[ExI] General comment about all this quasi-libertarianism discussion

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 07:01:33AM -0800, Ben Zaiboc wrote:
> Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com> suggested:
> 
> > ...
> > 
> > Which is to say:  if you think these
> > libertarian/anarchist proposals are 
> > so great, WHERE IS THE CODE?
> > 
> > I mean that literally.  Where are your system
> > simulations, which show 
> > that society will remain stable when, for example, most
> > government 
> > funded institutions are abolished?  Where are your
> > simulations...?
> 
> Nice idea.

Not really. There's no way to model social
cohesion and human interaction in a meaningful
way.

While do have meaningful evolving agent and
strategies simulations, these are a cartoon
versions, and do not produce quantitative
results.
 
> What would it take to create and run a series 
> of simulation experiments, that we can visit, 
> like Second Life or more likely Sim City, that 
> contains lots of agents representing all kinds 
> of v.1.0 humans, living in a particular society 
> for long enough to get a good idea of the 
> direction the society was going in?  This 
> could be run many times, with different scenarios, 
> and test out some of these ideas that are being bruited about here?

Your next-best bet is to let people's avatars work,
which is still a far cry from reality, because human
activities and motivations in the simulated world are
a poor model of reality.

If you want to run a more realistic study, you have
to recruit strata-representative samples and pay people real 
wages for simulated work.
 
> I'm sure this list has enough relevant talent and 
> resources to give something like this a decent try.

It's a lot of money, for a very dubious result.
 
> Possibly a game environment would be a good basis, 
> but run as a sim, not a game, i.e. the majority 
> of the action would be carried out by software agents, not game players.

No good, you want results representing people, there
needs to a warm, interested body at the console.
 
> Might something like this be able to weed out the more unlikely ideas?
> 
> I'd love to see how an Abundance Economy scenario 
> would pan out (like Iain M Bank's Culture, but without the FTL travel).

There's no such thing as an abundancy economy. Demand is always elastically
matching supply.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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