Deep Utopia

We, by contrast, we Homo cubiculi, needs must rely on self-discipline and structured incentives to get us to perform the requisite labors.

example, it could be that any cognitive system that is capable of acting very much like a human being across a very wide set of situations and over extended periods of time, could only do so by performing computations that instantiate phenomenal

A strategy of this sort is used today by managers in bureaucratic organizations, who sometimes seek to hire as many subordinates as possible in order to exalt their own position within the corporate structure. These new recruits may then repeat the procedure and work assiduously to build up their own team of underlings. It’s a pyramid scheme that c

Individuals with less enterprise, drive, education, health, emotional stability, etc. are more likely to become unemployed.

Student: I’d just like to know your position on this issue, that’s all. Bostrom: I don’t know. It seems pretty saintly never to look down on anybody, and never to hope that somebody else will look up to one. Maybe it’s good for somebody to be saintly in this way. Hard to know what the world would look like if people were universally like that. Sinc

It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society.

We say that X is a complement to Y if having more of Y makes extra units of X more valuable. A left shoe is a complement to a right shoe. If, instead, having more of X makes Y less valuable, we say that X and Y are substitutes. A lighter is a substitute for a box of matches.

Ich danke Gott an jedem Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen!45

Fred Hirsch in his 1977 book, Social Limits to Growth.65 The richer we become, the more of our desires for non-positional goods, such as basic food and shelter, are met; and the greater the fraction of our remaining as-yet unfulfilled desires pertain to positional goods, which are inherently scarce.