Hi, I’ve been constructing my median world, and I think I’ve used some ideas for incentive optimization and solutions that are rarely discussed here. Some parts (in my opinion) are novel, some are just value-dependent details and aesthetics. Some could actually be implemented (I haven’t heard of anyone treating ETF...
When I read about how dath ilani use unskilled labor hours as currency, it shattered my suspension of disbelief and I noticed confusion. It's hard to imagine that a coordinated utopia would consciously choose this as the best option. > Every part of dath ilan reads like it was built...
Content Warning: existential crisis, total hedonistic utilitarianism, timeless worldview, potential AI-related heresies. Hi, first post here. I’m not a native speaker, but I think it’s fine. I suffer from the illusion of transparency, yet if I delve into every detail of my reasoning, it might get a bit lengthy. So,...
Hi, I’ve been constructing my median world, and I think I’ve used some ideas for incentive optimization and solutions that are rarely discussed here. Some parts (in my opinion) are novel, some are just value-dependent details and aesthetics. Some could actually be implemented (I haven’t heard of anyone treating ETF investing as a moral act, and mnemonics are indeed underrated), some are speculative. I thought about it mostly for my own amusement, but it has accumulated enough details that I thought it’s worth sharing, so feel free to criticize, my world is flexible and you can change it.
A Fraction of Global Capital is indeed the Best Currency
I tried to describe this in... (read 2830 more words →)
You're welcome. It seems our positions are not very popular here, but I can't understand why. For me, the strongest argument against it and the strangest conclusion from my premises is that a superintelligent AI would change its utility function to the simplest one, as described here. But I don't see why it shouldn't do that. What do you think about this? By the way, have I convinced you to accept total hedonistic utilitarianism?
Strong upvoted. Wrote roughly similar thing, but I think that this position leads to total hedonistic utilitarianism, and that the "retrospective probability of finding oneself as another point" in the block universe of empty individualism could even force a superintelligence to change the utility function to the simplest. I'm interested in your opinion on this matter, since you seem to share some of my premises and you don't seem to be a total hedonistic utilitarian, so you can probably prove me wrong. I won't make you read the whole post if you don't want to, but in short - I think that you cannot strive for complex values, because the "joy of scientific discovery" or something among these lines will not be experienced by you-point and you could find yourself with different values, so it only makes sense to maximize pure pleasure.
To be fair, before publishing I thought this currency could be implemented in a real world environment with less improbability. My current main doubt is "how can the market cap be so volatile with a stable GDP, and would they be closer to each other in a more adequate equilibrium?". And I've basically switched to "okay oops, but under what conditions could this theoretically work, if could at all, and could you imagine better theoretical peak conditions?" mode. Deflation seems like a reasonable danger, I just can't see how it could be avoided if everyone used market fractions at least to store their money if not to exchange. Because, like, you don't introduce a random money-making machine into the system to solve your psychological problems at the cost of 2% of your money, there's no place for it, so I'm guessing that people would adapt to that, and there's a fictional example of dath ilan that such adaptation is real.
Thanks for the info, I'm not active in the discord but will consider joining now, sounds interesting. As I understand it, the "NGDPLT-indexed inflationary unit of account" is not the "fraction system" I proposed, and in fact Eliezer thinks that using inflation-deflation is adequate because even utopian coordination and higher average intelligence are not enough for everyone in the economy to simply behave adequately. Now I wonder if the system can simply be so sane that deflation in particular will not have a negative effect and people will simply efficiently preserve jobs, set and accept prices, and market cap is stable and close to GDP, etc. If it is really possible to train people out of bias or create a system with lower structural bias so to say.
In dath ilan, inflation and deflation are not used as macroeconomic tools because people are rational enough to accept wage reductions if their purchasing power remains unchanged, or to voluntarily pay the government to prevent crises without the need for a hidden tax that dilutes money by printing more during a crisis. Interest rates on loans could be lower if you expect returns that outpace deflation. If people can afford not to work, they are expected to do so, and they would spend more "shares", redistributing them in favor of those who are more eager to work. Perhaps you aren't really interested in having people work that much or that often, especially if you're aiming for a utopia with a four-hour workday, or something similar. How relevant are these issues in a world where "every person is economist in the same way every earthling is a scribe by medieval standards"?
I admit my mistake in intuitively assuming that GDP and stock market valuations should be closely linked. But it still seems strange to me why they aren’t, and I want to understand that better. Shouldn’t they at least be highly correlated in an idealized model?
Think of stocks as a kind of prediction market for a company’s value. The stock price should reflect expectations about its future earnings, but those expectations are built on something—maybe a new technology they’ve developed, or an undervalued specialist. If that’s the case, then why isn’t the market naturally structured in a way that adjusts salaries dynamically based on predicted contributions? Why don’t we have, say, ‘patent usage... (read more)
Because only the most wealthy people on earth keep their money in stocks, but they need to somehow communicate with all the other people who don't, so they only exchange "money for the worse money everyone else uses" when they trade. If everyone kept their money in stocks, I would expect people to exchange them directly without exchanging money for money, because you actually have to analyze MORE if you have two different currencies that you use for different purposes.
To the extent they don't have epidemics or handle them better, and don't elect Trump, it's probably more stable.
Not enough. In my understanding, GDP is REALITY and shares as a representation of your... (read more)
Understandable, but would you expect that in an efficient dath-ilani-like rational market, expectations would tend more to... match production with minor deviations? This is probably the crux here - if no reasonable amount of average person thinkoomph changes the radical fluctuations in expectations, then this currency is inefficient for regular shopping purposes and I say oops. I still can't imagine what currency would be better than this, though, because I can't think of a better way to say "I'm just as smart as the market" than to put my entire stake in the market.
The main reason economists like inflation is because it allows companies to lower real wages of underperforming workers without having to actually give them a pay cut.
Yeah, I remember this part, and also the part where dath ilan don't use it anyway, because instead they can just "order everyone to step to the right once" and accept those wages and people are sane enough to do so.
When I read about how dath ilani use unskilled labor hours as currency, it shattered my suspension of disbelief and I noticed confusion. It's hard to imagine that a coordinated utopia would consciously choose this as the best option.
Every part of dath ilan reads like it was built by some person of strictly average intelligence who'd read about education in a book but never actually gone to school, who spent ten minutes designing all our civilizational systems via a series of fifteen-second casual decisions about how things intuitively ‘ought to work’ that they made without ever seeing the consequences in action (C) Chief of Exception Handling
I’m not as smart as the average... (read 1801 more words →)
Content Warning: existential crisis, total hedonistic utilitarianism, timeless worldview, potential AI-related heresies.
Hi, first post here. I’m not a native speaker, but I think it’s fine. I suffer from the illusion of transparency, yet if I delve into every detail of my reasoning, it might get a bit lengthy. So, if anything seems unclear, just let me know!
I am a total hedonistic utilitarian, aiming to maximize the overall happiness of all existing and non-existing conscious beings. I do not value “complex values” and have a hard time imagining their existence. I want AI to turn the universe into hedonium, including my body and yours, and I consider this to be a universally true... (read 3350 more words →)
I doubt you can write down all the common stuff.
I imagined it more like tagging every joke into a general humor database with categories and context, obsidian-like meme maps, wikis for non-professional subtopics like video games and sports, "ask (type of people)" without personal answers, but with a fractal structure, representative of the percentage of different opinions of (type of people), and so on.
Even if physicists explain physics more accurately, mere mortals might add another case of misunderstanding about physics, which would spark new discussion and warn others against this misconception, or the question might be about the best metaphors or visuals for understanding physics, which requires the opinion of ordinary people.