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Rathmaster says | |||
| Suppose you were going to create a utopian civilization, a land free of war and, hopefully, plauge, on an island, how would you go about it? what religion would you use, or would you make a new one? what social structure, resources, and geography would you want to have? would it be ruled democratically, tribally, autocratically, would there be separation of the church and the state or would the religion rule the land? think about it carefully- the objective is to create in your mind a peaceful paradise for a population and tailor it to make everyone happy. | ||||
| Total Topic Karma: 15 | - More by this Author | |||
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Jim Jones says |
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| Religion? I would most likely live among my people. Social structure? Totalitarion Dictatorship where I ruled the people and acted in the name of the people. Geography? A continent where there was an abundance of plant life, carbons, oils, fertile soil, water, etc. Seperation of church and state? No they would be equal. Wait I just played that as God. is that what you were looking for? Or were you looking for me to play this like a politician. |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| either or both. however, keep in mind a few things. firstly, it should be totally self sustaining. secondly, you should look from the civilian's perspective and think about it for a minute. most utopias in literature have survived more than ten minutes ONLY because of total brain washing of the inhabitants. can you think of any way around that problem? |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| I would upload everyone, keep their bodies in suspended animation, let them exist in a private virtual reality created out of their own hopes fears and desires, aware of their position, able to communicate with each other. Allowed to awake and wander the island, unable to interfere with any of the automated systems while awake, to avoid sabotage. the whole system would be powered by a combination of solar, tidal and thermal energy. I would offer the option of a precreated virtual reality or a kind of "open source reality". Preblems i can forsee with this system: The inevitable griefers and pk'rs The degrading of components. and a multitude of other minor catastrophies arising from greed and entropy. |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| as an answer to your secondary question, in my proposal, each civilian is given their own private universe, complete with inhabitants to control, giving them the illusion of power that they so desire, allowing their greed to be somewhate satiated, therby sidestepping civil unrest. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| brilliant. I was going to post something, but I don't want to follow that at all. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Jim Jones says |
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| Oh and in my utopia everyone's naked 24/7. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
| SomeoneWhoIsntMe says |
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| Everyone has the right to property, life, and liberty. The government exists only to uphold these rights. Freedom FTW |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| the problem with uploading people can be shown easily in The Matrix. people will on occasion wish to leave. and when they do, you dont solve the problem of keeping people contained and happy. really, the objective of a utopia is a perfect self sustaining civilisation, and if you merely have a virtual reality controlled by the individual- thatll be called The Sims 3 or maybe 4. Keeping people playing video games does some, but doesnt keep people united and seperate. and yes, nudist colony all t3h way. as to the last comment, the only way for that to work well is for each person to be completely in charge of their own lives, which leads to chaos, because no judicial system can work in that situation. when no judicial system is in place, the people are free to do as they see fit, which causes problems. thats why this country HAS a judicial system |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Constantine says |
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| Rathmaster it is easy to satiate people who want to awaken, make another universe and "wake" them into it. You could make recursive realities if you wanted, they could wake up as many times as you wanted and they would never know. Too bad if you did this enough it would drive a person insane trying to determine what was real or not, and you would get a groundhog day situation. |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, the problem with creating a 'pocket universe' for each person is that A: your going to use up a huge amount of processor space and B: If you create an AI smart enought to give realistic answers worthy of a human, it's probably going to get sentient really fast and then demand equal rights. Also, in order to avoid the 'tech utopia's' which rely on theoretical technology, let's keep it to ideas that could be built by any modern billionare. Here's how I would set mine up: The island is equipped with solar powered machines placed every fifty feet which dispense the basic neccesities of life (food, water, clothing, etc.. Machine tools are also available which allows you to produce other things (like electronic devices, etc.) Currency is bartering something you've made for something else. In the event of a dispute, people would take their greivance to a jury of randomly selected citizens, who would look at the alleged crime, and choose punishment. This seems to me to be the best way to run a Utopia that could be built using only modern technology. |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Jim Jones says |
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| We could just give everyone a nudie mag and be done with it. | ||||||
| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| unfortunatly, Jim, not absolutely everyone is so obsessed with porn that they will sacrifice their freedoms and minds for it, just about 50% of males, and a considerably smaller percentage of girls. but anyone'll buy the stuff. |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| buy porn???? who does that anymore? |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
| SomeoneWhoIsntMe says |
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| Now that I think about it, direct democracy would be possible with today's technologies. Combine that with a completly free market and the social freedoms that I mentioned earlier, and you have the perfect society. | ||||||
| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| people buy subscriptions for porn, but yeah you have a point. | ||||||
| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| oh, a modern day utopis.. on my island.. i would have... no people. not even me. utopia. |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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DKlined says |
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| Well there would never be such a utopian civilization because people are unpredictable. The type of government I chose depended on the people and how many there were. If it's a small group of people then I would create a true democracy, where the people can vote, no representatives. If there was a large group of people I would create a republic democracy, but the representatives would have a term limit. The government would just be there to protect the citizens from outside threats. As for religion, I wouldn't care what the people practiced. I wouldn't make a national religion. I would chose an island with a lot of forest and great bay for ships to dock. Oh yea, can't forget about an island that can sustain animals. | ||||||
| - 02 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| i would go medieval technology-wise because when you are using ancient technology, fewer people get hurt. no atomic power even because IF something DID go wrong, there goes your utopia. bam. but i wouldnt elminate modern principles or understanding of stuff, especially medicine and physics, but i would probably create a religion to go with it to keep people isolated. no contact with the outside world as that bring in disruptive ideas, news, diseases, and other things that utopias dont want. think of it as a bubble from the outside world | ||||||
| - 02 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Scorcho says |
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| This is impossible, fact of the matter is that a utopia is impossible, someone will ALWAYS be pissed off, you might be able to keep some of the people happy, maybe even more of the people happy, but paradise is a thing of myth. | ||||||
| - 02 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| yes. the only way to keep people totally satisfied is when a dispute comes up that cant be solved easily, relocate one of the people, then they arent your problem. everyone on your island is still happy. | ||||||
| - 02 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Ah, good idea Rathmaster. Only problem with that is that you need a lot of square footage to avoid them ever seeing each other again. Also, all the people on your island WON'T be happy, unless you relocate all the people he knows with him (otherwise he'll find himself friendless oon an unfamiliar side of the island. |
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| - 02 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| no, you just remove him from the island. if the us doesnt want him, dump him off in the middle of nowhere. another idea, is if a political dispute comes up, divide it into two warring villages. that way, the war is staged, and although war should be avoided, with the OUTSIDE its different. if the only war is almost totally predictable, you can contain the situation. |
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| - 03 February, 2007 | ||||||
| SomeoneWhoIsntMe says |
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| Rathmaster, you'd end up with an island with nobody on it. Deporting people for being unhappy would make more people unhappy. |
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| - 04 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| well you could go into conflict resolution, but wouldn't it be alot easier to give each person a virtual reality where they won the argument? | ||||||
| - 04 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Fibonacci's Wench says |
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| then everyone would be happy right?! hmmmm but how real is it? |
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| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| how real is real? | ||||||
| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Fibonacci's Wench says |
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| hmmm you have a point... real enough is good  |
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| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| virtual reality might work for some people, but for others it wouldnt. for me for instance - i wouldnt tolerate having my LIFE be a VR if i could possibly know of it | ||||||
| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| I personally don't care whether any world I live in is 'real' or not. I could be perfectly happy living in a sufficiently advanced virtual reality. As long as I can't tell the difference, I see no problem with a universe thats made of bits instead of matter (indeed, there are theories that the universe WE live in is indeed made of information). | ||||||
| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| Exactly Ati. And if we were to use nanobota to costruct the Virtual Reality out of matter, then what difference would there actually be? |
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| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, then it wouldn't really be a virtual reality - it would be a 'maleable reality'. Which is something different all together. |
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| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| just because its maleable, is it not still virtual? virtual: "being such in power, force, or effect, though not actually or expressly such" again we come back to how real is real. |
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| - 05 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well no, there is a difference. In a virtual reality, the laws of the universe are up for grabs, where as in maleable reality, you can fudge a little, but you still have to follow the basic laws of physics. All in all, virtual reality is actually superior in some senses. |
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| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| point taken. | ||||||
| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Nadeem says |
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I wouldn't particularly mind if my life was a VR and I did know of it. As long as I can control it in crazy ways, of course. Kinda useless to be in VR and not indulge your every whim harmlessly.  |
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| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| i wouldnt mind. my life is in an online game anyway. as long as i was free to leave the vr, to come back, to do whatever, i wouldnt care. but that completely ruins the point | ||||||
| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| How does it ruin the point? I can easily see us or our descendants living in virtual reality and reality interchangeably. | ||||||
| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| i agree, i see the line between virtual reality and reality blurring to the point of non existence | ||||||
| - 06 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| or perhaps just inconsequence. | ||||||
| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| and the difference is important how? what is there that exists without consequence? what consequence doesn't exist? |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Constantine says |
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| I would say most people exist without consequence, but that is probably me just being cynical. | ||||||
| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, the difference between non-existance and inconsequence, is that in non-existance, it is impossible to tell the difference, and in inconsequence, the difference is simply too small to make much difference. It could go either way depending on how much progress is made on virtual environment. | ||||||
| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| I agree, and thank you for correcting me. So do you think that if we are smart enough to create something we will allways be smart enough to know that we created it? |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| "inconsequence, the difference is simply too small to make much difference" just to nit pick, surely if there is a difference at all then it is still consequential? |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Your nitmpick is accurate. but for the purposes of this discussion, lets define 'inconsequential' as 'noticable, but not significant'. And yes, I think it is entirely plausible for us to create a reality, and be almost entirely unable to distinguish it from the real thing, because the majority of the people using it would not have been involved in creating it, and would be unable to recognize the subtle charactorizations that identify it as what it is. |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
| SomeoneWhoIsntMe says |
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| Morally speaking, is locking people up and putting them into virtual reality ok? Sure it makes them happy, but I doubt that's what they'd want if they knew about it. You could put people in little cells and keep them high on heroin and they'd be happy as hell, but it's sure not ok to do. |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| wow, the libertarian party is advertising on this page. | ||||||
| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, that's not what were discusing, but I'll take a crack at it. Morally, it isn't any more okay to trap people in VR than it is in the heroin example. However, that wasn't what we were discussing - we were talking about a future in which VR is provided as a voluntary alternative or compliment to real life - not some dystopian 'Matrix' style virtual reality nightmare. |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| a couple of people have had that immediate recoil reaction, but i specifically stated in my initial post that people would be free to awake from vr and wander around the island, the only limit in that respect is that they can not interfere with the machinery controlling other peoples VR's | ||||||
| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Yeah, I've noticed the recoil reaction you mentioned. It's kind of a knee-jerk thing imbedded by popular culture. Kind of like how the idea of uploading tends to throw people for a loop. I personally think that VR will be a huge and beneficial part of our future culture. |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| agreed. and at this point we step into the realm of singularity. |
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| - 07 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| a blended VR and real life system would ruin the point of a utopia, because either the utopia is in VR, and when they leave it they're still causing all the problems of today, or the uto- WAIT if they were physically on the island, and virtually wherever they wanted, THAT would work alright. |
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| - 08 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| right. That's what we were talking about. | ||||||
| - 08 February, 2007 | ||||||
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p0ss says |
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| *points up 5 posts* | ||||||
| - 08 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Jim Jones says |
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| Uhh can we get back to porn? | ||||||
| - 14 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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It would be interesting to (as a social experiment) take, say, ten people, none of whom know each other, and give them a high-quality virtual reality simulator, and give them some simple tools to create worlds, single or multiplayer for them to interact with. Lets say it was done with top-of-the-line current technology, with chips imbedded in the sensory nerves to provide force feedback, and a panoramic, high resolution helmet, and camera motion tracking. Also, say, four Xbox 360s per person wired into a cluster to provide graphics. This could be carried off by just about anyone with a degree of technical skill and a good research grant. The experiment part of it would be to monitor them over the course of a year, and see how things turned out, which of them had nervous breakdowns, which were happy, how many of them isolated themselves in single-person fantasies, and how many spent all their time in multi-player worlds. It could give you an idea of how the well utopias such as these would work out. Oh, and @Jim Jones, No. |
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| - 14 February, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| Uhhh, why not make a cluster using real top of the line computers. | ||||||
| - 14 February, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| edit: Because 360s aren't really made for clustering, I wouldn't think that they would cluster well. |
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| - 14 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, I suggested a game console because they are, in fact, designed to produce game graphics, which (for the price) gives them a certain edge over non-specialized systems. Also, standard PCs weren't really meant to cluster either, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. |
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| - 14 February, 2007 | ||||||
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