Scandinavian countries top the indexes on metrics other than taxation, government spending and "labour freedom" while the monarchs (and arguably, the churches) are mainly if not solely symbolic. If labels are ignored I think "socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth" describes these countries very well.
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
-- Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
...Rin: What are clouds? I always thought they were thoughts of the sky or something like that. Because you can't touch them.
[ . . . ]
Hisao: Clouds are water. Evaporated water. You know they say that almost all of the water in the world will at some point of its existence be a part of a cloud. Every drop of tears and blood and sweat that comes out of you, it'll be a cloud. All the water inside your body too, it goes up there some time after you die. It might take a while though.
Rin: Your explanation is better than any of mine.
Hisao: Because it's true.
Rin: Th
Time-accelerated research with forking seems like the only safe (sane) thing one could do with WBEs. The human brain breaks easily if anything too fancy is attempted. Not to mention that unlike UFAIs which tile the universe with paperclips or something equally inane insane neuromorphs might do something even worse instead, a la "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream". The problem of using fiction as evidence is evident but since most fictional UFAIs are basically human minds with a thin covering of what the author thinks AIs work like I think the fai... (read more)