Just finished Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a riveting exploration of how anarchy leads to the "night watchman" minimal state via the path of the "dominant protective association" for a region; and how no morally legitimate path can lead to a more powerful state. In it he gives what are very likely brilliant rebuttals to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. I say "very likely" because Nozick generally starts each topic in laymen's terms but quickly segues into advanced mathematics, which leaves me in the dark even moreso than Rawls did, since the latter at least provides some illustrative graphics.
Anyway it got me thinking about simulations, and how people could use simulated worlds to experiment with various utopian ideas, or even totally narcissistic dystopias with themselves as supreme ruler. Also, randomly generated AIs could populate these simworlds, with or without participation of living humans "jacked in", to see how various utopian theories work out over many generations. I have no idea how far current technology would enable these experiments.
last updated 2020-10-11 19:04:17. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com