00:00Utopia, what is it? Is it an achievable thing? The definition is it's an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect, but perfect is in the mind of the perceiver, it's all relative to individual perspective. So that sort of suggests that utopia is a function of belief. This definition suggests that such a place is only imaginary, but say if every member of society believes they live in a utopia, they are in fact living in a utopia. For example, in Brave New World, if you have a society of people who believe they live in the ideal society but you introduce an individual with a different set of ideals about what is good to that world, it can destabilize that collective belief of well-being, and it sort of highlights how disparate beliefs can destabilize what many consider to be the ideal society.

00:49Now going back to the definition, it does not really consider utopia to be changing over time. It suggests it's a state of things or a place, it defines it as immutable, so we're thinking about utopia as a static thing. But all societies exist in a state of change over time. Even if in one moment five out of five people in a small society believe they live in a utopia, if one changes their mind they're really no longer living in a utopia. So time itself seems to be the enemy of utopia. And in a sense, because change is inherent, I think utopia can be better defined as a direction or a goal of society rather than a destination.

01:37And that goal is the function of some collective measurement of belief. So at least in the modern era we attempt to define society as moving forward in a positive direction if there is a state of growth of wealth, and I think that's actually incomplete. I think the goal of humanity actually can be better defined and quantified, and I think it comes down to the perception of not only well-being but also the perception of truth. If everyone shares some set of a crude objective truth and feels they are in a state of well-being, they are at least momentarily in a utopia. So it's similar, comes down to asking people their perception, and that's where democracy and markets come from.

02:25You either vote with your vote or you vote with your dollar and attempt to express your belief about how society is functioning. Markets in particular attempt to quantify well-being in terms of collected total wealth, and that wealth is quantified in money. Now it's not really about absolute numbers in our modern definition, there's never really enough, it's about numbers relative to the past state of that society. So it's about always moving in a direction. It doesn't really care about the distribution of that wealth or how that wealth is being used, only rather the totality of it and whether there is more than there used to be. So if a market starts to distribute wealth more evenly amongst the population but total wealth declines, at least in the eyes of those who are losing wealth to benefit those who don't have it, the system is failing.

03:12And invariably in this case there are some who are suffering because they are losing relative to others. So we see society as heavily valuing the increase of total collected wealth with less regard for the distribution of that wealth or a shared perception of objective knowledge about how the wealth is being utilized. And if we try to imagine where markets would take us, you know, only by optimizing for wealth and disregarding truth whatsoever, we can imagine a number of futures. So the question is, will markets trend towards utopia? And the way I like to explore this question is by charting a crude truth and a crude knowledge or crude goodness.

04:01So in this case, two sort of four directions society can move in. You can move slowly towards the truth without any regard for well-being, and this is sort of the pursuit of knowledge at any cost, and it's sort of a nihilistic state. I think it's relatively easy to understand how solely the acquisition of knowledge would not be the optimal society. People want to feel good and generally will embrace a comforting lie over a complex truth. But solely pursuing well-being can have negative consequences as well. This opposite route, which I think we're currently going in, this to focus only on accruing collective well-being while disregarding knowledge, because we tend to associate well-being with accrued wealth whether or not that's actually the truth.

04:50Certainly we acquire knowledge in this society but it's not really being evenly distributed. And the main goal of the knowledge that we acquire now is to accrue more wealth. Sure, you can pursue science as a career, but only if you can get a grant, and usually that grant is given because someone believes the research will accrue more profit for them. So not all knowledge in our societies treated equally, and information is not necessarily equate to objective truth. And I think that the the ultimate destination, if you trace this out, is sort of everyone hooked up to heroin VR pods that just release just the right amount of chemicals to sustain happy homeostasis. We're more and more tied to our devices and all the software it produces.

05:39And mostly about producing a little dose of digital dopamine than it is about reaching a collective consensus. And in reality we've moved past the information age into the misinformation age or post truth era. We've amassed information but we haven't really necessarily collected truth. And you know, maybe that world appeals to you, the heroin VR pods, but who would really maintain that system, and can it really be infallible? Now the third direction is to disregard either truth or well-being, and usually this is in the pursuit of power for a few without regards to how they're achieving that power. And it's sort of hard to imagine a society that would actively trend away from both truth and well-being, but if anything does, it's the book 1984 or some of these dictatorial countries like North Korea.

06:28In this situation the collective's actual well-being has no real importance, and the only thing that matters is that the existing power structures don't change. And the easiest way to do this is to stoke anger against a perceived enemy. And of course dictators use this technique quite often to maintain order rather than actually improving people's lives. And in 1984 this quite literally is represented by the two minutes of hate. There's no need to concern oneself with actually obtaining a healthy state of being, rather it's easier to maintain the status quo by reinforcing negative emotions towards something other than those that lead the society. And to an extent we actually do see this in places like North Korea where hatred is directed towards the United States.

07:16And I think a degree that that is the worst of the four directions. Now the final the direction is the direction I think we should be moving, which is where we balance our acquisition of wealth or well-being with our acquisition of knowledge. And this isn't always easy as many truths can create negative emotions, but we really shouldn't hide from these negative emotions, and that's why there needs to be this balance between well-being and truth. So the question is, if in our society money is a token codified to represent that goodness, that if anything you want can be achieved solely by acquiring money, how do you quantify collected knowledge? But the answer to that is for another video in the future.

08:05So what future do you think is most likely for our society? Which of these directions do you think we're currently moving towards? Do you think those heroin VR pods sound pretty cool? Feel free to quantify the goodness of this video by liking it, and feel free to quantify the truth of it by sharing it with others.