The current avenue of approach is indeed in two System Parts:
(1) Definition of the problem: If we want things to be 'best' in a sense, 'maximally humane', 'maximum quality of experience', 'maximum quality of life, existence and culture', etc. we should define those things, and create structures that continually refine and employ the best methods to asses and measure progress.
(2) Optimization of the problem: Choosing the architecture and structures that maximizes our measures. This again almost certainly is some kind of distributed structure that gives rewards and occasionally demands compensation (for a generalization of negative externality -- generalized externality of existence).
I often say that the Universe is a search problem. This is just a big honkin' search problem :)
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Capitalism leaves the job of (1) on the individual, and on the government somewhat. The job of (2) is accomplished by a dual again of capital (supply and demand, allocation of capital for maximum profit) and government (using taxes and incentives). Again the problem of capitalism is that it doesn't account for externalities very well (too often ends up maximizing the wrong function), and the problem of government is inefficiency, centralization (algorithmic inefficiency of resource allocation strategies), lack of agility.
Note: Capitalism (without support structures) is very similar to evolutionary dynamics. It's hard to model exactly what evolutionary dynamics maximizes, but one formulation is that it maximizes environmental domination: expanding to cover the most of the environment, whatever it takes. Lose consciousness and become soul-less robots to take over everything? Sure, no problem; and annihilate anything that gets in the way. Accidentally or not evolutionary dynamics gave us life and consciousness, but it's not certain life and consciousness will endure as essential for environmental domination (in a way, consciousness is currently related to intelligence via humans, but we for example already appear able to create super-human intelligence that is not conscious or at least not very conscious). So we need to change the objective function to create a great harmonious future where some for of existence... exists.
To see why evolutionary dynamics and environmental stability (i.e. the result of environmental expansion) doesn't prize conscious experience (in general, the Meaning of life), I use two thought experiments:
(1) Generalized grey goo/Paperclip maximizer. Again, just picture a very intelligent creature dedicated to maximizing only its environmental domination. It will create other forms of intelligence only as much as needed to maintain its dominion. Any form of existence that's not immediately conductive to the maintenance and expansion of dominion is irrelevant/negative value. I can only see this leading to an empty Universe and a few singular intelligences looking for ways to annihilate all other existences at maximum speed focusing on weapons research and planetary domination exclusively.
(2) Doomsday button. The ultimate thought experiment in this line is the following: suppose you assume environmental regularization (domination) originated by your actions is the 'Ideal goal of existence'. Then I present you a doomsday button: If you push the button, you will trigger some kind of physical mechanism that will consume the entire universe into a regular lifeless crystal-like structure. Think of it as a bomb of expanding regular wave that takes over the entire universe. In a way, this represents a maximally stable solution to dominating the environment... maximum effect, perpetual and irreversible. But that doesn't look like a good solution at all, does it? It's in fact lifeless and non-existential.
Clearly the ultimate objective is related to existence, not to environmental domination or regularization by some abstract definition of 'Individual' or 'Nation' or whatever. If we can't change objective, I predict we'll be consumed by this savage nature quite soon.
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I don't mean to trivialize System Part 1 (Evaluation). It's literally all that matters to humanity and existence. I guarantee it's not a second degree equation :) For example, individual autonomy can be an important component of human experience, the ability and free will to decide more or less independently is likely an important part of the whole.
My approach is that we need to define the Meaning of life clearly. We've also postponed this way too much as a Civilization. By now it shouldn't be that complicated -- we know it's got to do with experience and somehow the internal dynamics of a large neural network, the sustainability and continuity of life. I have a draft[1] but don't expect it to be bulletproof. This should evolve into a Formalization of Ethics program (hopefully a collaborative, worldwide effort) to get the basics done. Think of it as a Super Declaration of Human rights, or a Foundation of Ethics (like we have a Foundation of Mathematics).
This could not be ignored by any nation, hopefully in the short term strengthening clarity and convictions on the objective of human (and generalized conscious) existence.
This Foundations should be Universal.
First, I'm convinced the rough draft (given above) is correct, it should be a matter of truth and reason[2], and not require any advanced metaphysics or elicit genuine controversy after rational examination. This is also part of a new propostion for making philosophy that I call 'Explosive Philosophy': the negation of the Principle of Experience (i.e. consciousness is not the prime motive of existence) leads to absurdity as demonstrated by several thought experiments. Explosive Philosophy is the use of rejection by absurd by taking particularly obviously unacceptable consequences of a principle.
Second, if some Nation is a Competitive Supremacist (i.e. Evolutionarist), that will clearly put it in conflict with the Conscious Foundations. It will try to achieve domination at all costs, and eventually it will need to settle with the Foundations[2] or live under constant watch to make sure it doesn't take over everything or even consume itself.
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Afterwards, the plan is as I insuated, to change the Political-Economic-Cultural system to reflect the universal values (including diversity from derived heuristics). The main idea I've had is to create concrete measures related to Quality of Experience, and a distributed network of evaluations, each specialized in a segment of society (Science, Industry, Culture, Philosophy, etc.) measures impact of Corporations/Entities/Individuals, and compensates for the error the capitalist system has.
So if I create predatory advertisement, this has a social cost. An evaluator can perceive this, measure it (estimate it), and demand compensation (to be given back to society). The evaluator itself takes a share of this compensation to reward its effort. The evaluator can even colaborate with the company to more acurately measure the externality, and reduce the compensation (under uncertainty the evaluator would have an adjustment to overestimate/take an upper bound of the evaluation).
Those evaluator are adversarially cooperative, and predictive, in the sense that they oversee themselves as well, and are predictive. The success of an evaluator is asessed later: a market is established for the correctness of the decision.
The idea is to replace Supply-and-Demand with Science: in particular, a kind of Eventual Consensus -- in simple terms, the Consensus of evaluation by relevant audience/specialists upon reflection after a long time. The Consensus is made through cross-evaluation of evaluators (they get funds based on the later re-evaluation by the wider evaluation network), as well as certain input from individuals, corporations and government. Transparent (and relatively simple) algorithms resolve the credit assignment problem of how each evaluator should be credited. This is similar to the slow eventual consensus of Science, although the goals are different and the system would be both simpler and more transparent. That's close to a definition of truth itself: the eventual consensus model revealed by experiments and sufficient formal reasoning (following axioms of logic, and axiom of reality).
I call this idea 'Elementalism' for now.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/p2w4ql/e...
[2] Any similarity with Asimov's Foundations is a mere coincidence? :)
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/p6ng5d/what...
Note: What I mean by experience is not any kind of pure hedonism. It's a deep, rich internal collection of qualities and perception of the mind -- consciousness. Again we need principles and consensus to conclude what is the wisest experience, but we can derive general principles, largely centered around our cognition having structure, meaning and depth (this is getting really long so I'll stop now :) to discuss exactly what this means is involved).