Good old conservative values like living in giant-ass farming towns instead of small hamlets. Who wants to spend their day working their field when you can walk through fields of 50 other farmers instead.
Actually 1000-member farming communities normally use a radial field pattern. Traditionally, assuming that each man marries one woman who bares 10 children, a 1000 member town would only have 50 farms. These are arranged on a "pie slice" basis radiating from the church. The circumference of the township is arranged such that each farm's narrow end is exactly 2 plow-widths wide. Obviously.
He didn’t even ask his followers what size community THEY would want
to live in. He asked them what they THINK people would like. Truly sound
methods, I expect nothing less from a GMU professor.
It doesn't really matter what they want, there are 10 times more* farmville farmers than there have ever been real farmers, we should spend all our money on making computers better to improve sprite lives.
*a ratio I just made up
Conspiracy Corner:
He's knowingly done that to illustrate the keynsian beauty contest parable. He is doing performance art of a myopic and limited world-view. All while living on Kochbux welfare.
I mean, it’s a start of an interesting idea, but there are a lot of
implicit problems here. For starters, no matter how big the society, we
tend to subdivide into smaller communities which are the real source of
our social happiness: family, friends, neighbors, etc. Those exist in
any-sized society
This leaves out the most important variable, namely who is in this
community and is Robin Hanson among them. I imagine it would take a very
large city to drown out the annoying presence of a Hanson.
I mean, it’s completely meaningless no one answering the polls has
ever lived in groups of of two of the options, nor is there likely to be
any reliable statistical data on the ‘happiness’ of people who actually
have. Hell, most of the people answering the poll probably haven’t even
lived in towns 1000. How the hell should any of them know or have any
credible insight into whether or not people would be any happier in
those communities?
This is what he means and how people answer the question.
Would you rather live in:
- The Shire,
- Brutal cave-man times,
- A rank rat-hole, and you have to be a rat too,
- Blade Runner
> The Shire
>
> A rank rat-hole, and you have to be a rat too
If I said "aren't these basically the same thing", would I get banned for racism against hobbits?
(Recall that “farmer” is also Hanson’s term for good li’l worker-bee producers with conservative values)
Shouldn’t a PhD holder understand how to do proper studies?
That seems like a ‘slightly’ flawed poll.
He didn’t even ask his followers what size community THEY would want to live in. He asked them what they THINK people would like. Truly sound methods, I expect nothing less from a GMU professor.
I mean, it’s a start of an interesting idea, but there are a lot of implicit problems here. For starters, no matter how big the society, we tend to subdivide into smaller communities which are the real source of our social happiness: family, friends, neighbors, etc. Those exist in any-sized society
This leaves out the most important variable, namely who is in this community and is Robin Hanson among them. I imagine it would take a very large city to drown out the annoying presence of a Hanson.
He also admitted downthread that when he said “isolated” he meant “autonomous” which makes, uh, a significant difference for social well-being
Ah yes, the wonderful time in earth’s history known as… (checks notes) the Mammal Era!
I mean, it’s completely meaningless no one answering the polls has ever lived in groups of of two of the options, nor is there likely to be any reliable statistical data on the ‘happiness’ of people who actually have. Hell, most of the people answering the poll probably haven’t even lived in towns 1000. How the hell should any of them know or have any credible insight into whether or not people would be any happier in those communities?