Drift Poll Winner: Pay Parents, Rational Culture
Over the last day, I did two sets of polls comparing 16 cultural drift scenarios (detailed here) re their likelihood and desirability. Responses were unusually noisy, and desires had an especially large model fit errors. Here are best fit priorities (relative to 100 max), sorted by likelihood:
As you can see, paying parents seems the safe scenario, being 2nd highest in both likelihood and desirability. Rational culture seems the best long shot, being most desired scenario with a middle-of-pack likelihood.
Let me critique these results. On likelihood, I agree that replacement by Amish, etc. seems most likely (>30%), and malthusian AI seems pretty likely (>15%), as does something else I haven’t thought of (>5%). And a big return of war/famine/etc. also seems plausible (>5%). But the polls’ high chance of uber capitalism seems way to high (I give <2%); most hate it. And while I see some hope of fertility DNA selection and paying parents for kids (>5% each), the poll likelihood for paying parents seems high, and they both seem unlikely to solve culture drift problems (<5%). Though it would still be great to solve just fertility.
I’m a bit surprised to see sacred authoritarian govt rated as so likely, though I don’t especially disagree (I’d give >5%). And I’m of course disappointed to see sacred futarchy rated as the most unlikely; few think big social reforms can happen. Fitting with that, they rate deep multiculturalism as second most unlikely.
