, then we might have to chose to maximize the one to eliminate the other.
So that’s the stick; if it works reliably, people might be made to stay content with the carrot (fake zero-sum social games).
UPD: if you downvoted the above primarily for me mentioning that argument against the Patchwork thing—whether you find it weak or just out-of-place and needlessly political/etc: please downvote this comment but remove your downvote from the parent.
(Everyone else, please don’t vote on this comment.)