Of course it's falsifiable.

Demonstrate, please.

The entire premise of MIRI and CFAR is that this assertion is going to be falsified unless we take action.

The entire premise of Xyrik's scenario is that everything will be hunky-dory. Xyrik is just making a wish, and not thinking about how anything will actually work. He might as well call it elven magic as an AGI or "everyone decides to do the right thing". There are no moving parts in his conception. It is like trying to solve a problem by suggesting that one should solve the problem.

I tried to ask him about mechanism here, but the only response so far has been a downvote.

you assume that the only reason - or, even, the most important reason - that people work is to make money.

No, I do not. You're wrong.

I assume that the work that people do for money is important for the society and that a lot of it wouldn't get done if people worked just for pleasure. Basically, without money you'd get too many DJs and too few plumbers. Money fixes that balance problem.

Believe it or not, many people farm or tend gardens or animals simply because they enjoy doing so.

Of course, so what? Small-scale agriculture is remarkably inefficient. Specifically, it cannot feed the current population.

that humans will always choose meditation or video games or somesuch over 'mucking in the dirt' if given the choice.

Not always. But too few people will choose mucking in the dirt and without money I'm not sure how are you going to persuade a sufficient number of people to go and do what they don't like.

Experience shows that systems like these do not run into problems of food shortages (in fact quite the contrary).

Do tell me about that experience. I'm curious.

There's nothing in the scenario described by Xyrik, or the scenario described by Tem42, that says the people involved are doing only "meaningful conscious-expanding profound activities" and neglecting the necessities of life.

The whole point of the communist paradise is freedom from need. That, as you correctly point out, leads to an incentives problem and a coordination problem. The lack of incentives (which, I think, exists in Xyrik's scenario as the alternatives are... much less palatable) leads to people over-doing pleasant things (meaningful, profound, conscious-expanding -- or simply hedonic) and under-doing unpleasant things (e.g. mucking in the dirt). At the current level of technology a society without appropriate incentives will soon start to starve.

It works for small communities which mooch off larger societies (hippy communes, Burning Man, etc.), but convert the entire world to this system and I would recommend getting a lot of ammo and beans ASAP.

The whole point of the communist paradise is freedom from need.

Perhaps. (I'm not convinced; I can imagine someone saying "In a communist system we will all be slightly poorer because central planning doesn't work as well as markets, but it would be worth it because of the reduction in inequality" or "... because we would all have the lovely warm glow of knowing we were working together" or something. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not agreeing with those claims.)

The lack of incentives (which, I think, exists in Xyrik's scenario [...])

My interpretation of Xyrik's question was more like "Imagine that by some unspecified magic we have solved that problem, so that everyone willingly pitches in to do their bit. What are the drawbacks then?"

I agree that what we're then being asked to postulate is really improbable, and can't think of any plausible non-horrible ways to make it so, but I think the question is a reasonable one to ask anyway. (E.g., perhaps Xyrik is writing some science fiction about a hypothetical race genetically engineered to be much more willing to cooperate with one another than humans typically are, and wants to know what might happen if they tried communism.)

And I agree that if Xyrik were proposing to try this on a large scale in the real world the appropriate response would be somewhere between laughter and terror, depending on our estimation of how far s/he could actually get in making it happen. But that's not the question at issue.

Would someone be able to enlighten me on what the cons of a hypothetical situation in which everyone on the planet decides to temporarily get rid of the concept of money or currency, and pool our collective resources and ideas without worrying about who owes who? I mean on paper it sounds great, and obviously this is extremely hypothetical as it's virtually impossible to get all human life on Earth to actually do that, but are there hidden cons here that I'm not really seeing?

I've not really gone into too much thought on this, it was mostly a fleeting thought, and I was curious what others thought.

When you say you've used it to create an ebook form of Rationality: From AI To Zombies, do you mean the one that is currently for sale, or some other version?

I actually did not see that the latest meeting was today or I would have tried to come, although actually I was at work. Do these often happen during the weekdays, or are they also on weekends?

The meetups at Caffe Medici are every Saturday at 1:30 pm. We have a group meal on Wednesday evenings, with details announced (and food orders coordinated) on the list.

Is there some sort of email notification or something that notifies of Austin meetings?

The list has day-of announcements of the Wednesday group dinners, and discussions of any of the irregular things that we do. For example, we might go see The Martian together tomorrow. When there's an established plan for the meetup, I've started announcing those by email but that's inconsistent.

Just out of curiosity, do many people show up to these?

This depends pretty heavily on the season, because we have a lot of grad students who get research postings elsewhere over the summer. Typical attendance over the summer has been in the 2-4 range, and typical attendance during the school year is in the 4-8 range. I know I'll be around on the 8th, and there are ~3 others that I suspect might attend.

I'm curious about coming.

We'd love to have you come!

Also, Eliezer himself does not live here, does he?

Nope; he lives in Berkeley.

Just out of curiosity, do many people show up to these? I'm curious about coming. Also, Eliezer himself does not live here, does he?