Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Matt Prather's avatar

This is the first time I'm reading about this "em" emulated brain concept. I see a much more "near", pertinent issue in the tendency of today's corporate and financial systems to reward businesses and individuals who already treat the masses of living people as "biological androids". Like Huxley's Brave New World. You don't have to hold your breath for three-to-fifteen decades to profit from the economics of this. It's already here and booming.

Oh yeah, and the budget train-wreck isn't two decades out, either. It's already happened and they have been keeping things on life support ever since 2008.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

It is interesting to consider how the industrial-era political ideologies would deal with the em-econ. Liberalism would be concerned with ensuring the rights and freedom of persons, likely struggling to handle the political and economical quirks of copyable persons. Conservatism would want to preserve implicate social knowledge in the face of the change (it would of course have serious problems with the whole transition). Socialism would want to get the means of production under control by the "right" group, whether that is copy cooperatives, some avant garde etc. None of them seems to have speed and flexibility as a core ideological goal - liberalism would of course claim it would achieve it through harnessing individual initiative and institution-building, while socialism might think it could achieve greater coordination. But they all seem to be seriously hamstrung by their devotion to various pre-existing social institutions and assumptions about the nature of persons, societies and means of production.

For decisionmaking, demarchy might become practical. Imagine randomly selecting ems and making a parliament copy of them, acting as a representative body (normal demarchy has problems with having to call citizens to a duty that interferes with their lives). This might be a group generating the values input into futarchy.

Expand full comment
29 more comments...

No posts