So after long delay here is a follow up to my Weirdtopia promise. The "Utopia" and "Distopia" are from Eliezer Yudkowsky, the Weirdtopia's are mine. I think it's interesting to note how similar most of the "dystopias" sound to our current reality... I suspect that this exercise reveals more about the writer than about the future, but even so it's a very interesting exercise...

Economic...

• Utopia: The world is flat and ultra-efficient. Prices fall as standards of living rise, thanks to economies of scale. Anyone can easily start their own business and most people do. Everything is done in the right place by the right person under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Shocks are efficiently absorbed by the risk capital that insured them.


• Dystopia: Lots of trade barriers and subsidies; corporations exploit the regulatory systems to create new barriers to entry; dysfunctional financial systems with poor incentives and lots of unproductive investments; rampant agent failures and systemic vulnerabilities; standards of living flat or dropping.


• Weirdtopia: Money still exists, but is dealt with primarily by machines. People focus on higher level goals such as happiness, fun, personal development, and H+ augmentations. Due to the superior numerical skills of the machines, "money" has been allowed to complexify such that it transmits much more information than a single dimension. These extra dimensions are used to regulate in an economic way most of what the 20th century called "externalities". The environment is a primary beneficiary.

Sexual...

• Utopia: Sexual mores straight out of a Spider Robinson novel: Sexual jealousy has been eliminated; no one is embarrassed about what turns them on; universal tolerance and respect; everyone is bisexual, poly, and a switch; total equality between the sexes; no one would look askance on sex in public any more than eating in public, so long as the participants cleaned up after themselves.


• Dystopia: 10% of women have never had an orgasm. States adopt laws to ban gay marriage. Prostitution illegal.


• Weirdtopia: Everyone is gay. Straight relationships are seen as hopelessly doomed due to conflicts of interest; straight marriage is forbidden due to the high incidence of divorce & resulting horrible child custody battles. Reproduction is accomplished either via artificial wombs, or via liaisons between a male pair and a female pair, for their mutual benefit.

Governmental...

• Utopia: Non-initiation of violence is the chief rule. Remaining public issues are settled by democracy: Well reasoned public debate in which all sides get a free voice, followed by direct or representative majority vote. Smoothly interfunctioning Privately Produced Law, which coordinate to enforce a very few global rules like "no slavery".


• Dystopia: Tyranny of a single individual or oligarchy. Politicians with effective locks on power thanks to corrupted electronic voting systems, voter intimidation, voting systems designed to create coordination problems. Business of government is unpleasant and not very competitive; hard to move from one region to another.


• Weirdtopia: Global issues like climate change and global catastrophic risks forced the creation of binding global governance. After interminable failure of a democratic model, dictatorship was tried. Benevolent dictatorship of global issues worked amazingly well, and this lead to expansion of the system. The world is ruled like Singapore, and there is much talk of how foolish democracy was - how can uninformed citizens who have perverse incentives possibly rule well, even by proxy? This most simple form of government is widely hailed as the end-point of political history. Without the need to worry about governance (and freedom, taxes, elections, etc), people are free to pursue their own lives...

Technological...

• Utopia: All Kurzweilian prophecies come true simultaneously. Every pot contains a chicken, a nanomedical package, a personal spaceship, a superdupercomputer, amazing video games, and a pet AI to help you use it all, plus a pony. Everything is designed by Apple.


• Dystopia: Those damned fools in the government banned everything more complicated than a lawnmower, and we couldn't use our lawnmowers after Peak Oil hit.


• Weirdtopia: Technology is magic. The vast majority of people have no idea how technology works, nor do they care. A segregated priest-hood of technologists creates and maintains the magical artifacts which the population uses - dedicated devices are the rule, with very simple, easy to use interfaces. Quality is kept so high that the illusion of magic is unbroken. Nanosanta machines and immortality are just some of the magic on offer...

Cognitive...

li>Utopia: Brain-computer implants for everyone! You can do whatever you like with them, it's all voluntary and the dangerous buttons are clearly labeled. There are AIs around that are way more powerful than you; but they don't hurt you unless you ask to be hurt, sign an informed consent release form and click "Yes" three times.

• Dystopia: The first self-improving AI was poorly designed, everyone's dead and the universe is being turned into paperclips. Or the augmented humans hate the normals. Or augmentations make you go nuts. Or the darned government banned everything again, and people are still getting Alzheimers due to lack of stem-cell research.


• Weirdtopia: We're all still human, but we've created killer telepathy with a record function, and memories and experiences are traded like baseball cards. Identity is fluid and flexible - people choose all the time to absorb material which will change them fundamentally, and this is seen as a good thing ("moving on"). People also use the system to rapidly retrain for new jobs, to make themselves fit their partner(s) better, and for shear novelty.

Obviously I personally wouldn't want to live in many of those Weirdtopia's, but I do think that people living in them could be "better off" than in the utopia. Also check out Eli's latest Lower Bound on Utopia.