What could a World Unification Index track to measure how unified the world is, was, and is becoming?

One strong indicator of globalization is trade. The WTO maintains a set of global trade indicators, which has data on trade flows, trade disputes and tariff levels going back to 1948.

Mati_Roy

Dec 22, 2019

Some variables I would be interested in seeing tracked include:

the distribution on the number of people a person can communicate with (without translators; both fluently and at a basic level)
how good and easy to use translators are getting (including audio<>text conversion)
how much countries are legally merging (ex.: EU) or fragmenting (ex.: UK?), including level of desire to separate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_active_separatist_movements)
how much art (music, books, movies) are consumed internationally vs locally
how much other cultural elements are getting globally adopted (ex.: food, clothing)
how much international products / services are getting consumed
what fraction of people are multiracial, and multiracial to which extent on average

[-]brunoparga7y50

I'm thinking a few things that are perhaps not super important individually, but ought to have at least some weight in such an index:

Standardization and transportation

What's the progress of adoption of the metric system?
Relatedly, can we all (including Chile, where I live) ditch US paper sizes and switch to ISO sizes?
Standardizing electric plugs and outlets, as well as domestic alternating current frequency and voltage
Low priority, but probably still desirable if one wants a truly unified world: everyone driving on the same side of the road
For ra

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[-]kithpendragon7y20

what fraction of people are multiracial, and multiracial to which extent on average

Race being a construction, how would you measure this? Perhaps how widely the average person's genotype is distributed geographically?

kithpendragon

Dec 22, 2019

Access to public utilities. I'm looking for global power, water, data, transport (both goods and people) and economic networks.

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[-]Mati_Roy7y30

I have the impression that the more unified the world is, a) the less likely wars are, b) the easier it is to coordinate to solve global problems. It would also create more economic prosperity. But some forms of globalisation could also make our civilisation less robust. Anders Sandberg says the extent a feature is globalize should be proportional to the extent that feature's impact is global (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FKgBURAV0).

[-]jmh7y10

I think a careful definition of just what unification will mean in this context. Based on a number of the metrics you list we could view just about every empire as a form/attempt of world unification. But that view strikes me as being very different from a world where people are freely moving and interacting with one another on a peaceful and largely voluntary basis.

I think the other important question here might be the end point -- what is such an index telling us or to be used for.

My view is that a fully unified world, on pretty much any definition I can think about, is unstable. So if the goal were to maximize the unification index that might be a very bad plan. If it was used to start tracking where we might start seeing increased tensions that might lead to increased global conflict/world war type outcomes perhaps it becomes a useful tool.

Of course, that is in the abstract as I'm not sure just how such an index would be assembled or over what time periods any given construction would be valid.

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What could a World Unification Index track to measure how unified the world is, was, and is becoming?

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Dec 22, 2019

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