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Women's preferences aren't artificial constraints (I would stress that they are a fundamental regulating factor in human society), but in a UBI world they would

by beeflet 9mo ago

Women's preferences aren't artificial constraints (I would stress that they are a fundamental regulating factor in human society), but in a UBI world they would be made artificial. In a world with cloning and surrogacy, they will become irrelevant constraints. If there are unlimited resources, there is no need to select for a suitable mate, so this skill will be unlearned. Humans don't reproduce like e. coli, but in a UBI world that is the kind of human you are artificially selecting for. Ordinarily, bacteria aren't antibiotic-resistant, but exposure to antibiotics generation-over-generation changes them. Show me the incentives, and I will show you the man they create. Like it or not, Humans are animals. We have the same primal motivations as other animals, just a more complex expression of those motivations. I think you focus on the details of that expression to lose the big picture, which is incongruent for your personal desires of being free from material constraints. Life, like art, is defined by constraints. The meaning of our lives is to heroically struggle against them until we fail. To remove the constraints is to denature mankind. The process of evolution is nessisarially actuated through suffering. We naturally struggle against constraints like hunger, disease, and so on in an individual scale because this is what gives us meaning. But it would be a mistake to overcome these on a systematic scale, as it would rid of us of meaning. The future you propose is mankind wireheading itself.

foltik 9mo ago
Humans don’t have a single utility function like bacteria adapting to antibiotics do. When one constraint is relaxed, a fractal of others emerges. Behavior dominates any evolutionary effect. That’s exactly what we observe in rich societies. You never articulate why reproduction would become the dominant axis of selection, except by assuming it from the start. People empirically do not behave that way when material constraints are relaxed. > the process of evolution is necessarily actuated through suffering That’s a quasi-religious claim. At that point you’re no longer arguing “this will happen,” but rather “this must not happen,” because abundance threatens a worldview where hierarchy and enforced struggle are what give life meaning. That’s not “the big picture,” it’s your big picture. Look at the last thousand years. We’ve removed famine, plague, illiteracy, and constant violence, once considered inevitable and essential to discipline and social order. Society didn’t collapse into meaningless each time those went away; we simply gained more freedom to choose for ourselves what gives life meaning.

by beeflet 9mo ago

foltik 9mo ago

Humans don’t have a single utility function like bacteria adapting to antibiotics do. When one constraint is relaxed, a fractal of others emerges. Behavior dominates any evolutionary effect. That’s exactly what we observe in rich societies. You never articulate why reproduction would become the dominant axis of selection, except by assuming it from the start. People empirically do not behave that way when material constraints are relaxed. > the process of evolution is necessarily actuated through suffering That’s a quasi-religious claim. At that point you’re no longer arguing “this will happen,” but rather “this must not happen,” because abundance threatens a worldview where hierarchy and enforced struggle are what give life meaning. That’s not “the big picture,” it’s your big picture. Look at the last thousand years. We’ve removed famine, plague, illiteracy, and constant violence, once considered inevitable and essential to discipline and social order. Society didn’t collapse into meaningless each time those went away; we simply gained more freedom to choose for ourselves what gives life meaning.