Vladimir_Nesov comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (482)
Is that the case?
The majority dreams about a "just society", the minority dreams about a better one through technological advances. No matter there was 20th century when "socialism" brought us nothing and the technology brought us everything.
Echoing a utopian meme is analogous to stamping an instance of an invention, not to inventing something anew. It is inventors of utopian dreams that I doubt to be more numerous than inventors of technology.
And let's not forget how many millions of patents there are; I don't think there are that many millions of utopias, even if we let them differ as little as patents can differ.
You may be right here. Utopias are usually also quite uninnovative. "All people will be brothers and sisters with enough to eat and Bible (or something else stupid) reading in a community house every night".
Variations are not that great.
Can you invent a utopia? A utopia is an incoherent concept about a society that contains too many internal contradictions or impracticalities to ever exist. Thus, it cannot be invented any more than a perpetual motion machine can be.
If you do consider utopias inventable, what's the difference between "inventing a new utopia" and "having a new preference"? You want X; you dream of a world where you get X, inventing Utopia X.