Originally created 23th January 2024
It's not too difficult for anyone to imagine a "better system" or a better way of doing things than the current.
Even if we had these systems magicked into existence however, I'm certain they would be wrecked.
The reasons for this are:
- the world we live in is substantially different from the one we evolved in, so we are mostly ill-suited to it (citation: The Myth of Normal)
- we are following our evolutionary programming beyond where it is helpful. For example, many people across the world eat far more red meat than is healthy. This is because we've evolved to find it almost unquenchably delicious, since in the most of our evolution there was slim chance of eating too much red meat and more often too little. (It also relates significantly to status acquisition, another evolved trait - as being the one eating the meat was often much more important than the bodily benefit of the meat itself.)
- in part owing to the first point, we have significantly more psychological trauma within us due to a lack of secure attachment even with our own parents, and the huge amount of stress and constraints the modern world places upon them. Many humans grow up with both parents absent for much of the time due to professional work, and/or a parent taking out their own hurt on the child. For most of our evolution this was not the case, and the offspring would have very secure attachment with at least one parent or close family member.
It's important to recognise that the trouble of the world largely arises from these ills and possibly others. As we (hopefully) move into post-scarcity, if a miracle occurs and ASI delivers benefit to society without a catastrophe, we will hopefully have the ability to transition into a world which is more healing than the one we've been living through.