Generation Utopia

Introduction

I think the one key thing about life that unites all of us humans is that we want to live happy and fulfilling lives. The logical next step is therefore to solve as many problems and create as much of whatever we deem good as possible, for example, reducing poverty and starvation or maximizing our free-time and ability to work in jobs we love. The obvious conclusion then is that we should work towards building a world that is as good as possible and that provides individuals with the highest probability of living best possible lives – in short: a Utopia.

Not only do we all share what we want – good and even better lives – but the ways of how we have made our lives good and better so far are also shared, or in other words, universal: Science, technology, modern ethics – just to mention a few. To find the things that have the greatest effect on making the world a better place and seeing how they can be connected or even coordinated in the best possible manner is the first goal of this project. After delving deep into all different relevant areas, from science to sociology, I think there is a kind of shared pattern or logic to how humankind makes progress. This logic can be put together as a conceptualization or image, for example a framework that summarizes the most important factors for improving all of our lives. The finished product provides the appropriate high-level understanding that can be used as a basis to guide our actions for the countless instances of problem solving or improvements we make around the world.

In fact, my intention is to pursue a unifying theory for the advancement of human civilization. If we find out what could allow us to make progress by just one percent a year faster and then communicate those insights or logic to millions of people, which is the second goal of this project, it would literally change the world. This article is basically just an overview of the different topics that are covered in this project, but I link to all articles that go into more depth. Obviously I don’t claim that this is a precise guide with all the absolute right steps to creating a Utopia – look at it more as a business plan.

Why A “Unifying” Theory?

There are thousands of ideas and opinions of how we can make life better for people, but needless to say most are very limited or even ineffective – although you only realize that once you’d seen the whole picture. I think there are some things we can do and some conversations to have that are more valuable than thousands others combined. We need to ask “what are the optimal ways to make the world as good of a place as possible?”

When you dig all the way down from a thousand different angles you get to a core that represents a worldview or logic that combines the most effective elements of all these ideas into something simple, yet many times more powerful. And in return such a logic can guide you on a thousand different issues, point you in the right and precise direction of progress.

The One Goal Shared By All

The starting point of thinking about how to change the world for the better or even how to build a Utopia is what people want and what makes our lives better. And the one word that describes whatever we want is ‘value’, i.e. benefit, utility etc. This establishes one overarching goal, which is to maximize value, or as it can also be understood, to minimize suffering and maximize happiness.

The number one priority in this regard for humankind now should be to eradicate extreme poverty – nobody should starve in our modern world. Furthermore, on a more advanced level, to enable people to live their lives more in the way they want, e.g. work as whatever you want or in the future perhaps not have to work at all, is the key characteristic of a Utopia (but there are many others).

The Vision

The reason I am so optimistic is a general pattern that we humans have, for thousands of years, made achievements that seemed impossible. In my caveman-smartphone metaphor I argue that it was more difficult and unlikely for cavemen to make smartphones than for us to end hunger or become a star-faring civilization, so anything but optimism would be inappropriate – now more than ever. Maybe I’m wrong about being able to build a Utopia this generation, but we have already built a world a caveman would not believe possible and saying we can’t has never fostered any of this progress. Think about it, if aliens threatened to destroy the planet if we didn’t end starvation, climate change and doubled the efficiency of the world economy within three years, we could definitely pull it off.

Science and Technology

The single most effective way of working towards these goals and making our lives better (i.e. increasing ‘value’) is through science, which comes from the Latin word for knowledge and means that we learn about and understand our world better. Secondly, technology is how we humans apply the knowledge we have as tools or processes that have the potential to improve our lives, solve problems, minimize suffering etc. To know more about the world and be able to apply our knowledge and creativity to enhance our quality of life is the first and by far most important step, therefore the role of science (and reason) is that everything depends on it.

The STEPS to Changing the World

There is a little framework that covers all the different areas we need to do research on, think about and make connections between, which I call STEPS – an acronym that stands for science, technology, economics, politics and society. The first two we have covered. In the economy is where knowledge and technology is applied as goods and services to create value. Politics is the process through which we set the framework for all people to perform their actions that create value and finally (usually the government); society is the sum of all individual’s whose attitudes and behavior ultimately make change, innovation and progress possible. Not always do all these steps apply (e.g. technology) and not always in a linear fashion, but rather a sort of co-evolution.

The Exponential Techno-social Potential Divergence

While the potential of science and technology to create value has been growing exponentially, the ability of us people, i.e. society, to take advantage of this growing potential has not increased as fast. Our brains are the same as 5,000 years ago and hence also our biases and weaknesses. This leads to what I call a techno-social potential divergence, which is growing exponentially. Science and technology are not enough, we also need people to take actions, i.e. do their jobs or make improvements, and society at large to accept technology as well as change, i.e. their consumer behavior. Therefore, society, we the people, is where the (by far) biggest potential for progress lies and also the key to building a Utopia, which I will go into more detail on below.

How Innovation Creates Value Through the Multiplier Effect

Over the last 180 years the most developed nations have increased economic output per person around 34-fold. Go to a country that has a GDP/person of just $1,700 and you’ll understand how mind-blowingly awesome this is and what it means for your life. This trend has grown and is continuing to grow exponentially. In fact, 60% of this growth has come over the last generation alone and over the next we can expect it to double or triple again. How we have gone from being hungry and cold, living in huts and dying of the flu to being able to find and do a job we love and fly to a tropical island at almost 1,000km/h is the most important question of all time – a trillion or even quadrillion dollar question.

This question can be summarized in one word or phrase: Innovation – doing better things better, which can happen along any of the above-mentioned STEPS. This means that it’s not just about technology, but that, for example, it has to actually be valuable to people and accepted by them, i.e. commercialized. Innovation can even just be finding a better way to teach, to run a company etc. From a top-down view, how value is created through innovation is by a sort of multiplier effect, i.e. that the ratio between outputs (or value), e.g. food and housing, and inputs, e.g. work hours, increases more and more. Compared to any point in the past we have way more goods and services that give us value and others, like food, have become much more affordable (i.e. less input needed). And this all comes down to us having found better or more efficient ways of doing things, e.g. modern technology, and to create additional value.

Therefore, the most logical thing to do and the central notion of this theory to progress towards a Utopia is to look for ideas or innovations that have the biggest multiplier effects, i.e. that increase the overall input/output ratio the most.

The Biggest Multiplier Effects

Now is really an extraordinary time to find and make improvements and pursue innovations with tremendous multiplier effects we’ve never seen before. Think of the main things we need and that give us value in life or, in other words, the main parts of the economy: Food, transport, construction and manufacturing, health care, education, energy etc.

Education is the most inefficient system in all of society even though it has the greatest multiplier effect – it could be virtually free and should be of much higher quality in almost all schools or universities. Our transport system is insane: Almost everybody owns a personal vehicle while each and every one of us could save over ten percent of our income if we just changed our habits. The potential to make improvements and changes in all these major systems is exponentially greater than ever before.

Automation (robots, digitalization, artificial intelligence) has the greatest multiplier effect, because output or value is no longer limited by linear human input (i.e. we can only work this many hours). At the point where robots build robots that build and repair robots (or similarly: artificial super intelligence) that create products and services, the rate of progress will explode and building a Utopia will be a piece of cake. This generation will without much doubt make this happen, which means we are now at a tipping point where progress can take off like a rocket. The basics in life that have occupied us 24/7 like food, shelter, transport and energy will become increasingly less distracting (input or work intensive) and we’ll have increasingly more time, resources and capabilities to focus on the more difficult, and finally, big problems of the world. This includes not just technical, but also social issues, like equal rights for all, peace and creating more meaningful activities than repetitive jobs.

Apart from the radical system innovations with the gigantic multiplier effects there are countless hidden daily inefficiencies and low hanging fruits – the kind of inefficiencies that are easy to solve and need little change – at your work, at school, in the street, simply everywhere. One example is that of queues (lines) in supermarkets and retail, which would free up a whole percent of our entire economy. The list goes on and on with examples that will make our world look like how an ancient village was run to our grandchildren because we do things in such silly ways.

Society As the Flood Gate and Last Puzzle Piece

The one problem that all these potential innovations or improvements have in common is that they depend on people. And way too often they are actually held back by us. We humans are really very limited in how we think and act or, in other words, our attitudes and behavior. We all, collectively, simply don’t do enough, at least not enough of the right things. So, and this is a critical point, as we all want our lives to be good and better and the way to get us there is innovation – doing things better, improvements etc. – why are we not doing that much more?

The fundamental cause for this is that as a whole we are not intelligent and reasonable enough. Our main limitation and biggest negative multiplier effect is really just our ignorance – our lack of knowledge, reason and logic. So while science and reason is what has made our lives better the most, ignorance and irrationality is precisely the opposite and hence also leads to the opposite, or at least stagnation – and there are countless examples. We don’t all have to be geniuses, that’s not what I mean, but the fact that people don’t spend five minutes a day thinking outside the box means that bullshit worth tens of trillions of dollars can continue to prevail. That is because there are infinite ways to be ignorant and wrong about how we can make the world and our lives better and only few that are spot on.

How many of us truly understand the scientific method and investigate important issues affecting us all with information from proper sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journals) and act accordingly and rationally? We go to work from 9 – 5 so we can all pick up our piece (salary) of the cake (economy), but how much time do we devote to making the cake bigger?

The less you know and the less rational you are the less you know what you’re doing and the less spot on you will be on making your own life or the world for that matter. The number one cure for this is education – hence why it has the largest multiplier effect and greatest importance of any system in our society.

This all means that people don’t know why we should innovate or change things; what the true, tremendous potential is that we have and how it can benefit them. For this we need to educate people or give them more incentives, e.g. However, we stick way too much to our beliefs (often of religious or cultural nature) and habits, which means that even when some people hear why certain innovations are great, they still don’t want to change for irrational reasons.

Whatever the reasons, we are not motivated enough to change the world, not even for selfish reasons. Unlike Bertrand Russell wrote in his essay “In Praise of Idleness” I contempt idleness as a societal obsession, because the time now is too important to slack – we are the generation that just needs to make one more push.

At the same time, building a near-perfect world is not enough. We all have to find our own happiness, which is somewhat of an art. It’s also a science and skill that I would argue can be taught – which is where the cycle on education and science (understanding things in general) and society closes.

Education – the Link between S and Soc

Education is what can put the last S – society – in the STEPS framework on a higher step, closer to the first one, which is science. As science and reason is the start of the pattern of how we people make progress -through understanding the world better and then doing things better – better educated people can lead to more progress and better lives. The more people know and the more reasonable they are, on average, the more their attitudes and behavior will be conducive to making life better, and vice versa. It’s that simple.

Considering that we spend over 10% of our economic output on education (schools, universities) what we get in return is embarrassing. Few understand science, reason, humanist values or how to think critically and we make young people form terrible habits – doing nothing much for months and cramming for exams they hate. We also fail at teaching the skills necessary for life in this day and age, not to mention to prepare kids for the next generation.

Teachers to me are obviously the most important job in the economy and should have a skill level, as well as salary, comparable to top-managers. The output or value we get from the education system compared to what we put in is unacceptable and improving education would have the biggest (multiplier) effect on making the world a better place.

Politics as the Framework: From Ethics to the Role of the Government

It is not enough to have advanced technology and capitalistic businesses and smart people to create a good world. We all need to work together and coordinate certain actions for the sake of common goods, such as the environment, health care, education, transport and so on. Therefore, the government is important in order to circumvent the limitations of us individuals (like selfishness) to make sure that the maximum amount of value that we create also reaches every person in the maximal capacity.

In fact, the systems of our economy and society that have the largest multiplier effects (transport, education) and would create the largest amount of value for all are those where innovation would be best managed collectively, or by the government. For example, with education or transitioning to more sustainable energy systems the ball is definitely in the government’s court to solve short-term market failures and socio-technical lock-ins where a majority of stakeholders have to change, but individuals would hurt themselves if they changed. So the question is, what would be the perfect government, i.e. the best way of collectively coordinated innovation and value-maximization for all?

The key here for maximizing value for all is to get the ethics right or, in other words, our principles of how we can minimize suffering and maximize happiness for all. In fact, it can even be argued that this can also be done in a scientific and rational manner as we could technically analyze and measure levels of suffering and happiness, as shown by Sam Harris. Here the cycle closes on what everybody wants, i.e. good lives, as set out in the beginning of this article.And the best way to get this done is through the principle of the veil of ignorance, to start the whole process assuming that you don’t know which member of society you will be (e.g. a millionaire’s heir or an old man in a slum).

Ideally, politics should work like science, based on facts and reason, instead of emotion and ignorance, e.g. Trump. And when we do this we can make laws and policies that really maximize wellbeing for all. Perhaps the best example to showcase this line of thought works is that of automation – the innovation with the biggest multiplier effect – and the biggest social and ethical problem it creates, i.e. inequality. With the right ethical compass and political framework in place we can make the cake bigger in the optimal way and then give the now much bigger pieces to everybody in a fair way. For example, by creating new jobs that are more valuable and meaningful (e.g. more teachers) or through taxing automation and re-allocating the additional value, possibly through a universal basic income or other measures.

But getting the framework right also depends on people: on politicians on the one hand, but everybody to elect politicians or participate in direct democracy; on society to be able to deal with changes and businesses to operate in the interest of all, e.g. by abiding to laws.

The Marketing of Changing the World

The question now becomes how to align as many people as possible towards innovating and changing the world for the better considering the given level of education, attitudes and behaviors. Essentially, each of the points of why people are the floodgate for progress needs to be addressed. Just like the marketing and PR departments of multi-billion dollar companies are doing a highly effective job at convincing people that their products give them value we also need to be really good at marketing the vision of changing the world – for the same reasons, at the bottom line.

If people saw and understood the bigger picture just a little bit better and would form more positive attitudes towards change and innovation, it would help to open the flood gate of society and reduce the techno-social potential divergence. So what I call the marketing of changing the world is it’s own kind of education, but this goes way beyond science communication or reporting on tech breakthroughs. It is about getting people interested in not just science or technology, but progress as a whole, by conveying a compelling vision and making people talk about it. For example, I think it works much better to tell people that it is really important to innovate the education system with messages like “the cure for *insert disease* could be in the head of one of the billions of children who don’t receive proper education” compared to that “every child deserves an education”.

This is the real reason and highest goal of this project, to pain a picture, a vision that makes people get the tremendous importance and urgency as well as potential of changing the world and to inspire them. The greater the potential of a type of innovation (like shared autonomous vehicles at up to 10% of the economy) the higher the motivation should be for people to change or accept innovation, especially considering that their cost or discomfort is relatively small (e.g. changing the habit of owning a car to e-hailing robot taxis). In fact, this argument applies to science, technology and innovation in general, closing the cycle on the techno-social potential divergence, which I raised in the beginning.

But again, these points have to be gotten across in a way as effective as the marketing campaign of a billion dollar company. Simultaneously, it would be naïve to think that all people will take the time to listen and consider the future potential benefits and weigh them against their current costs. For the majority of people the willingness to accept change depends on whether it benefits them directly and immediately, for example, many people might care more about their burgers becoming a few dollars cheaper than donating to save starving children. So on the basis of what anybody values, almost always innovation is also the answer for them. Hence there are ways to incentivize people (e.g. through cheaper prices) to be pro-innovation even if they actually don’t care.

Summary

At thus, we reach the same point where this article started, which is that we all care about living happy, fulfilling lives where people get as much of what they value as possible. And while around this point of value all people can be aligned, the way how to maximize value in the world is through innovation, as it has a multiplier effect. This starts with science and technology, but more importantly, it depends on us people, our ethics and our actions as people, i.e. all STEPS. Education is what builds the basis of us people to become better at making our own lives better, yet the education system is in strong need of innovation itself. The opportunities to improve things are everywhere, in transport and energy, but also many little things we encounter every day, i.e. the daily inefficiencies. Especially through automation we could unlock multiplier effects that can lead to improvements like we humans could never achieve.