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Comment by Styx- | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I agree.

Considering a post-scarcity world, it is not difficult to imagine a pseudo-utopia with the way technology is going. Using the example of Manna, imagine the ability to plug into some perfect VR world that looks and feels just like reality. Why would anyone want to "compete" in that scenario?

Already today, human beings would rather stay at home and consume various forms of media (tv, games, etc..) than go out and "compete." Humans typically value security over a marginal gain in luxury. Even the risk-takers among us err closer to the security-side of this spectrum on the whole.

I think those in this thread that worry that humans will always have an innate desire to one-up their brethren are worrying about nothing or some close approximation to nothing.

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I'm afraid I am less utopian. To me it seems more likely that we will eventually overreach our productive capacity by wasting time on the "unhelpful" problems I mentioned above, and then enter a period of decline.

The best we could hope for in such a situation is that we realise the immediacy of the "real" problems, and start to focus on those, arresting the decline before it becomes too severe. I have an (unfounded) expectation that the process of switching our (i.e. humanity's) productive capacity to focus on the "real" problems would be characterised by cooperation rather than competition, because the adversity required for progress would already be there, and we wouldn't need competition to create it.

If humanity becomes more fragmented during that process (see the rise of the isolationist right around the world), then we would run the risk of that cooperation being focused on destructive goals - that would seem to me to be along the lines of the worst-case scenario.

It strikes me that a lot of that is my interpretation of some of what is in Joseph A. Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies", which I saw recommended on here, and subsequently read. I heartily re-endorse the recommendation (I did a search to see if I could work out whose recommendation it was that pushed me to read it, but I'm afraid I can't work out which it might be, for which I apologise).

>imagine the ability to plug into some perfect VR world that looks and feels just like reality. Why would anyone want to "compete" in that scenario?

At the moment the most played video game seems to be League of Legends where player compete to accumulate gold through killing other players amongst other things. So the human instincts come out, just in the virtual world.

Maybe the future is humans merrilly killing in VR while peaceful robots look after them in the real world, a bit like a variation on The Matrix.

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