By embracing empiricism, we address the classic utopia failure mode of a society that works in theory but not in practice.
Individuals have different preferences about their ideal society, and it seems overly controlling to prevent them from creating that society and joining other volunteers in moving there (within reason, e.g. no creation of catastrophic risks to other societies).
This could be a good “viatopia” by letting us collect data to inform later decisions. Might be possible to build RCTs into the process somehow. (If you’re near-indifferent between two city-states, you could sign up to receive a stipend in order to have your residency determined by coinflip. That forms a dataset about the causal impact of moving to a particular society. Track parameters of interest like your personal happiness or production of important philosophical insights.)
Vitalik Buterin’s call to “let a thousand societies bloom” seems interesting.
By embracing empiricism, we address the classic utopia failure mode of a society that works in theory but not in practice.
Individuals have different preferences about their ideal society, and it seems overly controlling to prevent them from creating that society and joining other volunteers in moving there (within reason, e.g. no creation of catastrophic risks to other societies).
This could be a good “viatopia” by letting us collect data to inform later decisions. Might be possible to build RCTs into the process somehow. (If you’re near-indifferent between two city-states, you could sign up to receive a stipend in order to have your residency determined by coinflip. That forms a dataset about the causal impact of moving to a particular society. Track parameters of interest like your personal happiness or production of important philosophical insights.)