We all dream of a better world, that is why I define a couple goals, some steps to proceed and the challenges to implement those steps. I encourage to set your own so we can brainstorm the “how to make a future society”. And if you want a less formal experience, I recommend to listen in the background the music of Swedish House Mafia “Greyhound”.
GOALS A· Science and economy must be more cooperative, more inclusive in the process as in the results. Advances in science could be much faster with common goals and convergent research, and economic failures can be avoided by ultimately securing the fate and well being of all individuals. B· Biomedical research and cybernetics hold the most promising technologies, and for it they deserve full attention or at least the most from the scientific community and economical investing. C· Informatics tools are the key for collective deliberation. A new form of democratic deliberation and a backbone of social reform, informatics tools need to be used, as well to developed with full collaboration of anyone interested.
STEPS A· To create models of collective convergence in science as in economics, as in society itself. Leaving behind the fear in capitalistic societies against collectivism (or for at least some uses), but also taking account what good comes from individual strategies (called by some “competitive strategies”). Social safeguards, at least similar in aim to UBI, must be implemented to cover entrepreneurship risk taking, jumping from a scarcity mindset to an exponential growth in futurist trends. B· Securing financial aid directed to biomedical and cybernetic research being mandatory, as also securing cooperation among businesses with the tools for this research. As it is mandatory to promote the attractiveness on these topics among the scientific community. C· Informatics tools for democratic deliberation need to be on the agenda of politicians. As well the ongoing efforts must be shared across the community, even if these efforts are different on the implementation.
CHALLENGES A· Not just conservative mentality, the myth of “everyone for its own” restrains collective approaches from being investigated. Some forms of discrimination put on hold basic income proposals, and the patent system now restricts what research paths could be taken to advance society. B· Patent “trolling” and overlapping patents are just the start. Businesses continuously restrict each other. Their R&D (research and development) is often effort put on dead ends. By not sharing common grounds many businesses broke. And the scientific community is still financed and motivated to do things with no common aims. C· New forms of deliberation via informatics are not in the agenda of politicians and the government. And much of the development of new virtual agoras are done without collaboration, on the excuse their different implementations are “heresy”.
A final note, please try to find for common goals, so in this way we can work immediately on change society. If we at the beginning have not much in common, lets slowly see any detail to find what we have in common.
Ok, so, as far as I understand you, you first want to collect different goals regarding a futuristic society, and only later on discuss them and find common goals and approaches. Well, sure. Then let’s dedicate this thread to collection and do the discussion in other threads afterwards.
Let me start with some goals. This is not totally systematic and it’s only an incomplete sketch. For my personal vision of a positive social future see my blog post about The Universal Upgrade. My approach is to envision an ideal distant future and to backtrack which intermediate goals and steps need to be taken to finally get there. I fear that I will need to go into breadth a lot, so there will be no room for details in this phase. Otherwise this post would become a thesis in its own right
Long-term goals (> 2050):
Full morphological freedom including the right and ability to change your body into any shape you like. Also, morphological freedom of the mind: Freely change your preferences, emotional configuration, ability to experience positive and negative feelings, cognitive capabilities, qualia setups, and so on.
Basic Rights for all sentient beings, be they animals, sentient artificial minds, cyborgs, uploaded mind, or aliens. Freedom from violence directed against you, if you refrain from violence against others. Also, active support for maintaining your existence via basic resource support and medical treatments, including regenerative treatments extending lifespan indefinitely.
Universal Prosperity for everyone. Generous basic access to resources, travel, medical services, culture. No poverty.
A radically inclusive culture with universal social mobility: No protection of special privileges for certain groups, be they defined by wealth, influence, species, substrate, morphology, or whatever. When you give your best to improve yourself, you should have a fair chance to attain any social position that’s available.
Free and Open Digital Abundance: Information is free and open. Knowledge is shared without any restrictions. If someone tries to sell information that person simply gets ridiculed. Patents and copyrights are universally outlawed.
The Hypernet: You can interconnect your mind with the machines and minds around you directly. The environment is filled with sensors and robots and artificial intelligences with which you can communicate telepathically. You know what others think and feel when they transmit their thoughts and feelings via their neural interfaces.
Sustainability: We don’t destroy the basic foundations of our lives within a relatively short timespan. Our civilization should be able to continue for billions of years.
Medium-term goals (2030-2050):
Cure for ageing and most diseases via advanced regenerative medicine, nanomedicine, and orthomolecular medicine!
Substrate independent minds (a.k.a. uploading your mind to something other than your own brain)
Basic Rights at least for all mammals under our protection. Artificial meat will replace meat extracted from sentient animals. Biosimulators will make animal experiments obsolete.
Universal Basic Income globally at least on a modest level that ensures basic survival.
Integrating sentient artificial minds (SAMs) into our society: Treat them as partners, not as tools or slaves.
Reputation economy as replacement for intellectual property laws: Content creators will be rewarded with high reputation and high reputation will be rewarded with wealth. This should possible with the Quantified Prestige system.
A “telempathic” network meaning a network in which different minds can share their thoughts and feelings via brain to brain interfaces. The science fiction novel Nexus by Ramez Naam displays how that might actually work out.
Sustainable and abundant energy via use of ground based and space based solar power. And hopefully nuclear fusion.
Short-term goals (2015-2030):
Pushing for legalization and research of longevity treatments.
Supporting research aiming at understanding the human brain.
Development of alternatives for animal products: Artificial meat, artificial milk, artificial eggs, simulated organisms for medical testing.
Experiments with Universal Basic Income: Introducing it locally first (as indefinite long-term experiments for example).
Developing working reputation economy systems, for example Quantified Prestige.
Preparing people for the coming sentient artificial minds psychologically! Also, actually develop artificial minds, of course.
Preparing people for the coming telepathic network psychologically! Also, developing the necessary brain to brain interfaces, of course.
Developing and deploying electronic smart grids, renewable energy sources, and storage technologies.
It is excruciatingly late here and I want desperately to read all that has been laid out here and respond in depth, all I can say right now is that I have literally been overjoyed these last few months to see this much activity in like minded rationalities. I am for lack of better words “Giddy”. More on this tomorrow. Sadly sleep is still in high demand.
Edit: I’ll use this as a place holder*
Day 2 time is not being kind to me. I will get around to this.
Edit 3:
I feel that a goal will have to be set, but society has to transition toward that goal. You can’t go to the end and work backwards because things change at the beginning. Tomorrow might have a drastically different political/social pattern.
We have to take step by step approaches from here and take care to evaluate every choice we make here and now.
Actualy we get every day new ideas about possible future socities which seem to be inseperable coupled with a economic and political system. From sharing economy until RBE until interestless economy countless types are suggested. After my analyzes of different ideas Ive realized that there are all one sided and carry about some specific issues of human existence like environment only, social justice only, money based distribution only, technology only, etc. However Ive developed a kind of evaluation and monitoring system which cares about a specific set of balances and metrics which should measure the influences (negative and positive) on the used balances and quantify them. However the balances considered in my sims will be: social balance, environmental balance, technological progress balance, human health balance and human development balance. As soon as developments are one sided the other balances can mostly get destabilized which can destabilize the whole economical and political system. For instance in profit driven systems the envrionmental and social balance are increasingly disturbed, what have to lead to a system destabilization and possible collapse. Societies which focus on social balance and or environmentla balance alone mostly ignore the other mentionen above and so forth, allowing only poor technological progess for instance.
Thats`why when ever measurement of all kind are there proposed they can only be part of a bigger system including all the measurements for restoring the balances which keeps a society stabil as long as possible.
The case of having different ideas of what needs to be done are not necessarily bad. But when we don’t converge into actionable plans, that is a problem.
But as a proposal, I am always inclined to ask for a virtual deliberation system which works to solve a lot of problems. And many people are working on a system like that one, so is not surprise this would be the first step to do.
However to any measurement proposal one would have to quantify the impacts and the results. What exactly measurable changed my countermeasurement for example introducing a basic income. Were this influences positive or negative on any other balances. Wellm things get quickly complex so one would need machines and simulations in order to evaluate it all.
Yes, estimating the effects of certain interventions is extremely difficult. Even computer simulations might not be able to catch all the different effects. If you really want to test a new system, you will sooner or later have to test it in real life to see how it actually behaves. Simulations are interesting, but I’d only trust a system that has been tested and proven to work with real people.
Yes indeed you need both, but extensive simulation helps you to avoid billions of time wasting mistakes with real people. Mistakes which can demoralize them and make them to give up the new ideas. The most mistakes in new communities are mostly psychologcial nature (like for instance ego fights of males) but also wrong or poor planning of resources for covering the the basic needs of the community can bring a community down, aw well as the lack of working organizational structures.
I pretty much ends on who programs the system, and under which criteria. With simulations done as an automatic check of outcomes, we still need to produce input, and that input is either created by humans or from some godlike AI (yes, “godlike” doesnt sounds good). If as humans we are either upgrading ourselves biologically or cybernetically, the criteria would still be our product.
Now, I would like to think “in the meantime”, and hands up working for deliberation tools, which, if there is the need of having an universally connected brain, ultimately be the basis of it. A primitive, but still a step forward.
the main problem i see is the personal
lens. if you give a person power to built a futuristic society on
the earth, this person could not avoid to create something matching
her own taste. and all the others have to live with that, no matter
if they like it or not. and this is what we always had.
so it is inevitable to ask
philosophical questions:
could there ever be a society for all
without exception?
what are the main values for orientation? : long
life, healthy life, long and healthy life, happiness, technology,
expansion?..
Yes, if you give a single person the power to “impose” a futuristic “society” on others, the result would undoubtedly be coloured by the personal preferences of that person. That alone is a good reason not so let any single person have such power over others! The right way to create a better society it to aggregate different visions and then devise some clever “compromise”, or a superior synthesis of different models.
“Could there be a society for all without exception?” That depends on whether you want an “ideal” society for everyone or a “globally acceptable” or merely a “locally acceptable” society for everyone. I think only the last one can be actually realized. There are many contradictory interests. Some people want to impose their way of living on others. This can’t obviously work out for everyone if people actually have competing ideas of what is the best way to live. People who want to see liberal democracy everywhere and worshippers of a global dictatorial theocracy won’t be able to come to a mutual agreement that would be really “globally acceptable” for any one side.
However, if you allow a fractal society with different systems on many different levels, then everyone could have a small “society niche” in which life is truly acceptable unless you demand to look outside of your small political habitat. Whether to call such a complex and diverse construct a “society” is nevertheless rather questionable. But I think it could be based on an agreement that this scheme actually allows everyone to thrive under her own chosen systems.
What would be the main values for orientation? In the fractal society every order of values is legitimate. There would be no global ideology which would have to be imposed on everyone. Everyone would be free to follow his own brain farts.
Yes, and this is why even creating an AI for managing policies must account that someone has to program it, at her liking.
Perhaps we can approach the entirety of population, plus answering what Radivis said. Now, I am not saying it would be perfect, but doable. I’ve developed a protocol to approach what I call “concord”, being this a concept untouched (yet).
The first part is done entering opinions into the more or less process known as “consensus”, but it needs more than that. Here comes the part of the “conformity”, measuring conformity its a novel approach (plus the word has seen wrong uses), but if we take conformity as the result of “what people agrees on which things get widely accepted”, then we have magic happening.
The first part comes from the synthesis mentioned too.
Yes, this is were things get really harsh, because its true what you say that this is more likely to happen. The result is that people who gets aware of other individuals with the same ideas join each other. I could use exact terminology for what it would happen, but because it sounds harsh, lets call this “social migration”. Did I mention I had a novel in the making about some societal implications of the future? its because this is a prolific story of humanity.
i think the problem has to be solved on a deeper level. your thought reminds me of the volonté générale
by rousseau. also kant had thoughts about that and created the Categorical imperative but the main problem persists: is there something for all, that equals all, a basical consensus, no matter how little ? or do we have to accept Cultural relativism no matter what kind of system a culture creates?
the only approach i had so far, is the question, what all people don´t want instead of the question “what do they want?”.
I think there is something that everyone wants: The ability to choose how he lives his life on a very foundational level. In the fractal society I depicted above that would mean the freedom and ability to choose in which “society niche”, or let’s better call it “social system”, you want to live. Even if that system brings with it certain restrictions of freedom. They might be stuck there for quite a long time without the choice to move to another system again.
But because people change, they should be given that right to move to some other system periodically (say, every 5 years for example). This would include the means to travel to the location you want to live in.
Pretty much yes. On the one hand we have the sociological view of “cultural universals”, which is still a concept on development. We also have evolutionary mechanisms which are the foundation of the human feelings. They might not be yet fully understood, but its a start.
I clear up than the “concord” aforementioned is a mechanism of census, thus approaching what is applied in real life. Among the ends is to reveal to the people involved the real feelings of everyone else on the vast subjects in existence, and as a plus we may find universals if we probe in the results.
In the draft I presented to the wikiparty of Spain, the word “primitive” appears, which is the logical result of a census which probes in the opinion gathered from having people thinking on the basis of their own opinions. Thus, this is the magic of fact-checking, concept linking wikis. To serve the purpose of knowing the mother-sibling-child structure of topics and ideas; the way how ideas relate.
EDIT: I must mention than the concept of “primitives” presented in the draft has the meaning of “an idea on which other ideas are based”.
if that is the core, people could leave society and try to live their life
outside somewhere in the wild. but there are not so much escapists in
this world. i think you miss something here.
what do you mean by “evolutionary mechanisms”? genetics? the “foundation of the human feelings” sounds interesting. this could be the most important discovery if we ever want to find something like the volonté générale. what do you think about my idea, to ask, what people don´t want?
I just realized the importance of your approach. So let me rephrase this a bit. First, if its a dislike on the basis of a wrong idea, it can be debunked. Now, for individual ideas, each time we have dissent may not be a social failure.
What if dissent actually means this individual has developed a new approach, which was unknown in the society? It would mean a social evolution by itself.
We ended having either a debunking or a social evolution. And if we now something is certain, its that change a constant.
It comes down to genetic entities, yes. We may have some social entities having to do in the basis of some cultural ideals, but the basis of emotion has to do with the evolutive processes of the origin of behaviour. Its not yet fully understood, but we are starting to see some fundamentals. It is not to say that even aliens would behave this way, but seems that humans definitely share a lot of fundamentals.
I thought I would throw in my penny’s worth on this.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve worked as the director of EOS and we have looked at the idea of moving to a sustainable, hi-tech, moneyless socioeconomic system.
Our plans for bring about such a society involves building ”stepping stones” of small communities networking together, each with their own way of doing things but cooperating together within a common frame work. We have made a start in that direction with the building of a bio-dome near Umeå in Sweden.
I’m coing to an end with my time with EOS this year and I’ve started to think about what to do post EOS. I’m thinking of a couple of things; one centers on poltics but the other centers on the idea of building a virtual nation. The virtual nation would represent a type of fantasy project where we get to ”pretend” we live in a futuristic society (bit like the good old days in Entropia, if anyone remembers them). However, the project I envision should extend into the real world. Forming clubs and get communities to start up.
Thanks for sharing your plans and visions, isenhand!
I find the ideas of the EOS quite fascinating, but as you said, you are now focusing on other things – may I just ask the reason for that? Was there any disappointment about the progress of the EOS?
The idea of a virtual nation is not new. It’s what Zero State tried to do all along, but unfortunately Zero State has lost momentum.
BitNation is also a virtual nation project that seemed to have come further. It’s based on the decentralized blockchain technology. They projects look relatively promising.
And there’s also the new Transhumanist Party Virtual which seems just to be the branch of the Transhumanist Parties that is concerned with virtual spaces rather than “geospaces”.
I think your idea would fit most closely into the Zero State idea. Now, Zero State is unfortunately mostly still active in Facebook. I’ve tried to get them into this forum, but the resonance was close to zero. Anyway, the Zero State Facebook group would probably the best place to “sell” your idea to a public that would probably embrace it. However, your idea sounds more like a virtual nation game, rather than a “real” virtual nation. It’s an angle that hasn’t really been explored in Zero State, so I think you should give it a go.
Best explain your idea in a new thread in this forum and then post a link to that forum to the Zero State Facebook group. That should get some attention there.
As for anything that wants to expand from virtual space to geo-space: You need very many interested people or a few insanely enthusiastic people to reach the necessary density of people for geo-meetings to be feasible. Even Zero State struggled a lot, since it “only” has between 2000 and 3000 members on Facebook. Even the whole transhumanist movement probably doesn’t have enough people to turn regular geo-meetings into a commonplace occurrence. Do you have any good strategy for dealing with that problem?
