I like push-ups and pull-ups, they're my main thing now that the office gym is closed. But I kinda miss the deadlift, there seems to be no bodyweight exercise that approximates it.

I immediately thought of Ross Scott's story about buying souls.

Sounds like a decent society, cribbing ideas from various religions and utopian movements. I guess the main problem is that young people, being naturally rebellious but inexperienced with superstimuli, would be quite vulnerable to the export image of the US - sex drugs rock-n-roll and coca cola. See 80s USSR, or the story of the mall in Najran.

I think "nerds" need to be taught exercise differently: not by pushing them to compete with others right away, but by lots and lots of patience, repetition, and focus on basics. At some point it will click and they'll be able to compete and have fun. Same as with "non-nerds" and math, really.

From my humble experience, I've come to believe that Deming's view was the wisest:

The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise. Everyone propels himself forward, or tries to, for his own good, on his own life preserver. The organization is the loser.

Very informative, thanks! The "tribalism" section does leave some unanswered questions, which only grow when you look at the actual (very complicated) org chart of the EU. Designing an international organization that doesn't fall prey to gridlock, doesn't fall apart, doesn't get pushed aside, doesn't gain too much power and so on seems like a fascinating problem. Do you have any thoughts about this?

Might be solvable with enough sci-fi technology:

• Bioengineering ourselves to live on other planets, or live differently on Earth (I'd like to be smaller and fly)
• Mind uploading, space colonization in uploaded form (send a receiver, then transmit people by radio)
• Solving population growth and arms races by worldwide cooperation / mind merging
• Quantum suicide reality editing, and otherwise using the exponential living space in quantum branches
• Writing ourselves into a mathematically possible universe with more room for growth, like in Permutation City
• Other possibilities that a smarter-than-me AI would find

Just wanna say I think this is good moderation policy, and thank you for upholding it.

Wouldn't a currency whose total supply is fixed while the economy grows, lead to the same problems with changing definition of horsepower and so on?

Huh, interesting. Indeed it seems post hoc-ed in this case, I should've looked at bitcoin's history more closely before making a confident statement. Thanks!