I just don’t see decision markets being used by anyone except painfully few intellectuals - and sometimes random gamblers at the right moment. To assume that Wall Street is a good proxy for decision markets in this context (cultural drift) would be like saying people go to university is because they are intellectually curious. We see universities have drifted, too. Finally, what qualifies as conservative seems to be the result of our lack of concision - maybe I’m confused, weren’t the Luddite’s then, very conservative? Everything is adrift. Traveling around the globe toward the east we end up in the West.
These markets are a reflection of the participants - not the countless who do not participate. There is an assumption that these markets represent society uniformly but I think Hanson understands that those who might participate may also tend to have lower fertility rates, lower religiosity, etc. They don’t necessarily represent humanity evenly. They might work for predicting the winner of the Super Bowl but I’m not sure this gets at the real challenge for society.
I have initiated “CAN FICTION HELP US THRIVE” to empower writers who create fiction with an overarching, sustainable vision.
My book, “The Jacksons Debate,” is published under this banner.
It explores the ethical complexities of interspecies relations through the lens of an advanced alien civilisation called the Jacksons. The novel challenges readers to consider how easily a more advanced civilisation might view humans as a resource, mirroring humanity’s own treatment of other species on Earth.
Language is overwhelmingly the most time-tested cultural meta-institution human beings have for collective problem-solving. However, object-level descriptive language depends on differential signal costs (see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybG3WWLdxeTTL3Gpd/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential ) that are being suppressed and replaced with loyalty signals. This corruption of language limits the expressive range and appeal of any decision market or futarchy, unless we take into account explicitly the mutual relationship between language and accountability mechanisms.
As you know, bets are a tax on bullshit. Maybe excepting Switzerland, the US seems like the most classically liberal nation-state, and it still has fiat currency, bailouts, rule by exception-making, all of which seriously weaken US currency as a means for resolving disagreements. This is compounded by declining adequacy of the civil courts, and (fortunately somewhat weakening) laws against gambling.
I don't see a way out of this short of a cyclical civilizational collapse, unless groups smaller than existing states (realistically, most likely much smaller) opt in to high-accountability arrangements with real resources at stake, to enable them to send more credible signals to each other and therefore capture more of the benefits of language than the surrounding society. Such groups would, if they can model external political threats adequately, quickly realize a strategic advantage.
It seems a stretch to say decision markets won't work because of problems with language imprecision & US govt effectiveness. Surely the usual obstacles are far more direct.
There's an emergent, decentralized, but synchronized pattern where language itself is undermined by people who draw out interpretive labor and then invalidate it.
Take this example: https://x.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1886078601054888267. What's happening here isn't disagreement; it's a prank in which someone makes claims, others spend effort interpreting and responding to those claims, and then the original person shifts ground in a way that invalidates all that interpretive work.
Another example is people who invoke antisemitic tropes in discussions of historical events not because they're interested in historical truth, but because mentioning Jews functions as an in-group recognition signal: https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/vibelash-reflecting-on-the-present Once this signal is exchanged, they stop engaging with the actual topic and move on to exchanging more signals. Part of the function of such notionally object-level signals is to send a meta-signal that one is treating discourse ironically and transgressively.
The principal targets of this pattern are the small number of thinkers (including you, and to a lesser extent tracewoodgrains) committed to clarity, precision, and constructive problem-solving. Part of what makes this dynamic so frustrating is how these interactions blur the distinction between people genuinely trying to advance understanding (like you) and people who just sound superficially similar but aren't actually committed to the same or any epistemic standards. Anyone paying attention can tell the difference, but the nature of the game they're playing involves refusing to acknowledge it.
More directly relevant to your work on decision markets: the same kinds of actors pretend to have the very problems your solutions are designed to address. Consider how corporations claim to maximize profits while their internal incentive structures work against this (as you've written about, and as documented in works like Moral Mazes). It's not that they don't understand what profit maximization means or that decision markets would help, it's that their coalitional strategy involves maintaining strategic ambiguity about their actual goals, and conspicuously wasting the time of people trying to be helpful.
These performative types are not good customers for your product. It's not just about having different values. It's about having a different relationship to truth claims altogether.
The problem isn't language imprecision, but a revealed preference for bullshit. Where speakers are on balance trying to make sense of things, imprecise language becomes more precise as needed. Where speakers are on balance trying to obscure, the opposite happens. Decision markets will be appealing as a tool where people are trying to clarify commitments in the service of explicit means-ends reasoning. In other contexts they'll maintain specious verbal ambiguity about whether they're trying to do something decision markets would help with, while taking actions that reduce motive ambiguity.
It seems to me that successful societies evolved naturally, without supervising authorities guiding the process. Perhaps it is hubristic to think that anything so complex as that evolution can be reduced to rational control.
Even if the natural path is for our civ to collapse and be replaced? Do you similarly avoid medicine because it is better to let your body naturally succumb to disease?
One could try to stop or modify obvious negative developments. For example, a collapse in natality, or the rise of shallow ideologies. But the aspiration for any sort of comprehensive control seems hubristic. As to the second point, Medicine and culture are very different affairs; the first is (mostly?) a matter of natural science, the latter full of unknowables.
I think the Amish and Haredim are the types of perpetual underclass who always end up parasitised by the rulers of the day. No need to worry that they will become replacements of the intellectual classes!
Things are getting wobbly at the top, I agree. I also think you are onto something with the idea that the expansion of humanity (along with the rest of the biosphere) into space is a path with promise. I don't think it will stop the current arrangements from crumbling into ruin, though.
It's easy to start despairing when we can see the way things are going, and the temptation is to try something again that worked in the past (gimme that ol' time religion!). But it never works. Let a hundred flowers bloom!
But it was in decline, and Christianity might not have survived if Constantine hadn't made it the state religion. Christianity certainly shortened the period of decline after the Western Roman Empire collapsed, by shoring up the authority of rulers and civilising the Vikings, who were wrecking the joint up until that point.
My own feeling is that our current religion, the Christian heresy of perpetual material progress, will collapse along with any further notions of a single World order. There will be rich pockets dotted around, but a lot of the 'West' will fade into impoverished barbarism.
Ultra-orthodox Judaism is completely ortho-prax, so Robin, if you're Chabad-curious, you could definitely get a quick read on your willingness to convert. 25 hours a week, minimum, devoted to observing the rules and customs of the local rabbinate. No one would bar you from converting if they found out you were completely an atheist in your *beliefs*
What % of their kids stay in this community, and how how a TFR are we talking? The key question is if they are insular enough to persist, and not suffer the fate of the Mormons, who are now just 20yrs beyond the mainstream fertility trends.
Hard to know, because it's not well studied. My impression is that it varies a bit, but in some communities, retention would be north of 60%. I'd guess TFR might be as high as 5-6, because you have some families with 8-14 kids, and others who can't have kids, or have a smaller number.
So it's not a silver bullet, but I think there are two points in its favor, and one potential weakness (at least wrt your goals):
Pros:
—Unlike the LDS, fully-practicing Catholics have become increasingly confident in their willingness to break with mainstream norms. (Mid-century, Catholics had managed to assimilate pretty successfully into mainstream society; since then, a lot of mainstream norms have changed such that Catholics have split into those who break with mainstream culture to follow the Church's teachings, and into those who break with Catholicism to follow the mainstream culture. The first group is much smaller but it is growing, and the second group is shrinking, because those people tend to leave the Church.) To me, this suggests
—The Catholic Church has developed lots of ways of coexisting with and interfacing with non-Catholic society. It is not maximally isolationist but there are also lots of unchangeable doctrines (including about things like sex and reproduction) which makes it harder for things to drift too far in the direction of the culture, at least among the fully-practicing. E.g. if you reject contraception, the culture can still affect your TFR (it may be very expensive to raise kids in your society, so you wait until an older age to have them) but there are, in practice, going to be lots of limits to this phenomenon.
Potential drawback:
—Right now, the group in question is growing both via conversion and reproduction. So the big question is whether the more salient thing that will be transmitted genetically/culturally is high fertility, or whether it's an unusually high willingness to convert to something different from what you were raised with. (I think I first heard this idea from David Schaengold.) If the former, expect lots of growth; if the latter, things could go either way.
To be clear, I don't think any of this would really add up to a good reason to become Catholic, but at least in your case it could be a reason to look into it quite seriously.
Behavior is important to biology. Adaptation depends on behavioral responses to stimuli of the environment. Human institutions cultivate environmental stimuli reinforcing learning. The term "culture" is somewhat globalism in a domain so that a question of the role of government as if to create or somehow make an improved culture is generally understandable but not very specific in the range of meanings.
Word behavior on the term "decision market" implicates a pattern suggesting an open marketplace where collective bargaining trends will lead eventually to a convention of some sort upon a popular decision or choice for some common need facilitated in the available resources offered up in that marketplace. Does this word behavior hold by any conference as a specific "thing" or is it a transient term used now from results using marketing surveys, opinion polls, and statistical data analytics along with reference shown to the "Stock Market" or other trading floors? If it is seen that "Nature" takes the least path of resistance, can anyone think of a way to be able to scientifically refer to a "market" as actually facilitating needs in the fullest function as a "decision market" or is it also essential to remember "decision" implies self-awareness and intelligence in the position of a mindfully present being and a position as someone or group before a domain that is an environment? The term "decision market" isn't functioning like reliable criteria traditional to objectivist purposes in the methods of science-based processes. But this is not meaningful as criticism of the exercise, as nothing requires a useful social philosophy essay to be linked to hard science methods in all cases.
The role of "government" in English language history was mostly a term for a system in society developing over about five centuries and with tools like Parliamentary Procedure or Robert's Rules of Order, organizing debate, legislation, conferencing for consensus in voting to form written bills documenting agreements and then from these practices to solve needs of a community. Nothing here is about the more global term of "culture" as there also could be tribes within geographic borders of several different domains of cultures simply existing in compliance with a government that makes mutually understandable community-wide needs to be resolved in commonly understood practices of that legislation in a civil code available to all in the greater geography of that governmental region. There is no real sociological science causal need of meaning that would mandate "government" a role in culture integrity or further development. Safe drinking water, food health, hygiene, livable working conditions in the industry, and humane conditions of care and upbringing of youth all can be rational government bills, without any problem being translated into several languages for more local county or state units smaller in geography to the domain of that government. Perhaps more specificity as in government consideration for mutual keeping of the domestic peace where borders between different cultural geography areas might sometimes come into a lack of cohesion might be a government thing but more as an oversight role of facilitating peaceful reconciliation, than as management directly upon any one domain of culture. That is the question then if understanding the term "government" is to be seen as not proxy upon anything in the globalist term "culture" which usually stems back many generations and may even be pre-scientific in much of the terms historic to human history of a quest for meaning. If "government" can't fix everything the question is in relation to subjects like "culture". Was it ever originally the concept this would have been a role for "government" in the first place? Government can act as a military shield, but not a social directorate seems to be the main item in this question, and not that any one answer seems to become apparent. But the history in English language around the term "Government" does bring this kind of question forth.
From all of these fascinating items, the general synthesis in the making of the term "Meta-adaptionist" seems an excellent start. It is a beginning. We should be able to benefit from that much in any case, as usually ensuing discussions will bring some insights. That's a good thing!
The loss of public trust in institutions, and expertise in general, is a thorny problem I wish we could solve. Perspectives will invariably differ on goals and priorities, but as a culture increasingly we can't even have that debate because we lack agreement on current reality.
At heart is the issue that Daniel Kahneman discussed in several of his last interviews: How susceptible human thinking is to being hijacked. All kinds of motivated actors are getting better and better at hijacking the thoughts of other people. Like Kahneman I despair of finding any real solution, since the perpetrators (and their AIs) are only getting better at it.
Is this a temporary glitch? Or as Kahneman feared, is this the mother of all maladaptations that will keep us from ever having trusted authorities and institutions again? It strikes me that if this problem can't be solved, then there is no way to get coordinated action on any of our other societal problems. We can only drift.
Hanson's very own Second Foundation. Interesting, more coherent than any other option I've heard, but ultimately= Bonini's Paradox / epistemological overreach. Highly unlikely gov't policy could guide culture w/ rapidly evolving tech without conformity, restrictive controls and coercion. Futarchy-type gov'ts may produce some highly adaptive results, but suggesting that they can guide culture? Thinking we can really anticipate what would result from setting certain long-term goals? Hubris. An invitation to coercion. Or science fiction.
Make as many bets on as many tables as possible. The problem is the mono-culture, not the drift. Global (monoculture) gov't policy should only be there to prevent Game Over. Everything else should multiply, mutate and drift. Spandrels often become incorporated into great architecture.
It aggregates the best guesses of those few with capital and interest on certain types of questions. Or, it seizes from those with capital to subsidize those without, which would likely be coercive. Even if not....saying it could produce better or even best guesses doesn't mean it can guide 'world monoculture' in any kind of strong sense, especially in a rapidly changing world.
> It aggregates the best guesses of those few with capital and interest on certain types of questions.
Lots of people have capital (just think of how many bet on sports), and even people who aren't interested in the type of question can be interested in making money.
> Even if not....saying it could produce better or even best guesses doesn't mean it can guide 'world monoculture' in any kind of strong sense, especially in a rapidly changing world.
Avoid the nirvana fallacy and compare to the best alternative.
I'm not aware of any other thinker who has seriously proposed a method of guiding 'world mono-culture'. Over time, tho, I think something more in the direction of Balaji's ideas would make sense, some kind of 'gov't as a service' model where the gov'ts themselves compete for citizens, making governance a competitive industry, which would provide an evolutionary sort of pressure.
Futarchy doesn't simply allow people to spend money to make decisions. Money is instead spent to make predictions, and if someone is making predictions that will be falsified, anyone who wants to take their money can bet against them.
I associate the idea of "governance as a competitive industry" with Patri Friedman. His idea of seasteading was supposed to enable the entry of startups into that industry.
Regardless. Capital still = better tools to make guesses, more advisors, more bets, oligarchy, etc. Will some very insightful poor people rise in that system? Absolutely. But generally the game will be heavily rigged for the rich. No idea about seasteading. Was speaking more of the core idea of changing the incentive system for gov't so they are competing for citizens just as companies compete for consumers' bucks.
I just don’t see decision markets being used by anyone except painfully few intellectuals - and sometimes random gamblers at the right moment. To assume that Wall Street is a good proxy for decision markets in this context (cultural drift) would be like saying people go to university is because they are intellectually curious. We see universities have drifted, too. Finally, what qualifies as conservative seems to be the result of our lack of concision - maybe I’m confused, weren’t the Luddite’s then, very conservative? Everything is adrift. Traveling around the globe toward the east we end up in the West.
Sharps/sharks will use them if they're subsidized. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/10/25/prediction-markets-and-the-need-for-dumb-money-as-well-as-smart-money/
These markets are a reflection of the participants - not the countless who do not participate. There is an assumption that these markets represent society uniformly but I think Hanson understands that those who might participate may also tend to have lower fertility rates, lower religiosity, etc. They don’t necessarily represent humanity evenly. They might work for predicting the winner of the Super Bowl but I’m not sure this gets at the real challenge for society.
The point of prediction markets is just to get the most accurate estimates, not to "represent" anyone.
Hi
I have initiated “CAN FICTION HELP US THRIVE” to empower writers who create fiction with an overarching, sustainable vision.
My book, “The Jacksons Debate,” is published under this banner.
It explores the ethical complexities of interspecies relations through the lens of an advanced alien civilisation called the Jacksons. The novel challenges readers to consider how easily a more advanced civilisation might view humans as a resource, mirroring humanity’s own treatment of other species on Earth.
It can be found here — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228994545-the-jacksons-debate
see if it resonates with your view of the world
Language is overwhelmingly the most time-tested cultural meta-institution human beings have for collective problem-solving. However, object-level descriptive language depends on differential signal costs (see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybG3WWLdxeTTL3Gpd/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential ) that are being suppressed and replaced with loyalty signals. This corruption of language limits the expressive range and appeal of any decision market or futarchy, unless we take into account explicitly the mutual relationship between language and accountability mechanisms.
As you know, bets are a tax on bullshit. Maybe excepting Switzerland, the US seems like the most classically liberal nation-state, and it still has fiat currency, bailouts, rule by exception-making, all of which seriously weaken US currency as a means for resolving disagreements. This is compounded by declining adequacy of the civil courts, and (fortunately somewhat weakening) laws against gambling.
I don't see a way out of this short of a cyclical civilizational collapse, unless groups smaller than existing states (realistically, most likely much smaller) opt in to high-accountability arrangements with real resources at stake, to enable them to send more credible signals to each other and therefore capture more of the benefits of language than the surrounding society. Such groups would, if they can model external political threats adequately, quickly realize a strategic advantage.
Calvinism seems to have been historically important specifically as a way for people with detailed-reputation-dependent economic niches to recognize each other: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/calvinism-as-a-theory-of-recovered-high-trust-agency/
It seems a stretch to say decision markets won't work because of problems with language imprecision & US govt effectiveness. Surely the usual obstacles are far more direct.
There's an emergent, decentralized, but synchronized pattern where language itself is undermined by people who draw out interpretive labor and then invalidate it.
Take this example: https://x.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1886078601054888267. What's happening here isn't disagreement; it's a prank in which someone makes claims, others spend effort interpreting and responding to those claims, and then the original person shifts ground in a way that invalidates all that interpretive work.
Another example is people who invoke antisemitic tropes in discussions of historical events not because they're interested in historical truth, but because mentioning Jews functions as an in-group recognition signal: https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/vibelash-reflecting-on-the-present Once this signal is exchanged, they stop engaging with the actual topic and move on to exchanging more signals. Part of the function of such notionally object-level signals is to send a meta-signal that one is treating discourse ironically and transgressively.
The principal targets of this pattern are the small number of thinkers (including you, and to a lesser extent tracewoodgrains) committed to clarity, precision, and constructive problem-solving. Part of what makes this dynamic so frustrating is how these interactions blur the distinction between people genuinely trying to advance understanding (like you) and people who just sound superficially similar but aren't actually committed to the same or any epistemic standards. Anyone paying attention can tell the difference, but the nature of the game they're playing involves refusing to acknowledge it.
More directly relevant to your work on decision markets: the same kinds of actors pretend to have the very problems your solutions are designed to address. Consider how corporations claim to maximize profits while their internal incentive structures work against this (as you've written about, and as documented in works like Moral Mazes). It's not that they don't understand what profit maximization means or that decision markets would help, it's that their coalitional strategy involves maintaining strategic ambiguity about their actual goals, and conspicuously wasting the time of people trying to be helpful.
These performative types are not good customers for your product. It's not just about having different values. It's about having a different relationship to truth claims altogether.
The problem isn't language imprecision, but a revealed preference for bullshit. Where speakers are on balance trying to make sense of things, imprecise language becomes more precise as needed. Where speakers are on balance trying to obscure, the opposite happens. Decision markets will be appealing as a tool where people are trying to clarify commitments in the service of explicit means-ends reasoning. In other contexts they'll maintain specious verbal ambiguity about whether they're trying to do something decision markets would help with, while taking actions that reduce motive ambiguity.
It seems to me that successful societies evolved naturally, without supervising authorities guiding the process. Perhaps it is hubristic to think that anything so complex as that evolution can be reduced to rational control.
Even if the natural path is for our civ to collapse and be replaced? Do you similarly avoid medicine because it is better to let your body naturally succumb to disease?
One could try to stop or modify obvious negative developments. For example, a collapse in natality, or the rise of shallow ideologies. But the aspiration for any sort of comprehensive control seems hubristic. As to the second point, Medicine and culture are very different affairs; the first is (mostly?) a matter of natural science, the latter full of unknowables.
I think technology and growth should be promoted. How it can be promoted? I wouldn’t know beside gaining power in government.
I think the Amish and Haredim are the types of perpetual underclass who always end up parasitised by the rulers of the day. No need to worry that they will become replacements of the intellectual classes!
Things are getting wobbly at the top, I agree. I also think you are onto something with the idea that the expansion of humanity (along with the rest of the biosphere) into space is a path with promise. I don't think it will stop the current arrangements from crumbling into ruin, though.
It's easy to start despairing when we can see the way things are going, and the temptation is to try something again that worked in the past (gimme that ol' time religion!). But it never works. Let a hundred flowers bloom!
Christians took over the Roman Empire from almost nothing by just doubling every 20 years for three centuries.
But it was in decline, and Christianity might not have survived if Constantine hadn't made it the state religion. Christianity certainly shortened the period of decline after the Western Roman Empire collapsed, by shoring up the authority of rulers and civilising the Vikings, who were wrecking the joint up until that point.
My own feeling is that our current religion, the Christian heresy of perpetual material progress, will collapse along with any further notions of a single World order. There will be rich pockets dotted around, but a lot of the 'West' will fade into impoverished barbarism.
Our civ will soon be in decline.
Surely you mean your prediction to refer to our best-case scenarios?
Traditional Christianity seems like the ultimate meta-adaptionist package which would easily pass the futarchy test. Time to convert?
I'd consider converting to Amish or Haredim if they accepted converts. The other Christians are failing with the rest of the world.
Ultra-orthodox Judaism is completely ortho-prax, so Robin, if you're Chabad-curious, you could definitely get a quick read on your willingness to convert. 25 hours a week, minimum, devoted to observing the rules and customs of the local rabbinate. No one would bar you from converting if they found out you were completely an atheist in your *beliefs*
In general polling organizations don't break down Catholics-who-reject-contraception vs Catholics-who-dissent-from-Church teachings.
But my impression is that:
1) Catholics who reject contraception tend to have a high TFR
2) Rejection of contraception by Catholics is pretty heritable
3) The move to "full orthodoxy" is culturally ascendent within the Church at a demographic level
There are also many, many more high TFR Catholics (often concentrated in specific communities) than Haredi Jews, Amish, etc.
What % of their kids stay in this community, and how how a TFR are we talking? The key question is if they are insular enough to persist, and not suffer the fate of the Mormons, who are now just 20yrs beyond the mainstream fertility trends.
Hard to know, because it's not well studied. My impression is that it varies a bit, but in some communities, retention would be north of 60%. I'd guess TFR might be as high as 5-6, because you have some families with 8-14 kids, and others who can't have kids, or have a smaller number.
So it's not a silver bullet, but I think there are two points in its favor, and one potential weakness (at least wrt your goals):
Pros:
—Unlike the LDS, fully-practicing Catholics have become increasingly confident in their willingness to break with mainstream norms. (Mid-century, Catholics had managed to assimilate pretty successfully into mainstream society; since then, a lot of mainstream norms have changed such that Catholics have split into those who break with mainstream culture to follow the Church's teachings, and into those who break with Catholicism to follow the mainstream culture. The first group is much smaller but it is growing, and the second group is shrinking, because those people tend to leave the Church.) To me, this suggests
—The Catholic Church has developed lots of ways of coexisting with and interfacing with non-Catholic society. It is not maximally isolationist but there are also lots of unchangeable doctrines (including about things like sex and reproduction) which makes it harder for things to drift too far in the direction of the culture, at least among the fully-practicing. E.g. if you reject contraception, the culture can still affect your TFR (it may be very expensive to raise kids in your society, so you wait until an older age to have them) but there are, in practice, going to be lots of limits to this phenomenon.
Potential drawback:
—Right now, the group in question is growing both via conversion and reproduction. So the big question is whether the more salient thing that will be transmitted genetically/culturally is high fertility, or whether it's an unusually high willingness to convert to something different from what you were raised with. (I think I first heard this idea from David Schaengold.) If the former, expect lots of growth; if the latter, things could go either way.
To be clear, I don't think any of this would really add up to a good reason to become Catholic, but at least in your case it could be a reason to look into it quite seriously.
Go big or go home, huh? Other branches/communities are persisting with fertility far above replacement, although not at Amish levels. For example, I have seen evidence that families attending the Latin Mass have a fertility rate of ~3.6 (see https://onepeterfive.com/new-survey-shows-disparity-of-beliefs-between-latin-mass-novus-ordo-catholics/#:~:text=Also%20of%20note%20was%20the,larger%20family%20size%E2%80%9D), which ain't bad. I should calculate the fertility rate at my local parish sometime--lots of very big families.
What about the Taliban. They'll have you.
Behavior is important to biology. Adaptation depends on behavioral responses to stimuli of the environment. Human institutions cultivate environmental stimuli reinforcing learning. The term "culture" is somewhat globalism in a domain so that a question of the role of government as if to create or somehow make an improved culture is generally understandable but not very specific in the range of meanings.
Word behavior on the term "decision market" implicates a pattern suggesting an open marketplace where collective bargaining trends will lead eventually to a convention of some sort upon a popular decision or choice for some common need facilitated in the available resources offered up in that marketplace. Does this word behavior hold by any conference as a specific "thing" or is it a transient term used now from results using marketing surveys, opinion polls, and statistical data analytics along with reference shown to the "Stock Market" or other trading floors? If it is seen that "Nature" takes the least path of resistance, can anyone think of a way to be able to scientifically refer to a "market" as actually facilitating needs in the fullest function as a "decision market" or is it also essential to remember "decision" implies self-awareness and intelligence in the position of a mindfully present being and a position as someone or group before a domain that is an environment? The term "decision market" isn't functioning like reliable criteria traditional to objectivist purposes in the methods of science-based processes. But this is not meaningful as criticism of the exercise, as nothing requires a useful social philosophy essay to be linked to hard science methods in all cases.
The role of "government" in English language history was mostly a term for a system in society developing over about five centuries and with tools like Parliamentary Procedure or Robert's Rules of Order, organizing debate, legislation, conferencing for consensus in voting to form written bills documenting agreements and then from these practices to solve needs of a community. Nothing here is about the more global term of "culture" as there also could be tribes within geographic borders of several different domains of cultures simply existing in compliance with a government that makes mutually understandable community-wide needs to be resolved in commonly understood practices of that legislation in a civil code available to all in the greater geography of that governmental region. There is no real sociological science causal need of meaning that would mandate "government" a role in culture integrity or further development. Safe drinking water, food health, hygiene, livable working conditions in the industry, and humane conditions of care and upbringing of youth all can be rational government bills, without any problem being translated into several languages for more local county or state units smaller in geography to the domain of that government. Perhaps more specificity as in government consideration for mutual keeping of the domestic peace where borders between different cultural geography areas might sometimes come into a lack of cohesion might be a government thing but more as an oversight role of facilitating peaceful reconciliation, than as management directly upon any one domain of culture. That is the question then if understanding the term "government" is to be seen as not proxy upon anything in the globalist term "culture" which usually stems back many generations and may even be pre-scientific in much of the terms historic to human history of a quest for meaning. If "government" can't fix everything the question is in relation to subjects like "culture". Was it ever originally the concept this would have been a role for "government" in the first place? Government can act as a military shield, but not a social directorate seems to be the main item in this question, and not that any one answer seems to become apparent. But the history in English language around the term "Government" does bring this kind of question forth.
From all of these fascinating items, the general synthesis in the making of the term "Meta-adaptionist" seems an excellent start. It is a beginning. We should be able to benefit from that much in any case, as usually ensuing discussions will bring some insights. That's a good thing!
The loss of public trust in institutions, and expertise in general, is a thorny problem I wish we could solve. Perspectives will invariably differ on goals and priorities, but as a culture increasingly we can't even have that debate because we lack agreement on current reality.
At heart is the issue that Daniel Kahneman discussed in several of his last interviews: How susceptible human thinking is to being hijacked. All kinds of motivated actors are getting better and better at hijacking the thoughts of other people. Like Kahneman I despair of finding any real solution, since the perpetrators (and their AIs) are only getting better at it.
Is this a temporary glitch? Or as Kahneman feared, is this the mother of all maladaptations that will keep us from ever having trusted authorities and institutions again? It strikes me that if this problem can't be solved, then there is no way to get coordinated action on any of our other societal problems. We can only drift.
You can trust the estimates of prediction markets without trusting any particular people as experts for whom you'd believe what they just said.
Hanson's very own Second Foundation. Interesting, more coherent than any other option I've heard, but ultimately= Bonini's Paradox / epistemological overreach. Highly unlikely gov't policy could guide culture w/ rapidly evolving tech without conformity, restrictive controls and coercion. Futarchy-type gov'ts may produce some highly adaptive results, but suggesting that they can guide culture? Thinking we can really anticipate what would result from setting certain long-term goals? Hubris. An invitation to coercion. Or science fiction.
Conformity, restrictive controls and coercion remain on the table as options. What more can we do than make our best possible guesses?
Make as many bets on as many tables as possible. The problem is the mono-culture, not the drift. Global (monoculture) gov't policy should only be there to prevent Game Over. Everything else should multiply, mutate and drift. Spandrels often become incorporated into great architecture.
Futarchy aggregates our best guesses.
It aggregates the best guesses of those few with capital and interest on certain types of questions. Or, it seizes from those with capital to subsidize those without, which would likely be coercive. Even if not....saying it could produce better or even best guesses doesn't mean it can guide 'world monoculture' in any kind of strong sense, especially in a rapidly changing world.
> It aggregates the best guesses of those few with capital and interest on certain types of questions.
Lots of people have capital (just think of how many bet on sports), and even people who aren't interested in the type of question can be interested in making money.
> Even if not....saying it could produce better or even best guesses doesn't mean it can guide 'world monoculture' in any kind of strong sense, especially in a rapidly changing world.
Avoid the nirvana fallacy and compare to the best alternative.
People with more money would dominate decision making. In this context, seriously? See:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:140;series:Net%20worth;demographic:networth;population:all;units:levels
I'm not aware of any other thinker who has seriously proposed a method of guiding 'world mono-culture'. Over time, tho, I think something more in the direction of Balaji's ideas would make sense, some kind of 'gov't as a service' model where the gov'ts themselves compete for citizens, making governance a competitive industry, which would provide an evolutionary sort of pressure.
I agree that allowing capitalism free reign to run governance and culture would likely work. I'm just skeptical that will be allowed.
I agree, but don't know why futarchy would be more probable. Your Great Filter Theory implies the probable outcome imo.
Futarchy doesn't simply allow people to spend money to make decisions. Money is instead spent to make predictions, and if someone is making predictions that will be falsified, anyone who wants to take their money can bet against them.
I associate the idea of "governance as a competitive industry" with Patri Friedman. His idea of seasteading was supposed to enable the entry of startups into that industry.
Regardless. Capital still = better tools to make guesses, more advisors, more bets, oligarchy, etc. Will some very insightful poor people rise in that system? Absolutely. But generally the game will be heavily rigged for the rich. No idea about seasteading. Was speaking more of the core idea of changing the incentive system for gov't so they are competing for citizens just as companies compete for consumers' bucks.