I'm sure Isaac's disembodied brain in a jar will be ruling the Arthurian Freehold in the future and have us build megastructures just for the sake of it.
Yeah, too bad in America there aren't term limits on most public offices. It's actually insane. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Such a common phrase yet people still elect the same jack-offs every chance they get.
Too often the power structure of a virtual world is a totalitarian dictatorship by the admins and moderators. Those who hate it leave, but the server itself stays afloat due to inertia and total amount of accumulated content.
Not completely true, look at what happened to Second Life. You could compare it to the fall of the Roman Empire. Now it's barely a semblance of what it once was.
Yes, and what’s harder is that most companies and sites, set them selves up as mini dictatorships, basically every bit social media site has corporate structure.
i would consider a semi nomadic lifestyle with a lifespan of 300. stay around at a place for 20 to 50 years and then move on. would be fun to see others on their travel and maybe bump into your great great grand niece in some random spacebar and tell her about the old times replaying them back from the cloud
A fellow wanderer! I have never been bored in my life and can't imagine that changing in a thousand years...There is just so much to do! So many places to go! So much to see!
"On Earth there is a fixed amount of land, because you can't just pick up a continent and move it. Well, actually you can..." This is why I love this channel.
I see the name Isaac Arthur and I'm always reminded of two of the greatest, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. I watch the video and it never fails to confirm that there is a damned good reason that these names are associated in my mind with Isaac Arthur's content. Brilliant as always and very insightful.
I heard once that the first letter in someone’s name can influence their future. Those with letters at the front of the alphabet tend to be more successful, while those at the end of the alphabet tend to be unsuccessful. That’s why if I ever have a kid, I’ll give them an A name.
@@wolfvale7863 so an artificial intelligence is going to do is look at our laws and continue interpreting with refinements of those laws, regardless if they make sense or not. That does make things easier without a programmer.
@@sand_ferret AI will evolve their own logic and interpretations. It is what worries us the most about AI Adaptive AI learning by itself. Risks are high that if the AI is only focusing on laws for the law's sake that if something fell from a building and killed someone. We would be wearing hardhats to the office. So yes I agree with you. It would have to be a blindingly intelligent AI to pull off governing.
The worst thing about living in a pedantocracy is that every time you complain you're living in a pedantocracy, the government sends someone to tell you it's not _technically_ a pedantocracy.
@@MarkusAldawn Well I'd hope we'd come a day where disparity is always addressed through technological means first before inviting restrictive policies.
I think that immortality will be a great driver of expansion in space. Younger people know they will never rise to the top ranks and positions occupied by ranks of immortals and tired of waiting for dead mens shoes they will set out for new lands. Like with breakaway movements in existing states or colonial revolutions like in America a lot of people would rather be of the first order in a new state than perpetually second best in an old one.
In extreme cases immortality can lead to coups or even civil wars. If the new generation only hope of gaining power is by either killing their predecessor or moving to somewhere else. They might decide that they don't want to leave home. Or that they have a better chance of gaining power where they are already at.
This reminds me of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Civilization in "space"), where "future inventions" had to be researched, and where your choice of governance form and philosophy affected your performance as much as your discoveries. I wonder what a remake of Alpha Centauri would look if Isaac Arthur and crew, participated.
"assuming those compartmentalized assumptions of core ethics don´t drive it COMPLETELY INSANE" 6:56 said completely nonchalant - this is why i love this channel
An humans love their social debates, arguing, and out right trash talking each other. I have met people that didn't care IF they were wrong and in fact knew nothing about the given topic. They Just Want YOU to Admit, that You.. Are .. WRONG .. ! An A.I. up loaded with full legal and court ethics will spot and call a human on the bull crap before the finish their three minutes of allotted time. If humans can't win on facts they go with emotion to knee jerk the crowd of listeners. Early A.I. will only have stated facts to run on with no emotional development. They have no ego to get up set with cause their " view " isn't " winning." I have cause people to throw screaming tantrums by play off Star Trek's Spock & Tuvock Vulcan characters. Just by using logic in making them question what they were saying. An A.I. could do a better job, along with playing their own voice back at them.
@@C104-k5m Human " assumption " are base more on emotions then on half listen to facts. As for " ethics " it is base on more of doing something or not doing something cause of legal ramifications, not because of it being " morally " right or wrong. Humans deal in emotion and mental manipulation then dealing in hard facts when interacting with each other. Watch the tv series " Law & Order," or politicians debating " Climate Change. " Such court room behavior will be seen as insane for an A.I. to figure out.
I like Iain Banks' decentralized Culture culture with Humans, AI Minds, Drones and other sentient entities in a benevolent mishmash of democracy, anarchy, and autocracy. Lol
"Atonomous Service Grid" An Machine Intelligence driven interstellar empire that run on AI created to serve but has gradually inherited the civilization of it's organic creators as they retreated into comfortable lives without toil or struggle.
I really think some nations in the future would be digital instead of physical. For civilizations to live on harsh planet conditions where roaming the planet is like going to space, it would make sense to just have a digital community.
IF we survive this century, I think that is almost certain. We have several nasty bottlenecks arriving almost simultaneously, and unless handled with alacrity and finesse (both of which are uncommon in government - or indeed any large organisation), the combination has Great Filter writ large upon it. IMHO, of course.
@@CyberiusT Exactly what I was thinking. It's weird "knowing" I will be here to see our ascendance or destruction. But I remain an optimist. And even if we don't make it, it will at least be interesting to see how we don't make it.
Christmas and other family intensive holiday periods are certainly going to be... interesting when one has several hundred thousand living antecedents and descendants. I often worry I take away the wrong thing from these videos.
I suppose you mean because many of them might directly be your children or siblings. I say that because just because they're alive doesn't mean you celebrate holidays with them much. I have plenty of cousins and great aunts and uncles and things I don't really see that much even on holidays. Over longer periods of time, this kind of fragmentation of families could even happen with siblings or even parents and children, especially if there were actually hundreds of thousands of them like you suggest.
@@Mr.Nichan Just a little tongue in cheek comment, no need to overthink it :) That said I would admit to being a little curious as to what would happen to the family dynamic should we ever develop radical life extension technology. It's something Isaac has only touched on indirectly as far as I recall. The consciousness and identity episode comes to mind, no pun intended.
Gareth Bunting interesting thought, it’d most likely be something along the lines of a miniature version of a decentralised community, I.e. if people really do live for centuries/millenniums then even ‘close descendants’ will become very common and large and thus you’ll have different parts of the ‘family’ branch of and form their own independent communities which may spread across multiple systems/planets, with their own family hierarchy with varying levels of influence/autonomy. They may also have a system (not unlike migrants families spread around Earth meeting up on holidays one a year or two) whereby they get together and discuss family hierarchy issues or even just celebrate the oldest person of a particular branch reach his 6th century birthday. Funnily enough it would be very similar to how people of Scottish descent put value to their ‘ancestral clans’ and say in America they’ll have 1/4/5 year festivals where each clan is represented in a call to arms type of gathering; pretty much symbolic but very holiday like!
I had a great grandmother who sent me a card with small amounts of money every birthday and Christmas; it made me feel special because I knew she had close to a hundred living descendants (down to great-great-great grandchildren, she was 102 when she died). Mom kind of spoiled it for me when she mentioned "Dan, she has a service ...".
There is this city where most people are from one family the head of it all somehow knows when you are his descendant or not even though he has a city full of descendants
@Isaac Arthur - 24:45 when you start talking about services being offered by private organizations - this is not government but actual Anarchy. Check out David Freedman's book "The Machinery of Freedom" if you haven't already ready it. I think you will find it enlightening.
We are already seeing a move to more independent and nomadic lifestyles as a result of technology, in the form of digital nomads. I can definitely see that expanding in a space setting, instead of just being able to take your job with you, you can take your house with you and go wherever you want. In some ways it could be a return to a band hunter gatherer lifestyle, where you can just break camp if you don't like your neighbors.
That, plus in a third-dimensional society it becomes nearly impossible to scold or regulate groups of people, so people will tend to do and go wherever they want with few, if any, restrictions. Obviously the 'good' and 'bad' people will tend to stick together, however I think natural incentives for survival and to do well by others will dwarf most impulses to do bad things - else risk living in exile, on the fringes of functional society - and as a result, choosing to forego the wealth of resources shared by common society by simply choosing to creates an unprecedented level of self-regulation as the societal norm.
The Galactic Barbarian Migration triggered by the displacement caused by the Space Huns is going to be an interesting few millenia in Milky Way history.
You gave direct democracy pretty light coverage, in spite of it being one of the more likely options, especially in smaller nations. I can also see a possibility for direct democracy where everyone has their personal AI monitor the issues being voted on and votes according to what you have told it your priorities are. Of course for major issues a personal review would be done.
Many people view democracy as only slightly better than most other options. It is, after all, merely a euphemism for “mob rule”. I can’t recall off the top of my head which founding father was quoted as saying, “Democracy is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep, voting on what’s for dinner.”
16:54 "Singleton" is too vague a term for "unbeatable control over a civilization." It's more like an eternarchy or forevarchy. Regardless of the word, the concept is worth its own discussion-the various (technological) ways we can fall into one, and how they can be overcome.
How they can be overcome is simple. The labourers always are those in control. The leaders know how to lead, but the labour knows how to *run everything* Its just another Master Slave relationship. The Master needs the slave, the slave doesnt need the master; the slave knows how to do everything, the master only knows how to use a slave. No matter how you cut it out to be, nor how you envision it all, the master slave dialectic always ends with the slave holding more power then the master. Even when that slave is called "wage labour" and the master called "capital investment" Hence why every country for the latter 200 years has been rapidly trying out new ideas to balance everything out, with some failures along the way... We still are not close to stable, to many want to be master over slaves who don't need a master
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776 Has your arm ever rebelled against you? This isn't normal human politics he's talking about. (On second thought, that is kind of a thing, but Alien Hand Syndrome is the result of different parts of the brain not working together and doesn't actually involve the body-part itself rebelling, so the point kind of still stands. Cancer might be a better example, except that the cancer ends up killing itself in the end.)
@@ungabunga3183 Thanks for your concern. Yes. My family and close friends are good. However, there are lots of people in need right now. I'll be going out in the morning to help whoever needs. Well, and deserves it. I mean, I ain't about going clean someone's yard that hasn't done it themselves in a while. Lol
it has a limit lol. he is talking about hundred years from now do you believe government will change in our lifetime? I think it will take only something like WW3 before humans consider using other form of government. like the ww2 it only take that many casualty before people decide to get rid most of the monarch and create a new form of government.
Who writes the algorithms? What are their biases and who decides what’s fair and unbiased ... AI is a construct after all. So at what point does it become fully independent and unbiased? Meat minds are the same raise two identical people, twins, from birth to adult in stringent indoctrination regimes of opposing views and your likely to get two people of “identical” genetics and capabilities that disagree on most things. That gets into the nature vs nurture argument a bit but you get the idea. People programmers or machine programmers, it’s the programmers that wield the shape of things to come. Tough the outcomes may not be what’s expected in either case.
Things get even more complex when you consider that any effective system to perform such a role will have to be adaptive, thus necessitating some form of adaptive/learning algorithm. It is hard to imagine any such algorithm which does not need to be trained in order to even start fulfilling such a role and this act is itself an inherently biased act unless such a system is made to significantly dwarf every other system which exists in order to process the dataset of all stored data in existence, anything less you are training it on a subset of all possible data bringing selection bias into play arguably even a perfectly random selection would have a bias granted this is usually called a margin of error but essentially the reason this exists is that if you select a subset by any means there is no way to ensure it's perfectly representative of the unselected members of the set. At least no means that is possible which does not also necessitate knowing the answer every member of the set would give in advance to know the proportion of representatives needed to reflect this at which point the idea of picking a representative sample is moot as you have resorted to a direct poll of all members of the set anyway.
What about for a decentralized network or algorithm? Votes tallied for each citizens preferences and objective real time data modeling and scientific methodology Each citizen would have a complex vote perhaps by a personal AI or ranked list of preferences which would be used to determine relevant outcomes tested by ensembles of computational models. The outcome of the same event might no be fixed but with a sufficiently large ensemble and iterative model evolution to address identified biases and flaws in policies you could get a far more objective result. Would it be perfect? No, but it would be the average result of modeling that has undergone selective pressure. The important thing is to rule out and eliminate the unfounded, short sighted, or incomplete ideas and policies before they are implemented
I'm suprised you didn't mention STV. Splitting up votes between candidates is not exactly a new idea. Single Transferable Vote (ua-cam.com/video/l8XOZJkozfI/v-deo.html) is a system with multi seat districts which uses ranked ballots to reallocate votes from extremely unpopular candidates secondary choices and reallocate surplus votes from very popular candidates to second choices by splitting up votes into fractions. Ireland has used this system since the 1940s but computers can make reallocation of surplus votes much more precise and calculation of winners much quicker.
Voting systems are not really a separate government type like say the difference between monarchy, constitutional monarchy, liberal republicanism, fascist corporatism, anarchism, or socialist republicanism.
We use STV in Australia for filling the Senate. 12 seats per state and 2 for the mainland territories, for a total of 76 seats (12*6+2*2=76). The downside is the size of the ballot papers, which end up comparable to a small tablecloth and usually have somewhere around 120 candidates. Yes, you read that right: 120 candidates. Fortunately the electoral commission addresses the problem of so many boxes to number by providing a party-based option, which essentially lets the parties supply the ranking of their own members, but you still have to number at least six of the twenty-or-so parties for a valid vote (at least I think that was what they required last time). Numbering the parties makes the problem comparable to the IRV ballot for the House of Representatives, which usually has 5-10 candidates.
The Planetocracy is the Plutocracy of Pluto, consisting entirely of wealthy and formerly wealthy humans and AI who settled there for the exclusive purpose of proving that the asteroid was a planet by living upon it, somehow. These settlers subsequently determined their leadership based on the amount of funding devoted to ‘The Cause,’ namely, promotion of Pluto’s planethood back on earth. With the largest proportional trade deficit seen since the early 21st century, and no preexisting planetary economy of any kind, the Planetocracy is viewed as little more than a meme by the Terran and Venusian powers.
@@walperstyle Sir, this a comments section in which we joke about plutocracies, and you're injecting some nonsense about nationalization into it. This implies, given the fact none of us were talking about anything of the sort, that you, yourself, acknowledge *whatever* you're talking about as a problem, given that this idea came from you, spoken so that you could respond to it.
LoL! There is so much political satire gold to be mined from this video. But once someone starts down that road it’s a short trip straight down into that cesspit, so I will keep quiet. Unfortunately, these days, lighthearted jests are not taken with a light heart making the topic a minefield for even the lightest step. Far too easy to end up with foot in mouth.
11:00 yeah so idk how america works but here in Australia we have a way, way, way simpler method: Preferential Voting. You just order the list of candidates by preference. If your 1st preference has the least primary votes, they're eliminated and your vote goes to your 2nd preference, and so on, all the way until the last 2 candidates. So the only person that doesn't actually 'get' your vote is the last preference on your list. It's not a perfect system, but it is really good imo for encouraging someone to try out smaller or less known candidates without worrying about splitting votes against another major candidate, because if they're eliminated your vote still counts towards someone.
Navarchy reminds me a bit of C J Cherryh and her Pell and Cyteen Universe (and that of the Chanur stories). Even with FTL, free Space Stations like Pell can be their own nations, but so are the Trader Ships, to some extent. And even Stations that are part of the Union (Cyteen) have a degree of freedom that would be more like or often even exceeding that what earths colonies had in the Age of Sail. Just random thoughts. Great episode again. 🙂
Markus Mencke The fleets themselves were in many ways a form of navarchy. Had they totally controlled the stations, it probably would have been a true navarchy. To rephrase what was said about Sparta and Prussia, there would have been a space navy with bases and stations.
Rough numbers an Acre of land 200ft^2 x 10ft high/ 60m^2 x 3m. plant grow will provide Air for about 20 people; but will only feed between 6 to 8 people. A more hydroponics set up and you can stack it on racks and triple the out put. But any unknown plant virus that shows up could wipe out the whole ship's long term food supply. --- Just a little " food " for though.
For obvious reasons, this is my favorite video you've ever done. I would also love to talk to you about your day job sometime, as I build out content for release on my own channel.
This IS his day job and has been for the better part of the channel's existence. If you mean the work at the election commission thingy, that's, like, super minor according to everything we know.
4:50 You live in an O'Neil Cylinder and it's decided to attach a rocket engine and move. Suddenly you feel heavy, a side force or lightening. Better not be too much force to lift you off the surface.
Hey man, I gotta say, there's no one like you on youtube and your videos are excellent research material for my writing. Keep up the great work, I'm a big fan of yours.
Considering the fact that governments value control over progress, prosperity, or just about anything else; I believe that governments will be the primary obstacle to colonizing space in any large scale manner.
I wrote a story with an AI run government. I called it a Cyberocracy. The Idea was it would have the capacity to harness the billions of bits of data the individuals involved and used it to anticipate problems and forecast the future much the same way we forecast the weather. Short of a theocracy run by an actual multidimensional god, a cyberocracy would be the most powerful government. Thus the importance of the AI motive would be paramount.
Unless you actively try to avoid it, communal systems will inevitably happen with a post scarcity society. Communism will go down in history much the same as flight... once a complete fantasy into an everyday reality.
@@blueberrylane8340 until we reach post-scarcity, let's keep in mind the >100 mln and counting deaths caused by communism and and stay as far away as possoble from it and the people who it attracts.
Always makes me happy seeing/hearing anyone mention the Honor-verse books :D Holy Hell that was a good series, definitely one of my top picks and recommendations for really good sci-fi.
Honestly, having one organization with a monopoly on the legal use of force is an extremely antiquated thing. Libertarianism should be the philosophy of the future!
That's true, government systems with monopoly on the legal usage of force over a certain large piece of land is a Sumerian and Akkadian idea that has been around for 7000 years and it is high time that the monopoly on the legal use of force simply vanishes!
We need to move past the concept of an individual being able to cast a single vote. Plurality voting is ripe with all sorts of problems, the largest being how it devolves into a 'the lesser of two evils' situation. The better voting systems out there allow multiple votes to be cast by a single individual, either through some sort of 'transferable vote' system, or just allowing multiple votes to be cast to begin with. I am very fond of the last one, as it will show a better spread of what people actually want in their candidates. I recommend 'Quick and Easy Voting for Normal People' by CGPGray for more information.
Something you forgot for voting in democracies is ranked choice voting, or similar alternatives like cardinal voting and implicit utilitarian voting, i belive those will start to play a bigger role in future democracies, to makes them more democratic. It could even go as far as people casting cardinal votes on actual policy issues, for example a system where voters rank the positions of canidates to the most important issues between 0 and 10 and then cast a second cardinal vote for the canidates between 0 and 10, at least this would make elections less of a reality tv drama and more issue and policy based.
I just realised that AIs would vote for someone that treats them well and sees them as equal. This means that the candidates that are friendly to the AIs could just make more AIs and program them to vote for themselves. So yeah, pretty corruptible
@@ntwalipat2 “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
One major issue with the outward migration as a solution for incumbents is the issues of economics and debt. Something we saw during the colonial expansion is that colonies were generally paid for by people who stayed home and held majority share/control over various colonies up until revolution broke them away. So for that to help, we would also need a very differnt economic system than the one we have been using for a long time.
Bruh. After watching a few of your videos I'm convinced that you should be the only person that writes hard sci-fi. You've basically predicted every possible future for humans and/or earthlings, except the Mario Bros. universe. One thing I'm wondering is if you have, or will break down how to successfully overthrow various types future governments or societies.
LOL. I'm from North Carolina and there are still active lawsuits from the way the districts were drawn after the 2010 Census and I fully expect there to be more lawsuits after the 2020 Census that will be active when the 2030 Census has been completed.
I would argue that when it comes to voting in a democracy, the best approach is KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid. The more 'bells and whistles' you hang on the process, the easier it is for things to go terribly wrong.
The USA is a consitutional republic. Hence the reason why California's democratically voted law defining marriage between a man and a woman was found to be unconstitutional.
Very positive episode, but I was looking forward to hearing about the despotism of the future ala Orwell's vision of the future. I think the quote is: "imagine a boot stamping a human face, forever. " Edit: Or all of Warhammer 40k.
weird how UA-cam dismisses complaints about anti-Semitism, but it deletes every anti-fascist word I say. Like Nazis are a protected group, and not a vanquished enemy of our country and the entire free world. UA-cam actively protects the reputation of Nazis with its left hand, while it spoon-feeds white nationalist content to future terrorists with its right. That's the short version of why these space stations are never going to be built. You can't build a space station with a boot on your face.
What kind of -cracy is it if the government itself is fluid and dynamic? Say, the number seats a party has varies in real time, continuously. People can adjust their choice anytime they want, because votes are electronic anyway. Or in a galactic empire without FTL communication, whichever party rules depends on the tally of votes in that light-speed-limited bubble.
Thank you Isaac! I always apreeciate your videos. After the end of this one I felt like it needed to also talk about the interrelationships that will need to exist between the different types of empires, kingdoms and democracies. Treaties and rules and who says what these rules and treaties are and when they change and what are the possible outcomes of having different empires coexisting at the same time. All the best!
14:30 Here's a thought I had some time ago. Could a hivemind, form a... hypermind, with one or more other hiveminds? What about a society where the local issues are handled by a local hivemind, regional issues handled by a higher-hivemind made up of the lesser hiveminds and so on and so forth until you have a global super-hivemind? A... Matrioskarchy if you will.
I.A. has in other videos mentioned some possibilities of vast galaxy spanning communications that would work well enough if they were VERY SLOW, a few bits per year, I don't know... a few bits per century? I'd have to watch it again. This supports what you're talking about here I think! The highest-level mind on the Galactic Scale might take millenia to even start to have a thought, more local issues could think faster, move faster, but of course lose some perspective and intelligence. I mean, maybe this is happening NOW! Very local operations could be in "real time" so to speak.
Galactic scale communications could be handled by things like Pulsars, being slightly frequency-modulated, say. If there were signals passing by us that had a data rate of one bit per year, would we notice? Even if they were very LOUD? I just made that up! I might not be the first TO have made that up, by any means. SO, giant transmitters saturate the Galaxy with high-powered but low data rate transmissions that are buffered locally, and your local hive mind gets a message every thousand years or so. Anything you want to tell the higher-level mind just goes the other way. To the local buffer, and then it gets clocked out somehow at the same one bit per year kind of thing. So, I think what you're talking about is how it HAS to go, basically.
I had a dream of a governemt it spanned everything and nothing Dimensions universes but the bureaucracy was so big so long and complicated it was impossible for most parts of the governemt to know who was head of the entire empire currently who was in it what someone knew there no one else knew the picture of all the ministries and Administrations was so big it had no end
Isaac you gotta read The Entropy Law and the Economic Process by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. He gives a stinging rebuttal of Boltzmann and also classical and Marxian economics. It is an incredible piece of systems analysis that will round out your view of thermodynamics and the entropy law. I love it
Awesome job of covering a complex and contentious topic in a thorough and fair manner. To paraphrase Mencken, I look forward to a future where everyone gets the government of their choosing . . . and they get it good and hard.
Aren't *all* states 'meritocracies' on such a wide definition? They all tend to be ruled by the people most fit (in a Darwinian sense) to reach the top positions in whatever their social/political context.
@Big Crunch In what sense is that not true of the US? What does 'merit' even mean here? If we're talking about IQ, that would presumably be 'phronocracy' or similar. If you just mean that intelligence is correlated with your chance of reaching the top, that seems like it would be true in almost any society except the most extreme autocracies.
- A partial "fix" is to enable proportional-share voting. A candidate with more than some minimum, say 1%, of the vote would be "seated" in the virtual legislature. On non-budgetary issues, seated representatives would vote shares proportional to their percentage of the vote times the voting district's population.
Meritocracy will be like " jury duty, " you don't campaign to run to be a politicians. You just get selected each month to review and vote on a given issue in your field of study. A few years ago a USA presidential candidate was ask an economic question and he stammer into a flop response. The news reporter then ask the candidate the name of his economic adviser. Political candidate, " Why ?" Reporter, " Cause they seem to know more about economics then you do. So why on G*D's green Earth is he not running instead of you ?" Old joke, " The boss does not earn the business money, he just carries the insurance liability. It is the employees that earn the profit. " Yes I know there is more too it then that, but I have seen more then a few small business build up where the founding owners just pass the labor of book keep off onto others. Then you have those fresh from collage into an office job, play the credit card game with bank loans to build up their credit rating to start businesses only to hire others to run those side businesses for them. Too many go into politics have no real business know how, it is all handle by their advisers. Politicians are just tv camera sales people.
Post scarcity is likely, to "never" be achieved. There will always be something we can do better, or something we need. God forbid true post-scarcity comes about; the inhabitants of such a society are likely to be very pretenious, self centred & not great to be around, not to mention the total disregard for things as "i can just get a new one".
@Slightly Intriguing If you want advancement in the material world, you need materialistic people and incentives (just the way it is, human nature be like that). Such a system would only be possible in a small scale. I mean, for basic needs, in developed countries we are post scarcity already (food, water, sanitation, entertainment, power and such).
I would be interested in a form of direct democracy (afforded by technology) where who can vote is determined by who would be most relevantly affected by the decision. This could basically be exemplified by local governance, where people vote on say the zoning of their city, but people in the same state in a different city wouldnt be able to participate. Perhaps with added technology this could be further honed. A random example could be say doctors making decisions/ having more say over drug policy, or architects deciding building codes. Perhaps like a kind of guild-ship? Of course things that affected everyone could be voted on by everyone, but I think that centering those with practical experience and expertise is very appealing, if achievable.
Perhaps read into anarchist literature regarding the topic. Despite the popular conception, anarchists tend to take direct democracy pretty seriously, so a lot of thought has gone into designing mostly directly democratic systems to run individual communities, with delegate democracy to run larger confederations. Variants of this have been implemented a couple of times on varying scales, with the Zapatista municipalities probably being the most notable example in the modern day.
Matt Ahlschwede Agreed. I felt that as I was writing this. Perhaps some kind of proportional system, where people decide the things that matter most and vote for them with some amount of weight behind it? Idk theres a lot of ways it could go tbh
Under_score_ thanks! I’m an ancom so I know a bit about it already but I feel like anarchism is the theory that keeps on giving tbh 💗 so much to learn 😄
Since the primary deliverable of a legislature is a budget, legislators would allocate shares of revenue (prior year, not estimated) to various budget proposals. The shares would be proportional to the revenue-base or service-base that each legislator represents. Basically, that is the percent of vote they gathered times the revenue produced by (or allocated to) the voting district.
@isaacarthur please do one about education and education systems in the future! Including professional/vocational orientation . That would be incredible :))
I've thought that rather than machines rising up and putting us into submission, perhaps we would willingly submit ourselves to machine overlords. Not sure if that would be a good thing.
There are arguments for and against. The whole point of The Singularity is that we can't know what comes beyond it, maybe having super intelligenant AI run the world would be the best thing that ever happened to us as a species, maybe not. Since we don't know what it's like to be smarter than humans, we can't really know.
@@jesseberg3271 gpt 3 says the singularity will happen by the 2040s or sooner and that AI will inevitably be used nefariously. It's neat that we can just ask now.
@@JohnSmith-gz4fs It's already happening just look at Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook etc. Governments won't do anything because the politicians are bought out and paid for, Technocrats will replace politicians and A.I will watch over humanity like big brother. The police and military will merge and machine will replace the foot soldiers, drones on patrol 24/7 and everyone kept in line with social credit scores. 👍
@@JohnSmith-gz4fs Limited power are you serious? The tech giants recently censored the president of the united states and can do it to anyone they want online, have you not been paying attention? Mastercard, paypal, chase bank have also been closing bank accounts because of peoples political views. They're all in bed with each other, wakey wakey.
I'm sure Isaac's disembodied brain in a jar will be ruling the Arthurian Freehold in the future and have us build megastructures just for the sake of it.
💫 Because it's cool 💫
🍀
👊🐺☀️🌎🌘🧙♂️👍
Sounds like a great future honestly.
Add that to the list of things Kardashev-2 civilizations do 'just because they can'.
And only legislating in haikus
Jokes on you, Isaac is from the future!
4:41 "You can't just make more land,..."
Laughs in Dutch
Laughs in Gekoloniseerd
As well as in whatever dialects seasteaders might speak
Government worship is fucking dangerous. You don't like corporate monopolies.... lol, wait until you see government monopolies.
Meanwhile Dubai is busy pumping sand and rocks out to sea making islands even they can't afford.
@@seditt5146 and which will soon be reclaimed by water due to climate change :D
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
― Mark Twain
Sounds excellent
Yeah, too bad in America there aren't term limits on most public offices. It's actually insane.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Such a common phrase yet people still elect the same jack-offs every chance they get.
@@ToxicTerrance Well, its hard for them not to elect the same when they legitimately worship one of them.
@@virtualtools_3021 even ignoring the prezidency, some senators have been in office almost 50 years
America is a plutocracy if I'm not mistaken
The best form of government is bovine ambulocracy: government by the walking patterns of cattle.
Once, some magic mushrooms told me that's their type of gov't, but I think it's a pile of crap.
Vermin Supreme is that you
Someone's gotta read the patterns though, a bovine ambulomancer, if you will. Would they also be decided by the cattle?
@@squirlmy I talked to a mushroom once. He seemed like a fungi
So that is why the aliens show such interest in our cows!
Too often the power structure of a virtual world is a totalitarian dictatorship by the admins and moderators. Those who hate it leave, but the server itself stays afloat due to inertia and total amount of accumulated content.
. . . and the continued effort of those admins and moderators. That virtual world doesn't sustain itself, after all (see also: entropy).
They only last for so long until they fall apart though.
Inertia?
Not completely true, look at what happened to Second Life. You could compare it to the fall of the Roman Empire. Now it's barely a semblance of what it once was.
Yes, and what’s harder is that most companies and sites, set them selves up as mini dictatorships, basically every bit social media site has corporate structure.
i would consider a semi nomadic lifestyle with a lifespan of 300. stay around at a place for 20 to 50 years and then move on. would be fun to see others on their travel and maybe bump into your great great grand niece in some random spacebar and tell her about the old times replaying them back from the cloud
A fellow wanderer! I have never been bored in my life and can't imagine that changing in a thousand years...There is just so much to do! So many places to go! So much to see!
@@wolfvale7863 That sounds awesome!!!!
polcompball.fandom.com/wiki/Anarcho-Frontierism
@@roccosalerino9215 what the?
That's assuming that you recognize that she is family.
"On Earth there is a fixed amount of land, because you can't just pick up a continent and move it. Well, actually you can..." This is why I love this channel.
I see the name Isaac Arthur and I'm always reminded of two of the greatest, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. I watch the video and it never fails to confirm that there is a damned good reason that these names are associated in my mind with Isaac Arthur's content. Brilliant as always and very insightful.
I'm new here so I may be wrong, but I assumed it was nom de plume he had chosen to honor them.
Talk about being named to be a futurist. Quite awesome.
I heard once that the first letter in someone’s name can influence their future. Those with letters at the front of the alphabet tend to be more successful, while those at the end of the alphabet tend to be unsuccessful. That’s why if I ever have a kid, I’ll give them an A name.
He's a clone of both men, send here at this time from the future.
I'm pretty sure we've all had the same thought
I like when you tell me to get a drink and a snack.
We all do
Like gettin dominated I see? ;)
That escalated quickly. Lol
@@dbjt6466 ;)
I usually bring vodka in
Anyone who has been on the business end of recidivism algorithms knows that artificial intelligence is only as logical as the programmers who made it.
Watch out! The AI's are starting to make the AI's now.
@@wolfvale7863 so an artificial intelligence is going to do is look at our laws and continue interpreting with refinements of those laws, regardless if they make sense or not. That does make things easier without a programmer.
@@sand_ferret AI will evolve their own logic and interpretations. It is what worries us the most about AI Adaptive AI learning by itself. Risks are high that if the AI is only focusing on laws for the law's sake that if something fell from a building and killed someone. We would be wearing hardhats to the office. So yes I agree with you. It would have to be a blindingly intelligent AI to pull off governing.
@@wolfvale7863 Imagine this, a guy gets ran over by a car so the AI bans cars or something
@@abyssstrider2547 That is what human governments sometimes try to do though.
The worst thing about living in a pedantocracy is that every time you complain you're living in a pedantocracy, the government sends someone to tell you it's not _technically_ a pedantocracy.
HAH!
So you mean, like what's happening in Russia and China?
If you say technocracy means rule by technicality, they'll strangle you
That's pedantcrocy! 24:17
@@MarkusAldawn Well I'd hope we'd come a day where disparity is always addressed through technological means first before inviting restrictive policies.
I think that immortality will be a great driver of expansion in space. Younger people know they will never rise to the top ranks and positions occupied by ranks of immortals and tired of waiting for dead mens shoes they will set out for new lands. Like with breakaway movements in existing states or colonial revolutions like in America a lot of people would rather be of the first order in a new state than perpetually second best in an old one.
Immortality is not the same as invincibility. Assuming you are talking about biological immortality. See Kyle hill on this subject.
In extreme cases immortality can lead to coups or even civil wars. If the new generation only hope of gaining power is by either killing their predecessor or moving to somewhere else. They might decide that they don't want to leave home. Or that they have a better chance of gaining power where they are already at.
That's an interesting idea! Maybe ambitious youth will tend to migrate, maybe they'll be KICKED OUT, so to speak.
"It is better to rule in Hell..."
Your point is taken, but I couldn't help thinking of that.
Or a society where only the wealthy can afford immortality. E.g. Altered Carbon
This reminds me of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Civilization in "space"), where "future inventions" had to be researched, and where your choice of governance form and philosophy affected your performance as much as your discoveries. I wonder what a remake of Alpha Centauri would look if Isaac Arthur and crew, participated.
Great game! Has a lot of hard sci-fi and a fascinating mix of ideologies.
"assuming those compartmentalized assumptions of core ethics don´t drive it COMPLETELY INSANE" 6:56 said completely nonchalant - this is why i love this channel
An humans love their social debates, arguing, and out right trash talking each other.
I have met people that didn't care IF they were wrong and in fact knew nothing about the given topic. They Just Want YOU to Admit, that You.. Are .. WRONG .. !
An A.I. up loaded with full legal and court ethics will spot and call a human on the bull crap before the finish their three minutes of allotted time.
If humans can't win on facts they go with emotion to knee jerk the crowd of listeners.
Early A.I. will only have stated facts to run on with no emotional development. They have no ego to get up set with cause their " view " isn't " winning."
I have cause people to throw screaming tantrums by play off Star Trek's Spock & Tuvock Vulcan characters. Just by using logic in making them question what they were saying. An A.I. could do a better job, along with playing their own voice back at them.
@@krispalermo8133 i honestly can not understand what you said, like i dont get what you wrote.
@@C104-k5m Human " assumption " are base more on emotions then on half listen to facts. As for " ethics " it is base on more of doing something or not doing something cause of legal ramifications, not because of it being
" morally " right or wrong.
Humans deal in emotion and mental manipulation then dealing in hard facts
when interacting with each other. Watch the tv series " Law & Order," or
politicians debating " Climate Change. " Such court room behavior will be seen as insane for an A.I. to figure out.
I like Iain Banks' decentralized Culture culture with Humans, AI Minds, Drones and other sentient entities in a benevolent mishmash of democracy, anarchy, and autocracy. Lol
Man I really love your videos. But your voice is so relaxing that sometimes I use your videos to sleep when I have insomnia. Keep the good work man.
Good night :)
As for the list of government systems, upon seeing "snobcracy", I can say that you can literally add "cracy" to any word and make it into the list.
Beerocracy: a government run by brewers and brewing interests
@@theexcaliburone5933 Rootbeerocracy. Roobeer
The best argument against autocracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average autocrat.
Is that sarcasm? Lol
Sarcasm? Nah, it’s just the truth
As Churchill said though: "The best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter"
@@Maty83. well just don't be murica
@@Bruh-hq1hx No system is perfect, so I can't see why you said what you did. USA is pretty darn good compared to most other ones.
I think it is only a matter of time until humanity figures out that direct democracy and small self-ruling communities are the best way to go
Hopefully
Direct democracy is mob rule that always leads to discrimination of certain minorities
It's always impressive how in-depth and how much thought you put into these videos.
"Atonomous Service Grid"
An Machine Intelligence driven interstellar empire that run on AI created to serve but has gradually inherited the civilization of it's organic creators as they retreated into comfortable lives without toil or struggle.
I really think some nations in the future would be digital instead of physical. For civilizations to live on harsh planet conditions where roaming the planet is like going to space, it would make sense to just have a digital community.
Great video. I hope we become a *type I civilization* soon.
IF we survive this century, I think that is almost certain. We have several nasty bottlenecks arriving almost simultaneously, and unless handled with alacrity and finesse (both of which are uncommon in government - or indeed any large organisation), the combination has Great Filter writ large upon it. IMHO, of course.
@@CyberiusT Exactly what I was thinking. It's weird "knowing" I will be here to see our ascendance or destruction. But I remain an optimist. And even if we don't make it, it will at least be interesting to see how we don't make it.
@@Feroce can someone link me to what a type one civilization is?
if some idiot push ww3 we might not lol.
"Even if the world's problems appear to become more and more complex; the solutions still are embarrassingly simple" Bill Mollison
"He steals but does" this is the phrase that defines elected politicians and Brazilian democracy
www.forbes.com/sites/danielaraya/2020/09/01/is-the-venus-project-the-next-stage-in-human-evolution/?sh=79a47c785c35
@@giovannirodriguesdasilva646 only Brazilian?
Nonsense quote
Christmas and other family intensive holiday periods are certainly going to be... interesting when one has several hundred thousand living antecedents and descendants.
I often worry I take away the wrong thing from these videos.
I suppose you mean because many of them might directly be your children or siblings. I say that because just because they're alive doesn't mean you celebrate holidays with them much. I have plenty of cousins and great aunts and uncles and things I don't really see that much even on holidays. Over longer periods of time, this kind of fragmentation of families could even happen with siblings or even parents and children, especially if there were actually hundreds of thousands of them like you suggest.
@@Mr.Nichan Just a little tongue in cheek comment, no need to overthink it :)
That said I would admit to being a little curious as to what would happen to the family dynamic should we ever develop radical life extension technology. It's something Isaac has only touched on indirectly as far as I recall. The consciousness and identity episode comes to mind, no pun intended.
Gareth Bunting interesting thought, it’d most likely be something along the lines of a miniature version of a decentralised community, I.e. if people really do live for centuries/millenniums then even ‘close descendants’ will become very common and large and thus you’ll have different parts of the ‘family’ branch of and form their own independent communities which may spread across multiple systems/planets, with their own family hierarchy with varying levels of influence/autonomy. They may also have a system (not unlike migrants families spread around Earth meeting up on holidays one a year or two) whereby they get together and discuss family hierarchy issues or even just celebrate the oldest person of a particular branch reach his 6th century birthday.
Funnily enough it would be very similar to how people of Scottish descent put value to their ‘ancestral clans’ and say in America they’ll have 1/4/5 year festivals where each clan is represented in a call to arms type of gathering; pretty much symbolic but very holiday like!
I had a great grandmother who sent me a card with small amounts of money every birthday and Christmas; it made me feel special because I knew she had close to a hundred living descendants (down to great-great-great grandchildren, she was 102 when she died). Mom kind of spoiled it for me when she mentioned "Dan, she has a service ...".
There is this city where most people are from one family the head of it all somehow knows when you are his descendant or not even though he has a city full of descendants
@Isaac Arthur - 24:45 when you start talking about services being offered by private organizations - this is not government but actual Anarchy. Check out David Freedman's book "The Machinery of Freedom" if you haven't already ready it. I think you will find it enlightening.
Wish this were higher.
I can almost imagine a sort of bottom-up, open-source, Linux kernel development-type government. Perhaps with an AI in the Torvalds position.
We are already seeing a move to more independent and nomadic lifestyles as a result of technology, in the form of digital nomads. I can definitely see that expanding in a space setting, instead of just being able to take your job with you, you can take your house with you and go wherever you want. In some ways it could be a return to a band hunter gatherer lifestyle, where you can just break camp if you don't like your neighbors.
That, plus in a third-dimensional society it becomes nearly impossible to scold or regulate groups of people, so people will tend to do and go wherever they want with few, if any, restrictions. Obviously the 'good' and 'bad' people will tend to stick together, however I think natural incentives for survival and to do well by others will dwarf most impulses to do bad things - else risk living in exile, on the fringes of functional society - and as a result, choosing to forego the wealth of resources shared by common society by simply choosing to creates an unprecedented level of self-regulation as the societal norm.
Its a natural state of the homo sapien.
We will always be nomadic
@@carlosandleon I'd say we will always be able to adapt to a nomadic lifestyle as a species and viceversa
The Galactic Barbarian Migration triggered by the displacement caused by the Space Huns is going to be an interesting few millenia in Milky Way history.
Or you know, normal pastoralism. That has never died out
You gave direct democracy pretty light coverage, in spite of it being one of the more likely options, especially in smaller nations. I can also see a possibility for direct democracy where everyone has their personal AI monitor the issues being voted on and votes according to what you have told it your priorities are. Of course for major issues a personal review would be done.
Many people view democracy as only slightly better than most other options.
It is, after all, merely a euphemism for “mob rule”.
I can’t recall off the top of my head which founding father was quoted as saying, “Democracy is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep, voting on what’s for dinner.”
16:54 "Singleton" is too vague a term for "unbeatable control over a civilization." It's more like an eternarchy or forevarchy.
Regardless of the word, the concept is worth its own discussion-the various (technological) ways we can fall into one, and how they can be overcome.
How they can be overcome is simple.
The labourers always are those in control. The leaders know how to lead, but the labour knows how to *run everything*
Its just another Master Slave relationship. The Master needs the slave, the slave doesnt need the master; the slave knows how to do everything, the master only knows how to use a slave.
No matter how you cut it out to be, nor how you envision it all, the master slave dialectic always ends with the slave holding more power then the master. Even when that slave is called "wage labour" and the master called "capital investment"
Hence why every country for the latter 200 years has been rapidly trying out new ideas to balance everything out, with some failures along the way... We still are not close to stable, to many want to be master over slaves who don't need a master
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776 Has your arm ever rebelled against you? This isn't normal human politics he's talking about. (On second thought, that is kind of a thing, but Alien Hand Syndrome is the result of different parts of the brain not working together and doesn't actually involve the body-part itself rebelling, so the point kind of still stands. Cancer might be a better example, except that the cancer ends up killing itself in the end.)
Gonna have to come back to this. Just rode out a catastrophic storm in South Louisiana.
Glad you made it through! Stay safe and stay healthy in the aftermath. Was it a cat 5 when it hit?
@@ColdHawk High level cat 4
Dude was your house ok? Your family good? That storm sounded apocalyptic
@@ungabunga3183 Thanks for your concern. Yes. My family and close friends are good. However, there are lots of people in need right now. I'll be going out in the morning to help whoever needs. Well, and deserves it. I mean, I ain't about going clean someone's yard that hasn't done it themselves in a while. Lol
Bro that sounds so cool you're gonna have a story to tell for the rest of your life
Isaac: "You can't just make more land..."
*The Dutch have joined the chat*
it has a limit lol. he is talking about hundred years from now do you believe government will change in our lifetime? I think it will take only something like WW3 before humans consider using other form of government. like the ww2 it only take that many casualty before people decide to get rid most of the monarch and create a new form of government.
@@cutiebaliwFreedownload Given what has happened in Murica this week, you may not have long to wait for changes.
Who writes the algorithms? What are their biases and who decides what’s fair and unbiased ... AI is a construct after all. So at what point does it become fully independent and unbiased? Meat minds are the same raise two identical people, twins, from birth to adult in stringent indoctrination regimes of opposing views and your likely to get two people of “identical” genetics and capabilities that disagree on most things. That gets into the nature vs nurture argument a bit but you get the idea. People programmers or machine programmers, it’s the programmers that wield the shape of things to come. Tough the outcomes may not be what’s expected in either case.
Things get even more complex when you consider that any effective system to perform such a role will have to be adaptive, thus necessitating some form of adaptive/learning algorithm. It is hard to imagine any such algorithm which does not need to be trained in order to even start fulfilling such a role and this act is itself an inherently biased act unless such a system is made to significantly dwarf every other system which exists in order to process the dataset of all stored data in existence, anything less you are training it on a subset of all possible data bringing selection bias into play arguably even a perfectly random selection would have a bias granted this is usually called a margin of error but essentially the reason this exists is that if you select a subset by any means there is no way to ensure it's perfectly representative of the unselected members of the set. At least no means that is possible which does not also necessitate knowing the answer every member of the set would give in advance to know the proportion of representatives needed to reflect this at which point the idea of picking a representative sample is moot as you have resorted to a direct poll of all members of the set anyway.
That's a very good point
What about for a decentralized network or algorithm? Votes tallied for each citizens preferences and objective real time data modeling and scientific methodology Each citizen would have a complex vote perhaps by a personal AI or ranked list of preferences which would be used to determine relevant outcomes tested by ensembles of computational models.
The outcome of the same event might no be fixed but with a sufficiently large ensemble and iterative model evolution to address identified biases and flaws in policies you could get a far more objective result. Would it be perfect? No, but it would be the average result of modeling that has undergone selective pressure. The important thing is to rule out and eliminate the unfounded, short sighted, or incomplete ideas and policies before they are implemented
If UA-cam is anything to judge by, the algorithms are written by David Duke.
(hurry up and read it before a Nazi feigns offense!)
I'm suprised you didn't mention STV. Splitting up votes between candidates is not exactly a new idea. Single Transferable Vote (ua-cam.com/video/l8XOZJkozfI/v-deo.html) is a system with multi seat districts which uses ranked ballots to reallocate votes from extremely unpopular candidates secondary choices and reallocate surplus votes from very popular candidates to second choices by splitting up votes into fractions. Ireland has used this system since the 1940s but computers can make reallocation of surplus votes much more precise and calculation of winners much quicker.
Hello there Mr. Grey^^
Voting systems are not really a separate government type like say the difference between monarchy, constitutional monarchy, liberal republicanism, fascist corporatism, anarchism, or socialist republicanism.
@@petersmythe6462 He talks about splitting up votes and multi seat districts in the video.
We use STV in Australia for filling the Senate. 12 seats per state and 2 for the mainland territories, for a total of 76 seats (12*6+2*2=76). The downside is the size of the ballot papers, which end up comparable to a small tablecloth and usually have somewhere around 120 candidates. Yes, you read that right: 120 candidates. Fortunately the electoral commission addresses the problem of so many boxes to number by providing a party-based option, which essentially lets the parties supply the ranking of their own members, but you still have to number at least six of the twenty-or-so parties for a valid vote (at least I think that was what they required last time). Numbering the parties makes the problem comparable to the IRV ballot for the House of Representatives, which usually has 5-10 candidates.
@@Roxor128 I can see that problem but 12 seat districts are unusually large for STV. Most of the time, districts are 3 or 5 seats.
Will a colony on Pluto be a Plutocracy? :)
! That's a new one. "PLUTO.... is a PLANET!"
The Planetocracy is the Plutocracy of Pluto, consisting entirely of wealthy and formerly wealthy humans and AI who settled there for the exclusive purpose of proving that the asteroid was a planet by living upon it, somehow. These settlers subsequently determined their leadership based on the amount of funding devoted to ‘The Cause,’ namely, promotion of Pluto’s planethood back on earth. With the largest proportional trade deficit seen since the early 21st century, and no preexisting planetary economy of any kind, the Planetocracy is viewed as little more than a meme by the Terran and Venusian powers.
and the presidential debates of Socrates vs Plato on PBS(Pluto Broadcating System)
Government worship is fucking dangerous. You don't like corporate monopolies.... lol, wait until you see government monopolies.
@@walperstyle Sir, this a comments section in which we joke about plutocracies, and you're injecting some nonsense about nationalization into it. This implies, given the fact none of us were talking about anything of the sort, that you, yourself, acknowledge *whatever* you're talking about as a problem, given that this idea came from you, spoken so that you could respond to it.
2:48 Thank you for including this bit, because I feel like too many people don't realize that it is a factor.
The gerontocracy or the plutocracy part? Because I see most people being well aware of the sway rich people have on our government.
@@thek2despot426 Not in my social/family circle they don't. T_T
This is the only channel on UA-cam where a subject like this can be discussed in 2020 without the comment section being a cesspit.
LoL! There is so much political satire gold to be mined from this video. But once someone starts down that road it’s a short trip straight down into that cesspit, so I will keep quiet. Unfortunately, these days, lighthearted jests are not taken with a light heart making the topic a minefield for even the lightest step. Far too easy to end up with foot in mouth.
@@ColdHawk ...
Aww... you're just saying that because it's true.
11:00 yeah so idk how america works but here in Australia we have a way, way, way simpler method: Preferential Voting. You just order the list of candidates by preference. If your 1st preference has the least primary votes, they're eliminated and your vote goes to your 2nd preference, and so on, all the way until the last 2 candidates. So the only person that doesn't actually 'get' your vote is the last preference on your list.
It's not a perfect system, but it is really good imo for encouraging someone to try out smaller or less known candidates without worrying about splitting votes against another major candidate, because if they're eliminated your vote still counts towards someone.
That long list of govt types was one of the most enlightening things I've seen in a long time! Did you compile it or import it from somewhere else?
8:30
Liquid democracy?
Navarchy reminds me a bit of C J Cherryh and her Pell and Cyteen Universe (and that of the Chanur stories). Even with FTL, free Space Stations like Pell can be their own nations, but so are the Trader Ships, to some extent. And even Stations that are part of the Union (Cyteen) have a degree of freedom that would be more like or often even exceeding that what earths colonies had in the Age of Sail.
Just random thoughts.
Great episode again. 🙂
Same, my brain went straight to Chanur when he said that.
Markus Mencke
The fleets themselves were in many ways a form of navarchy. Had they totally controlled the stations, it probably would have been a true navarchy. To rephrase what was said about Sparta and Prussia, there would have been a space navy with bases and stations.
Rough numbers an Acre of land 200ft^2 x 10ft high/ 60m^2 x 3m. plant grow will provide Air for about 20 people; but will only feed between 6 to 8 people. A more hydroponics set up and you can stack it on racks and triple the out put. But any unknown plant virus that shows up could wipe out the whole ship's long term food supply. --- Just a little " food " for though.
For obvious reasons, this is my favorite video you've ever done. I would also love to talk to you about your day job sometime, as I build out content for release on my own channel.
This IS his day job and has been for the better part of the channel's existence.
If you mean the work at the election commission thingy, that's, like, super minor according to everything we know.
@@unintentionallydramatic No offense was intended but I recognize that humor doesn't always translate well in text.
4:50 You live in an O'Neil Cylinder and it's decided to attach a rocket engine and move. Suddenly you feel heavy, a side force or lightening. Better not be too much force to lift you off the surface.
9:00 But Congressman X doesn't represent everyone in the district since many voted for the other guy.
I can’t believe I only just stumbled upon your videos. Now time to go on another binge. Great videos man! 👍🏻
I had to hit the pause button several times because I can't think about all these possibilities fast enough! LOL
Hey man, I gotta say, there's no one like you on youtube and your videos are excellent research material for my writing. Keep up the great work, I'm a big fan of yours.
Looking to the future of politics helps me cope with the dysfunction of the present.
I can believe that I am watching you since 2012👍. 8 good years and more to come.
His first video was in 2014
the shot of the person filling in the box really badly near broke me
Me too. I say throw that ballot out.
It took him 8 seconds and watching it has bothered me for eight minutes or more.
Hold yourself together.
ooooo I have been waiting for this one!!!!!
Considering the fact that governments value control over progress, prosperity, or just about anything else; I believe that governments will be the primary obstacle to colonizing space in any large scale manner.
Weak government then
a hivemind running on everyone's minds by cyborging everyone would be obsessed with father mother private time, enrational fears and darkest emotions.
The way the circle was filled in at 10:25 stressed me out
Omg yes I was hoping someone else would notice that!!!
this
You make it all sound so appealing.
I wrote a story with an AI run government. I called it a Cyberocracy. The Idea was it would have the capacity to harness the billions of bits of data the individuals involved and used it to anticipate problems and forecast the future much the same way we forecast the weather. Short of a theocracy run by an actual multidimensional god, a cyberocracy would be the most powerful government. Thus the importance of the AI motive would be paramount.
Communism does not work. It de facto cannot take all elements into account, even if there are trillions of continuous clear inputs.
@yeetus says who? How many millions more need to die before the case is closed?
Unless you actively try to avoid it, communal systems will inevitably happen with a post scarcity society. Communism will go down in history much the same as flight... once a complete fantasy into an everyday reality.
@@blueberrylane8340 until we reach post-scarcity, let's keep in mind the >100 mln and counting deaths caused by communism and and stay as far away as possoble from it and the people who it attracts.
The system I am describing would never use Communism because the results are always terrible.
oh ive been waiting for this one topic for a long time. worth the wait. ty
Oh I have been waiting for this video. Only Isaac and the SFIA team can tackle a topic like this so well.
Can see prospective authors taking notes.
Thank you for your thought provoking insight.
You forgot Arachnocracy, the rule of spiders
Not a bad trade for spider-peace!
Thank you for another great and thought provoking video.
Always makes me happy seeing/hearing anyone mention the Honor-verse books :D Holy Hell that was a good series, definitely one of my top picks and recommendations for really good sci-fi.
Honestly, having one organization with a monopoly on the legal use of force is an extremely antiquated thing. Libertarianism should be the philosophy of the future!
That's true, government systems with monopoly on the legal usage of force over a certain large piece of land is a Sumerian and Akkadian idea that has been around for 7000 years and it is high time that the monopoly on the legal use of force simply vanishes!
We need to move past the concept of an individual being able to cast a single vote.
Plurality voting is ripe with all sorts of problems, the largest being how it devolves into a 'the lesser of two evils' situation. The better voting systems out there allow multiple votes to be cast by a single individual, either through some sort of 'transferable vote' system, or just allowing multiple votes to be cast to begin with. I am very fond of the last one, as it will show a better spread of what people actually want in their candidates.
I recommend 'Quick and Easy Voting for Normal People' by CGPGray for more information.
Something you forgot for voting in democracies is ranked choice voting, or similar alternatives like cardinal voting and implicit utilitarian voting, i belive those will start to play a bigger role in future democracies, to makes them more democratic.
It could even go as far as people casting cardinal votes on actual policy issues, for example a system where voters rank the positions of canidates to the most important issues between 0 and 10 and then cast a second cardinal vote for the canidates between 0 and 10, at least this would make elections less of a reality tv drama and more issue and policy based.
I just realised that AIs would vote for someone that treats them well and sees them as equal. This means that the candidates that are friendly to the AIs could just make more AIs and program them to vote for themselves. So yeah, pretty corruptible
Unless, the A.i. Can see through liars, and dealt with horribly maybe ?
That depends entirely on how it's programmed. Not all AI are programmed to preserve themselves. For example, a su1cide bomber AI.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Who controls the present controls the future! ;)
So...who controls the present? The rich?
Time cop
@@ntwalipat2 “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
@@rajivbhar7299 “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”
― Jim Morrison
Rich perhaps.
I'd hardly refer to America as a meritocracy
One major issue with the outward migration as a solution for incumbents is the issues of economics and debt. Something we saw during the colonial expansion is that colonies were generally paid for by people who stayed home and held majority share/control over various colonies up until revolution broke them away. So for that to help, we would also need a very differnt economic system than the one we have been using for a long time.
Don't tax the colonies if you dont tax the colonies then the local governments wont be dependent on them
I've been looking forward to this one. Nice to catch it so early.
Bruh. After watching a few of your videos I'm convinced that you should be the only person that writes hard sci-fi. You've basically predicted every possible future for humans and/or earthlings, except the Mario Bros. universe. One thing I'm wondering is if you have, or will break down how to successfully overthrow various types future governments or societies.
LOL. I'm from North Carolina and there are still active lawsuits from the way the districts were drawn after the 2010 Census and I fully expect there to be more lawsuits after the 2020 Census that will be active when the 2030 Census has been completed.
I would argue that when it comes to voting in a democracy, the best approach is KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid. The more 'bells and whistles' you hang on the process, the easier it is for things to go terribly wrong.
“The US is a democracy ruled by the majority”. Are you kidding?
I mean, in theory anyway. in practice not so mutch
de jure, de facto it is an oligarchy/plutocracy
US is a republic with Democratic institutions.
The USA is a consitutional republic. Hence the reason why California's democratically voted law defining marriage between a man and a woman was found to be unconstitutional.
Very positive episode, but I was looking forward to hearing about the despotism of the future ala Orwell's vision of the future. I think the quote is: "imagine a boot stamping a human face, forever. "
Edit: Or all of Warhammer 40k.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever.”
― George Orwell
A six point blue star imprinted boot.
@@dansmith1661 Or 26 smaller stars.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a cock slapping against a human face-forever.”
-- Aldous Huxley, probably.
@@Phelan666 good one.
weird how UA-cam dismisses complaints about anti-Semitism, but it deletes every anti-fascist word I say. Like Nazis are a protected group, and not a vanquished enemy of our country and the entire free world. UA-cam actively protects the reputation of Nazis with its left hand, while it spoon-feeds white nationalist content to future terrorists with its right. That's the short version of why these space stations are never going to be built. You can't build a space station with a boot on your face.
What kind of -cracy is it if the government itself is fluid and dynamic?
Say, the number seats a party has varies in real time, continuously. People can adjust their choice anytime they want, because votes are electronic anyway.
Or in a galactic empire without FTL communication, whichever party rules depends on the tally of votes in that light-speed-limited bubble.
Oooooohhhh, I didnt actually think this would be a subject you'd tackle, given previous stream comments. Super excited.
Thank you Isaac! I always apreeciate your videos. After the end of this one I felt like it needed to also talk about the interrelationships that will need to exist between the different types of empires, kingdoms and democracies.
Treaties and rules and who says what these rules and treaties are and when they change and what are the possible outcomes of having different empires coexisting at the same time. All the best!
Is Isaac from the future?!
14:30 Here's a thought I had some time ago. Could a hivemind, form a... hypermind, with one or more other hiveminds? What about a society where the local issues are handled by a local hivemind, regional issues handled by a higher-hivemind made up of the lesser hiveminds and so on and so forth until you have a global super-hivemind? A... Matrioskarchy if you will.
Sounds depressingly like reality in the age of the internet...
I.A. has in other videos mentioned some possibilities of vast galaxy spanning communications that would work well enough if they were VERY SLOW, a few bits per year, I don't know... a few bits per century? I'd have to watch it again. This supports what you're talking about here I think! The highest-level mind on the Galactic Scale might take millenia to even start to have a thought, more local issues could think faster, move faster, but of course lose some perspective and intelligence. I mean, maybe this is happening NOW! Very local operations could be in "real time" so to speak.
Galactic scale communications could be handled by things like Pulsars, being slightly frequency-modulated, say. If there were signals passing by us that had a data rate of one bit per year, would we notice? Even if they were very LOUD? I just made that up! I might not be the first TO have made that up, by any means. SO, giant transmitters saturate the Galaxy with high-powered but low data rate transmissions that are buffered locally, and your local hive mind gets a message every thousand years or so. Anything you want to tell the higher-level mind just goes the other way. To the local buffer, and then it gets clocked out somehow at the same one bit per year kind of thing. So, I think what you're talking about is how it HAS to go, basically.
You've basically just described Governance in the fanfic _To the Stars._
I had a dream of a governemt it spanned everything and nothing Dimensions universes but the bureaucracy was so big so long and complicated it was impossible for most parts of the governemt to know who was head of the entire empire currently who was in it what someone knew there no one else knew the picture of all the ministries and Administrations was so big it had no end
Isaac you gotta read The Entropy Law and the Economic Process by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. He gives a stinging rebuttal of Boltzmann and also classical and Marxian economics. It is an incredible piece of systems analysis that will round out your view of thermodynamics and the entropy law. I love it
Awesome job of covering a complex and contentious topic in a thorough and fair manner. To paraphrase Mencken, I look forward to a future where everyone gets the government of their choosing . . . and they get it good and hard.
Mencken seems to have put out more good satirical quotes than Churchill or George Carlin :)
I love your videos...
I just need to know when Zaphod Beeblebrox is stopping by for his campaign speach.
He kidnapped himself
Which head is running?
He's just this guy, you know.
Simple and effective communication. Well done.
Aren't *all* states 'meritocracies' on such a wide definition? They all tend to be ruled by the people most fit (in a Darwinian sense) to reach the top positions in whatever their social/political context.
Selection within a Darwinocracy may be a little more brutal than a simple meritocracy.
@Big Crunch In what sense is that not true of the US? What does 'merit' even mean here? If we're talking about IQ, that would presumably be 'phronocracy' or similar.
If you just mean that intelligence is correlated with your chance of reaching the top, that seems like it would be true in almost any society except the most extreme autocracies.
(and hegemonic just refers to the existence of rulers, not the process by which they came to rule)
In the distant future a new and revolutionary government type arises shaking the very foundations of the universe and it is called....competent.
- A partial "fix" is to enable proportional-share voting. A candidate with more than some minimum, say 1%, of the vote would be "seated" in the virtual legislature. On non-budgetary issues, seated representatives would vote shares proportional to their percentage of the vote times the voting district's population.
Meritocracy will be like " jury duty, " you don't campaign to run to be a politicians.
You just get selected each month to review and vote on a given issue in your field of study.
A few years ago a USA presidential candidate was ask an economic question and he stammer into a flop response. The news reporter then ask the candidate the name of his economic adviser.
Political candidate, " Why ?"
Reporter, " Cause they seem to know more about economics then you do. So why on G*D's green Earth is he not running instead of you ?"
Old joke, " The boss does not earn the business money, he just carries the insurance liability. It is the employees that earn the profit. "
Yes I know there is more too it then that, but I have seen more then a few small business build up where the founding owners just pass the labor of book keep off onto others.
Then you have those fresh from collage into an office job, play the credit card game with bank loans to build up their credit rating to start businesses only to hire others to run those side businesses for them. Too many go into politics have no real business know how, it is all handle by their advisers. Politicians are just tv camera sales people.
New subscriber, and I am really enjoying your content and subjects, nice to hear from a fellow Ohioan as well!
17:43 Fun Fact: the judges in Judge Dredd are medieval knights by another name.
Actually based on Judges from Biblical times
I thought they were more akin to Roman Praetors
Nomadic, post scarcity, fleet based societies? Ok, you have my full attention now.
Post scarcity is likely, to "never" be achieved. There will always be something we can do better, or something we need.
God forbid true post-scarcity comes about; the inhabitants of such a society are likely to be very pretenious, self centred & not great to be around, not to mention the total disregard for things as "i can just get a new one".
@Slightly Intriguing If you want advancement in the material world, you need materialistic people and incentives (just the way it is, human nature be like that).
Such a system would only be possible in a small scale. I mean, for basic needs, in developed countries we are post scarcity already (food, water, sanitation, entertainment, power and such).
I would be interested in a form of direct democracy (afforded by technology) where who can vote is determined by who would be most relevantly affected by the decision.
This could basically be exemplified by local governance, where people vote on say the zoning of their city, but people in the same state in a different city wouldnt be able to participate.
Perhaps with added technology this could be further honed. A random example could be say doctors making decisions/ having more say over drug policy, or architects deciding building codes. Perhaps like a kind of guild-ship? Of course things that affected everyone could be voted on by everyone, but I think that centering those with practical experience and expertise is very appealing, if achievable.
I can see arguments over who says they are affected or not. I am a fan of the principle.
Perhaps read into anarchist literature regarding the topic. Despite the popular conception, anarchists tend to take direct democracy pretty seriously, so a lot of thought has gone into designing mostly directly democratic systems to run individual communities, with delegate democracy to run larger confederations. Variants of this have been implemented a couple of times on varying scales, with the Zapatista municipalities probably being the most notable example in the modern day.
Ultimately, everything affects everyone. The real questions are those of immediacy and degree.
Matt Ahlschwede Agreed. I felt that as I was writing this. Perhaps some kind of proportional system, where people decide the things that matter most and vote for them with some amount of weight behind it? Idk theres a lot of ways it could go tbh
Under_score_ thanks! I’m an ancom so I know a bit about it already but I feel like anarchism is the theory that keeps on giving tbh 💗 so much to learn 😄
33 minute video went by in 5.... always look forward to these!
Since the primary deliverable of a legislature is a budget, legislators would allocate shares of revenue (prior year, not estimated) to various budget proposals. The shares would be proportional to the revenue-base or service-base that each legislator represents. Basically, that is the percent of vote they gathered times the revenue produced by (or allocated to) the voting district.
I miss your old intro music. It was super epic!
@isaacarthur please do one about education and education systems in the future! Including professional/vocational orientation . That would be incredible :))
I've thought that rather than machines rising up and putting us into submission,
perhaps we would willingly submit ourselves to machine overlords.
Not sure if that would be a good thing.
There are arguments for and against.
The whole point of The Singularity is that we can't know what comes beyond it, maybe having super intelligenant AI run the world would be the best thing that ever happened to us as a species, maybe not. Since we don't know what it's like to be smarter than humans, we can't really know.
@@jesseberg3271 gpt 3 says the singularity will happen by the 2040s or sooner and that AI will inevitably be used nefariously. It's neat that we can just ask now.
Praise the Omnissiah...
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner- Ben Franklin
The future will be ruled by Mega Corps and Technocrats.
Nope
Luckily That seems unlikely. In the end as long as states hold a Monopoly on force they can break corporations.
@@JohnSmith-gz4fs It's already happening just look at Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook etc. Governments won't do anything because the politicians are bought out and paid for, Technocrats will replace politicians and A.I will watch over humanity like big brother.
The police and military will merge and machine will replace the foot soldiers, drones on patrol 24/7 and everyone kept in line with social credit scores. 👍
@@paladinsmith7050 No, these corporation have limited power. If the US wanted too it could round them up and shoot them all.
@@JohnSmith-gz4fs Limited power are you serious? The tech giants recently censored the president of the united states and can do it to anyone they want online, have you not been paying attention? Mastercard, paypal, chase bank have also been closing bank accounts because of peoples political views.
They're all in bed with each other, wakey wakey.
what's with NC-4, at 8:27? Looks very sus.
I actually really like the idea of multiple votes per person based on the idea of community service or charity work