4 ms·

I mostly agree with your observations but would like to see more experimentation. Specifically, existing countries have to work with/for the people they've got.

I mostly agree with your observations but would like to see more experimentation. Specifically, existing countries have to work with/for the people they've got. Over time it may be that the citizens are no longer really "like minded" to a minimum level where they can cooperate effectively. We should be able to try experiments with "re-booting" populations without secession, civil war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. I would be interested in re-seeding a secular society that although it doesn't ban religion also doesn't privilege religion. I.e. believe and do what you want but any time your religious beliefs run into conflict with secular values, secular values win. The problem is that religious beliefs are (at least pragmatically) protected because they are so deeply and dearly held. It seems unfair and ultimately futile to just ask true believers to turn it off in school / on the job / in the voting booth. From what I understand of US law, non-profits are not able to discriminate based on religion, but religious organizations are. So e.g. you can't say "You can't join the Secular Space Nation Project because you're religiously devout or your particular religious beliefs will make you hard to integrate," but you can say "You can't join the Church of the New Space Country" because you don't practice the "New Space Country" religion.

Leherenn 6y ago
> We should be able to try experiments with "re-booting" populations without secession, civil war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. How would that work? You need to have some kind of coherent territory for a state to work I would say. If you do a reboot and someone is not happy with the new values but does not want to move, what do you do?
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  Exactly. I guess "re-boot" was the wrong choice of word. I meant to create a new country on new territory, but with sufficiently like-minded people. EDIT> I mentioned anti-discrimination rules because even if you wanted to create a new polity, you can't actually legally deny membership even to people who would be hostile to that polity. Unless you start a religion ... weird.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    US states do that to some extent. Alabama is a whole different ballgame than California, and people do (to some extent) tend to self-segregate into states that match their preferred lifestyle and political environment.
danjac 6y ago
So you have an ideal of how you want society to be. Being serious, how are you going to get the land you need? It's not like any country is just going to give you a spare island or two, especially if the island has enough viable resources to be worth occupying. You're going to have to take it from people who already live there, or persuade them that it's worth staying in your ideal society. Ask the Maoris or Palestians how that worked out. You might buy some land, but I'm guessing you're not Bezos, and you're not Musk either, so colonizing Mars is a no-go. Or...it looks like you want to change US law on the protection of religion. That's a specific change, that actually has a lot of support. The younger generation tends to be less religious than their parents, so there might be a long term trend behind you. Perhaps it might be worth getting on board with whatever groups are lobbying for that change. That's something actionable, rather than dreaming about starting a whole new country.
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  This is sound and realistic advice. Certain kinds of change are possible within the system, but perhaps some useful changes are not? Is there a middle ground that would allow for experimentation without the hazards of revolution?
  - danjac 6y ago
    As I'm guessing you are American: The US constitution itself is very resistant to change. It's doable, but very difficult in an era of deep polarization and partisanship. For example, many think the electoral college is undemocratic and outdated, but there is a vested interest by both parties in keeping it in place. That said, the "middle ground" is probably the states. For example, Oregon I believe just decriminalized all forms of recreational drug use. Who knows how that will turn out, but it's a social experiment that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Another example - think of the communes in the 1960s or the Israeli kibbutzim or other experimental communities throughout history. Maybe try out your ideas on a small scale with a small group of people and see what works.
    - JabavuAdams 6y ago
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Say I'm Catholic, and I oppose abortion because that's church doctrine. OK, that's religious. But say I'm an atheist, and I think that a fetus is genetically human and also genetically a different individual from the mother, and I think that that implies that it has human rights and can't just be killed for someone else's convenience. That's the same position, but now it's not religious. That is, I think that every conviction that a person can have for religious reasons (at least, every one that affects politics or society), people can have the same convictions for non-religious reasons. I see no valid reason for saying that the non-religious ones are "less valid" than secular ones, or that secular ones should win by default. Now let's say that here's a Catholic university. I'm an atheist, and I want to be the president of that university. They're going to say "no way", and I don't get to claim discrimination, because they're religious. But let's say there's a Haskell Foundation, and I want to be president of that, even though I'm a hard-core C++ bigot. They are also going to say "no way", but they're going to say "incompatible with our goals as a foundation" or something. But it seems to me to still be quite similar. People who don't believe in the identity of your organization are a bad fit for positions of authority in your organization.
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  The problem is that for the vast majority of people religious beliefs are instilled while they are children, within a cultural context, and are empirically harder to change than things like programming language preference. For many, they're not even open to discussion. That's in fact why there are religious protections. It's simply unrealistic to expect people to give up their upbringing just to get a certain job. You identify the problem in your paragraph re: Haskell. Suppose I want to set up some organization working to start a new polity. Let's say that as a baseline, I want to recruit people who think it is wrong to resort to violence over say cartoons that are offensive to their religious beliefs. Or maybe I want to recruit people who have no desire to bar people of different sexual orientations from fully participating in love and social life. I can't do that in the current legal system because religious beliefs are a protected class. I understand why we got here, historically, but now that we're not burning people at the stake, I don't see why their religious beliefs should supersede the larger societal norms (of a new society). It's a matter of how strongly those beliefs are held and the futility of trying to convince people to abandon such deeply-held and meaningful beliefs. Better to tilt the scales by not inviting them to the party, regardless of which way things evolve later. EDIT> For any given religion I recognize that there are many possible doctrinal and individual interpretations. But how to measure the individual's preferences as a filter on admission? It's easy to fake answers to a questionnaire. How to establish an org without inviting the griefers, and without running afoul of protected classes? I mean you could do it the old-fashioned nudge-nudge-wink-wink way, but that's a huge legal vulnerability.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
Maybe agent-based modeling could be used to gain some interesting insights in the way you're describing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model "ABMs do not assume the economy can achieve equilibrium and "representative agents" are replaced by agents with diverse, dynamic, and interdependent behavior including herding. ABMs take a "bottom-up" approach and can generate extremely complex and volatile simulated economies. ABMs can represent unstable systems with crashes and booms that develop out of non-linear (disproportionate) responses to proportionally small changes." We do see that to some extent in the United States, since the states do have a fair amount of leeway in making a lot of laws. Granted, nothing like what you're talking about. I can buy an AK-47 with the capacity to accept detachable magazines in Phoenix, but not in Los Angeles. In Oregon, a minor can get an abortion without a parent present. In Texas, it can't happen without a parent present. In California I can walk into a store and buy an ounce of Nothern Lights cannabis, but in Alabama, everyone working in the dispensary would be put in prison on felony charges. In Nevada I can legally visit a prostitute. In Arizona I cannot. In California I can ride a motorcycle in-between lanes of traffic. In New York I cannot.

Leherenn 6y ago

> We should be able to try experiments with "re-booting" populations without secession, civil war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. How would that work? You need to have some kind of coherent territory for a state to work I would say. If you do a reboot and someone is not happy with the new values but does not want to move, what do you do?

JabavuAdams 6y ago
Exactly. I guess "re-boot" was the wrong choice of word. I meant to create a new country on new territory, but with sufficiently like-minded people. EDIT> I mentioned anti-discrimination rules because even if you wanted to create a new polity, you can't actually legally deny membership even to people who would be hostile to that polity. Unless you start a religion ... weird.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  US states do that to some extent. Alabama is a whole different ballgame than California, and people do (to some extent) tend to self-segregate into states that match their preferred lifestyle and political environment.

danjac 6y ago

So you have an ideal of how you want society to be. Being serious, how are you going to get the land you need? It's not like any country is just going to give you a spare island or two, especially if the island has enough viable resources to be worth occupying. You're going to have to take it from people who already live there, or persuade them that it's worth staying in your ideal society. Ask the Maoris or Palestians how that worked out. You might buy some land, but I'm guessing you're not Bezos, and you're not Musk either, so colonizing Mars is a no-go. Or...it looks like you want to change US law on the protection of religion. That's a specific change, that actually has a lot of support. The younger generation tends to be less religious than their parents, so there might be a long term trend behind you. Perhaps it might be worth getting on board with whatever groups are lobbying for that change. That's something actionable, rather than dreaming about starting a whole new country.

JabavuAdams 6y ago
This is sound and realistic advice. Certain kinds of change are possible within the system, but perhaps some useful changes are not? Is there a middle ground that would allow for experimentation without the hazards of revolution?
- danjac 6y ago
  As I'm guessing you are American: The US constitution itself is very resistant to change. It's doable, but very difficult in an era of deep polarization and partisanship. For example, many think the electoral college is undemocratic and outdated, but there is a vested interest by both parties in keeping it in place. That said, the "middle ground" is probably the states. For example, Oregon I believe just decriminalized all forms of recreational drug use. Who knows how that will turn out, but it's a social experiment that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Another example - think of the communes in the 1960s or the Israeli kibbutzim or other experimental communities throughout history. Maybe try out your ideas on a small scale with a small group of people and see what works.
  - JabavuAdams 6y ago

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Say I'm Catholic, and I oppose abortion because that's church doctrine. OK, that's religious. But say I'm an atheist, and I think that a fetus is genetically human and also genetically a different individual from the mother, and I think that that implies that it has human rights and can't just be killed for someone else's convenience. That's the same position, but now it's not religious. That is, I think that every conviction that a person can have for religious reasons (at least, every one that affects politics or society), people can have the same convictions for non-religious reasons. I see no valid reason for saying that the non-religious ones are "less valid" than secular ones, or that secular ones should win by default. Now let's say that here's a Catholic university. I'm an atheist, and I want to be the president of that university. They're going to say "no way", and I don't get to claim discrimination, because they're religious. But let's say there's a Haskell Foundation, and I want to be president of that, even though I'm a hard-core C++ bigot. They are also going to say "no way", but they're going to say "incompatible with our goals as a foundation" or something. But it seems to me to still be quite similar. People who don't believe in the identity of your organization are a bad fit for positions of authority in your organization.

JabavuAdams 6y ago
The problem is that for the vast majority of people religious beliefs are instilled while they are children, within a cultural context, and are empirically harder to change than things like programming language preference. For many, they're not even open to discussion. That's in fact why there are religious protections. It's simply unrealistic to expect people to give up their upbringing just to get a certain job. You identify the problem in your paragraph re: Haskell. Suppose I want to set up some organization working to start a new polity. Let's say that as a baseline, I want to recruit people who think it is wrong to resort to violence over say cartoons that are offensive to their religious beliefs. Or maybe I want to recruit people who have no desire to bar people of different sexual orientations from fully participating in love and social life. I can't do that in the current legal system because religious beliefs are a protected class. I understand why we got here, historically, but now that we're not burning people at the stake, I don't see why their religious beliefs should supersede the larger societal norms (of a new society). It's a matter of how strongly those beliefs are held and the futility of trying to convince people to abandon such deeply-held and meaningful beliefs. Better to tilt the scales by not inviting them to the party, regardless of which way things evolve later. EDIT> For any given religion I recognize that there are many possible doctrinal and individual interpretations. But how to measure the individual's preferences as a filter on admission? It's easy to fake answers to a questionnaire. How to establish an org without inviting the griefers, and without running afoul of protected classes? I mean you could do it the old-fashioned nudge-nudge-wink-wink way, but that's a huge legal vulnerability.

phobosanomaly 6y ago

Maybe agent-based modeling could be used to gain some interesting insights in the way you're describing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model "ABMs do not assume the economy can achieve equilibrium and "representative agents" are replaced by agents with diverse, dynamic, and interdependent behavior including herding. ABMs take a "bottom-up" approach and can generate extremely complex and volatile simulated economies. ABMs can represent unstable systems with crashes and booms that develop out of non-linear (disproportionate) responses to proportionally small changes." We do see that to some extent in the United States, since the states do have a fair amount of leeway in making a lot of laws. Granted, nothing like what you're talking about. I can buy an AK-47 with the capacity to accept detachable magazines in Phoenix, but not in Los Angeles. In Oregon, a minor can get an abortion without a parent present. In Texas, it can't happen without a parent present. In California I can walk into a store and buy an ounce of Nothern Lights cannabis, but in Alabama, everyone working in the dispensary would be put in prison on felony charges. In Nevada I can legally visit a prostitute. In Arizona I cannot. In California I can ride a motorcycle in-between lanes of traffic. In New York I cannot.