Viatopia
The concept:
Viatopia: an intermediate state of society that is on track for a near-best future, whatever that might look like.
Viatopia is a waystation rather than a final destination; etymologically, it means “by way of this place”. We can often describe good waystations even if we have little idea what the ultimate destination should be. A teenager might have little idea what they want to do with their life, but know that a good education will keep their options open. Adventurers lost in the wilderness might not know where they should ultimately be going, but still know they should move to higher ground where they can survey the terrain. Similarly, we can identify what puts humanity in a good position to navigate towards excellent futures, even if we don't yet know exactly what those futures look like.
In the past, Toby Ord and I have promoted the related idea of the “long reflection”: a stable state of the world where we are safe from calamity, and where we reflect on and debate the nature of the good life, working out what the most flourishing society would be. Viatopia is a more general concept: the long reflection is one proposal for what viatopia would look like, but it need not be the only one.
I think that some sufficiently-specified conception of viatopia should act as our north star during the transition to superintelligence.
The competition:
[Utopianism says] we should figure out what an ideal end-state for society is, and aim towards that. Needless to say, utopianism has a bad track record.
From Plato’s Republic onwards, fiction and philosophy have given us scores of alleged utopias that look quite dystopian to us now. Members of every generation have been confident they understood what a perfect society would look like, and they have been wrong in ways their descendants found obvious. We should expect our situation to be no different, such that any utopia we design today would look abhorrent to our more-enlightened descendants. We should have more humility than the utopian perspective suggests.
And:
[Protopianism says] we shouldn’t act on any big-picture view of where society should be going. Instead, we should just identify whatever the most urgent near-term problems are, and solve such problems one by one.
There is a lot to be said in favour of protopianism, but it seems insufficient as a framework to deal with the transition to superintelligence. Over the course of this transition, we will face many huge problems all at once, and we’ll need a way of prioritising among them. Should we accelerate AI, to cure disease and achieve radical abundance as fast as possible? Or should we slow down and invest in increased wisdom, security, and ability to coordinate? Protopianism alone can’t help us; or, if it does, it might encourage us to grab short-term wins at the expense of humanity’s long-term flourishing.
Viatopianism offers a distinctive third perspective. Unlike utopianism, it cautions against the idea of having some ultimate end-state in mind. Unlike protopianism, it attempts to offer a vision for where society should be going. It focuses on achieving whatever society needs to be able to steer itself towards a truly wonderful outcome.