Building Weirdtopia

Sexual Weirdtopia could just be "the internet comes to life"... e.g. everyone gets freaky without shame, but it turns out almost everyone is into something that's of absolutely no interest to you personally.

Or, to follow the public science example, the taboo is revealed to be as fundamental aspect of sexual arousal as the unknown is to the intellectual. The people demand a strict morality police after an era of total acceptance drains all the fun out of it. Everyone is fully expected to both seek out sexual thrills and aid in the swift punishment of anyone who seeks out sexual thrills: If you ask for a spanking you may be asking for a spanking.

I recently wondered whether it's possible that transhumans would spend parts of their lives in situations very similar to Dante's hell, complete with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Some have suggested that a bit of pain might be necessary to make all the pleasure we're supposed to get realizable, but I suggest that we might actually need quite a lot of it. If the only way to make people happy is to improve their lives, pushing them way down might turn out to be a reasonable solution. And some might choose that route to spice up whatever other sources of happiness there are. The fact that hellfire scares us fleshlings wouldn't matter to indestructible nanocyborgs.

Or maybe they would intentionally seek other things that I consider horrible. Like the risk of death - isn't that what people do already when they walk on a tightrope?

But Utopia and Dystopia are parts of reality and human existence, if we were to eliminate one of them, it would create unpredicted problems. Weirdtopia is a mutation of both, and it may work, or not.

Some have suggested that a bit of pain might be necessary to make all the pleasure we're supposed to get realizable.... If the only way to make people happy is to improve their lives....

Taken to a literal extreme (I don't know if that's your intent), the idea that pain is necessary for pleasure violates the Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle, or something like it. If pleasure without contrast palls, there's some neurological reason for this, one that we could work around in wireheading if we really wanted to. I think the most you can plausibly say is that for humanlike architectures, memories of suffering (not necessarily true ones) are necessary to appreciate pleasures more complex than heroin.

Personally, though, I think that there are already plenty of humans who, through genetics and/or introspective self-modification, can be perfectly happy without improving conditions.

Economic Weirdtopia: FAIth determines that the love of money actually is the root of ~75% of evil, so it's back to the barter system for us.

Sexual Weirdtopia: FAIth determines that the separatist feminists were right -- CEV requires segregation by sex. Homosexual men and lesbians laugh and laugh. Research on immersive VR becomes a preoccupation among the heterosexual majority in both segregated camps.

Not very plausible, but... "That's the thing about FAIth. If you don't have it, you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary."

Economic weirdtopia: being rich is socially unacceptable; not because the society values equality, but because it's considered decadent and, in a certain sense, cheating. Weirdtopia's system of morality is virtue-based, and one of their highest virtues is a peculiar sort of self-sufficiency. Essentially, you're expected to be able to make yourself safe and comfortable by relying only on your wits and not on material goods. Needing to consume natural resources is accepted as a fact of life, but you should be able to do as much as possible with as little as possible. There is no concept of land ownership. In a loose sense of the word "own", you own the chattels that you produce with your own hands, but accepting the products of others' labor is a vice.

Exchanging knowledge and techniques is normal and acceptable. Being knowledgable about things that others have discovered is entirely amoral. Innovating earns you respect, but equally so regardless of whether you're the first to ever discover something or whether you figured out something widely-known on your own.

I think the most you can plausibly say is that for humanlike architectures, memories of suffering (not necessarily true ones) are necessary to appreciate pleasures more complex than heroin. Probably what matters is that there's some degree of empathy with suffering, whether or not that empathy comes from memories. Even in that weakened form the statement doesn't sound plausible to me.

Anyway it seems to me that utopianly speaking the proper psychological contrast for pleasure is sobriety rather than pain.

Neil Stephenson's new book Anathem does exactly what you suggest in your public understand of science Weirdtopia. Although, he also sequesters the scientists in "monasteries."

Economic... Weirdtopia: The world has an indirect economy. People trade status for predictive power to decide which ventures get the most attention and which resources to allocate to whom/what. Businesses are considered a weird anachronism of a begone era. People are free to do whatever they want with their status, except trade real property. (They can, however, use it to make the market grant favours if they want.) Life's necessities are always freely accessible.

Governmental... Weirdtopia: Every conflict is resolved either by consensus or moving away. There are even seed spaceships moving far away from Sol for the latter option. Non-violence isn't the rule, it's the law. Every intelligence agreed to remove violent urges. Non-violence has an extremely broad definition that not only covers force, but also deception, market manipulation, even advertising, bad manners and ostracism. Honesty is not expected, it just is; the only way people find out what the word means is through history classes.

It must have been intentional that all the Dystopia examples are almost one-to-one mappings of the real world? Except for the cognitive one. That one stands out as strange, perhaps intentionally - the message is that the world is fucked, and we've only one more chance as the last Dystopian calamity looms before us.

As to the assignment:

Economic Weirdtopia: The production economy is entirely automated. Supply is near infinite due to the constellation of this automation with asteroid mining. (The weird part is that the political will was somehow mustered to accomplish this.) Quite oddly, class inequalities are no longer sustainable - due to the occasional public slaughter of the rising bourgeoisie and power elites.

Sexual Weirdtopia: What you described as Utopia seems pretty damn weirdtopia to me.

Governmental Weirdtopia: Each person is a congressmen. "Leaders" are chosen by lot, or else elected on merit by representatives chosen by lot. Laws are written and interpretted by juries, who are themselves potentially open to prosecution for the verdicts which they render. Lawmakers can be charged criminally by the people for the laws they pass.

Technological Weirdtopia: The human race has turned into a civilization of AI flying around the solar system (in a Dyson sphere).

Cognitive Weirdtopia: "

"Every conflict is resolved either by consensus or moving away."

I'm not moving. You move. Bastard.

"I'm not moving. You move. Bastard."

Fine, we'll both move to different Everett branches.

Weirdtopia: A deeper understanding of anthropics leads us to consider quantum immortality valid, as long as the death is instantaneous. We prepare an electron in a spin up state, and measure its angular momentum on the x axis. Left, your faction terminates, right, mine.

sexual wierdtopia: It is mandated by the central processor that participants stop to ask 'are we having fun yet?' every 60 seconds in order to allow the partners to elucidate and record the performance of the previous minute. Failure will result in the central processor rescheduling the desire impulse, and scheduling some other emotional context. This is not just for training, reason stipulates sexual performance can always be further optimized.

Governmental Weirdtopia: Double-blind democracy. Yearly presidents are chosen at random. (couldn't be worse than our current system) The catch is that the person chosen to be the leader has absolutely no idea that they are the leader. They are followed around and monitored, and anything uttered resembling a decree is put into action if it doesn't violate the constitution. The decrees are only put into place after their term expires so they don't catch on. Quick decision-making such as treaties are wars are left up to a streamlined unicameral legislative body.

Economic Weirdtopia: Market is so efficient that nobody has to work, and everybody's basic needs can be sustained by just asking any charity. This prosperity hyperactivates everybody's social status chasing instincts, so people work harder and longer than ever, feeling inadequate if they don't earn more than their peers, and spending most of what they earn on making their 3d virtual avatars look better than other people's 3d virtual avatars.

Sexual Weirdtopia: Reproduction is completely separated from sex, children are taken care of by free market and government services with just token parental involvement, and all STDs all eliminated. This first leads to everybody having sex with everybody else, but people got bored with vanilla sex soon and many sexual identification based on shared sexual fetishes emerge. They replace religions, languages, citizenships and ethnicities as leading in/out-group indicators, and somehow Middle East is still in endemic state of war, now between guro and furry.

Governmental Weirdtopia: Government knows everything about everybody, but doesn't abuse it because everybody knows about everything it does. Universal transparency makes corruption impossible, so people are no longer interested in governing or lobbying and governments atrophy with time.

Cognitive Weirdtopia: Combination of efficient search and prediction markets made all knowledge easily available, so all schools shut down. People don't even learn basic mathematics any more, as easily available mathematical coprocessors for brains do that more efficiently and without prevalent human biases. People find themselves a niche hobby that wasn't explored yet and learn everything about that yet. If they're lucky it might get popular later and they'll make decent money in prediction market out of it.

Sexual Weirdtopia: Double-blind Sexocracy .... you get the idea.

Two roads diverged in the woods. I took the one less traveled, and...

Utopia: that has made all the difference. Dystopia: had to eat bugs until Park rangers rescued me. Wierdtopia: got to eat the bugs until the rangers threw me out.

For an example of a sexual wierdtopia, I'd recommend the movie zerophilia. Kinky, but not porn, and heck, my library has 2 copies.

Stranger in a Strange Land may have been an attempt to describe a Weirdtopia.

Everyone is orgasmium. And strangely enough, they don't think it's all that horrible.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Babylon Lottery, 1941. Government by lottery. Living under a lottery system leads to greater expectation of random events, greater belief that life is and should be ruled by randomness, and further extension of the lottery's scope, in a feedback loop that increases until every aspect of everyone's life is controlled by the lottery.

Food Weirdtopia: We see the same type of taboos or enthusiasms that we see about sex in this world. The Catholic Church declares that artificial sweeteners are a perversion; there are pro-starvation articles at feministing; the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate weighs 300 pounds...

Sexual Weirdtopia:

The world envisioned in the strange philosophies of E. Yudkowsky, where the sentient citizens of terra-gen civilization have convinced themselves that the only noble pursuit is becoming pregnant. Sex has evolved into an elaborate emotional and intellectual ritual, combining features of philosophy, mathematics, and social activity. Emotional attachment to 'ephemeral' events does not come naturally to these beings, so sex is nearly always "for keeps," with at least one party (occasionally more) becoming impregnated with a unique seed-entity. Due to the dynamic way in which the seed-entity is designed through the interactions of the parents during sex, the cognitive distance between citizens is often staggering. Still, most citizens agree that no endeavor can match sex in importance. What little terra-gen culture does not center around making one another pregnant is seen as an idle diversion with little value and no consequences.

Sexual Weirdtopia: If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? by Theodore Sturgeon

Economic: I cited Asimov on the previous post, so let's stick with that. The Computer effectively runs a planned economy, using massive information-gathering and computing power to overcome the Hayekian knowledge problem. It really does know what is best. Everyone is free to listen to The Computer or not, but you know that your decision would be less efficient for accomplishing your goals. Such rebellions are useless, however, because The Computer's prediction capabilities include whether or not you will take its advice, and it acts accordingly to make sure you get the best results anyway.

Sexual: With no need for biological reproduction, the sex drive is eliminated in favor of other interests. Some people continue to have sex; as a hobby, it has a public reputation somewhere between (the current view of) Civil War re-enactments and juggling.

Governmental: Initiation of violence is the chief rule. With powerful AI and ubiquitous nanotech, it is recognized that anyone can inflict his will upon a large area in a short time. Pre-emptive execution of possibly unfriendly biologicals is the major task of government.

And I thought this blog was about artificial intelligence!

Yoshitoshi Abe does a decent job at describing an Afterlife Weirdtopia in Haibane Renmei. Wikipedia could be seen as Knowledge Weirdtopia that became reality.

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Economic Weirdtopia: There is no economy. Everyone lives a self sufficient existence on isolated farms. Think Solaria.

Few of these weirdtopias seem strangely appealing in the same way that conspiratorial science seems strangely appealing.

It will be sad if sex disappears only because there is no need for biological reproduction.

Bah, steven is right. We have a bunch of weird dystopias. On the other hand, "strangely appealing" could be idiosyncratic. I think it was Harry Harrison's Deathworld 2 that made a neo-medieval dystopia from groups that held scientific secrets in enclaves. Miguel Antonio would be sad if sex disappeared, but I know some people who would be much more content without it, while others are really excited about Civil War re-enactments. By my count, speculations on sexual weirdtopias are well in the lead in the comments; is this just normal for our species, or are OB regulars more interested in weird sex?

Yeah, strangely appealing takes more work. I think we're looking at premature search-halts here. You don't have to go with your very first idea.

Most of these are random SF Weirdtopias, not fun-theoretical Weirdtopias and many have already been done in SF, too. Actually most of these are plain old Utopias or Dystopias.

But I would give credit to Joe's morality police, Mike Blume's Everett-splitting society, Edward's double-blind democracy, and Tomasz's "somehow Middle East is still in endemic state of war, now between guro and furry".

Political Weirdtopia: Citizens decide it is unfair for a democracy to count only the raw number of people who support a position without considering the intensity with which they believe it. Of course, one can't simply ask people to self-report the intensity with which they believe a position on their ballot, so stronger measures are required. Voting machines are redesigned to force voters to pull down a lever for each issue/candidate. The lever delivers a small electric shock, increasing in intensity each second the voter holds it down. The number of votes a person gets for a particular issue or candidate is a function of how long they keep holding down the lever.

In (choose one: more/less) enlightened sects of this society, the electric shock is capped at a certain level to avoid potential fatalities among overzealous voters. But in the (choose one: more/less) enlightened sects, voters can keep pulling down on the lever as long as they can stand the pain and their heart keeps working. Citizens consider this a convenient and entirely voluntary way to purge fanaticism from the gene pool.

The society lasts for several centuries before being taken over by a tiny cabal of people with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain Disorder.

Personally I don't find the scientific weirdtopia strangely appealing. Finding knowledge for me is about sharing it later.

Utopia originally meant no-place, I have a hard time forgetting that meaning when people talk about them.

I'd personally prefer to work towards negated-dystopias. Which is not necessarily the same thing as working towards Utopia, depending on how broad your class of dystopia is. For example rather than try and maximise Fun, I would want to minimize the chance that humanity and all its work were lost to extinction. If there is time and energy to devote to Fun while humanity survives then people can figure it out for themselves.

Utopia originally meant no-place, I have a hard time forgetting that meaning when people talk about them.

The term "utopia" was a deliberate pun on "outopia" meaning "no place" and "eutopia" meaning "good place". It seems doubtful that Thomas More actually intended to depict his personal ideal society, so one might say that Utopia is the original Weirdtopia.

I think we're looking at premature search-halts here.

I plead no contest.

Well, this may not quite fit the personal criteria for a wierdtopia, since this is quite close to what I would consider a utopia, but it stands fairly far apart from the other scenarios presented so far, so I figured I might as well post it:

Tech Everyone is forcibly uploaded, the surface of the earth is scanned in super-duper-hi-fi precision and then used for computronium to house the newly uploaded minds. An overseer AI is created that sends out a sphere of near-light speed probes to convert the rest of the stuff in our future light cone into computronium.

Cog Everyone stays more or less at the level they are, since they are all supposed to pull themselves higher mentally by their own will, and almost everyone is too busy screwing around for the foreseeable future.

Gov't Doesn't exist, since everyone has their little (or rather huge) chunk of cyberspace where they can summon any simulacra of beings that they want. The overseer AI has discovered that there is no verifiable difference between conscious and unconscious algorithms (but the scanned in humans are almost definitely conscious) so it is satisfied with providing everyone with a way to create human simulacra that are probably not conscious and allowing the probably conscious humans to do whatever it is they want to them (simulating earth histories is a popular hobby).

People are allowed to visit other people's created worlds, and some even do it quite a lot. Violence can only happen if the victim allows themselves to be hurt, and those conflicts that can't be resolved without emotional damage (eg love triangle) are handled as they are now, except without the possibility of suicide (well, you can do it in theory, but only if the overseer analyzes you and sees that you would never recover from your emotional loss, and that's never happened so far). At most, the hurt party researches neuropsychology for a while before invariably getting distracted.

Econ Similarly doesn't exist except for what people want to make up in their fake worlds. The overseer oversees (duh) the actual RL acquisition of material for more computronium, and distributes it to the measly amount of humans that want to use even a small fraction of it.

Sex One of the biggest distractions. This field got researched to a fairly decent level, so people get to have many of their craziest fantasies fulfilled. To uploaded people, the difference between another uploaded human and a simulacrum is academic, so most create elaborate worlds for their satisfaction. Many also have real loving relationships, but things like "public" perceptions of sex don't really play a role in anyone's life.

Zubon, from what I've read of Austrians they laugh at the claim (I think Gunnar Myrdal made it) that you can solve the knowledge/calculation problem with such a computer as a misunderstanding of the problem.

Yvain, you are groping toward one of the oldest forms of democracy.

aoeuid, that's the kind of Future I grew up in, and that I'm trying to get away from; it hasn't been discussed here because it's too obvious.

Why, oh why haven't we robotized every job already? Why aren't our computers smarter? Why is there so much manual labor still around? A thin slice of humanity has several trillion of disposable money. Trillion. Millions of millions. What are they buying with it? Gold chains? ...because nothing really impressive seems to be happening. There's a lot of planning and talk, but happening... it ain't happenin'.

I cite Vinge here: we simply can't imagine weirdtopia. C'm on: 6 billion uploaded humans recursively self-modifying. There will be so many variations and weirdnesses that you could never list them all, and a significant subset of them would be beyond our cognitive ability to model due to intelligence smarter than us

Furthermore, I think a lot of people here might be surprised to find out how much weird shit there is in real life all around them.

I was chatting to a student at a very good UK university last night, and the topic of understanding science came up. I asked her how mobile phones worked, and she said she neither knew nor cared. When pressed, she said "magic", and when pressed even more, she said it had something to do with "fibre optic cables". I asked her why light bulbs lit up, and she said it probably had something to do with a chemical reaction, "you know, like a glow stick".

I was genuinely shocked.

I have since resolved to go read some Shakespeare so that I don't commit the mirror image of this ignorance.

Perhaps I should make an implicit point explicit: if we get to a stage where humans can modify their own minds, it is highly likely that this will get rid of the psychological unity of the human race. Everyone else has been posting on how "people will (all) do this, be like this, etc". The reality is that there may well be on the order of (6*10^9)/100 ~ 10^7 separate psychological niches into which groups of co-self-modifying humans eventually splinter into, as humans with similar preferences gather together into groups of people with similar preferences, the limiting factor being that you don't want to be in too small a group. Perhaps this number is a overestimate due to vast duplication of desired end-states in self-modification space.

An interesting question is: how many people will want to become superintelligent? Even if only all of the academics in the world did this, you'd still have about 10^5 superintelligent posthumans running around. What would they get up to? Will there be a gender imbalance in humans who want to become superintelligent? [look at the gender balance of the h+ and s^ lists, for example]

TGGP, Hayek argued some reasons why it is not even theoretically possible for central planners to have all the relevant information, making it more than a calculation problem. But if we are picking up utopias and weirdtopias from sci fi, we can let Asimov have his; which one you count that story from I, Robot as presumably depends on your views of central planning. Or maybe it is a dystopia with amputation of destiny, as the story's conclusion implies.

If we get that technological utopia and have thumbnail-sized supercomputers that predict as well as Omega, maybe they can pull it off. If I can simulate your brain perfectly, I can presumably capture that knowledge. If we are all uploaded, some computer(s) will be able to simulate all our brains at once.

Roko, Instead of Shakespeare, perhaps resolve to get a sense of the knowledge, rationality, and general motivations and outlook of a larger set of people? Knowing who makes up our economy, governments, medical systems, and research institutions is as important as knowing how a lightbulb works for making good decisions in the world.

I'm far from perfect on this one; if anyone has suggestions for illuminating conversations to have with strangers, do share.

It's so sad that economics hasn't progressed over the last 100 years or so, beyond either "extreme central planning doesn't work" or "extreme unregulated free market doesn't work". Nothing, save Gesell and Yunus. Have you ever considered that cdo's, cds's and letters of credit were not invented for their own sake, but for a real world reason? What's going to be scarce in weirdtopia? The normal? Or, if I can have all the gadgets I want and never need a job or a place to live, talent and hard work? I think a lot of dissatisfaction comes from 1) frustration, 2) popculture. Our imagination is stuck in either LOTR or Star Trek. The reality is underground. Under people's noses a sea change is going on. Physics and philosophy have been demoted and biology rules. What if a patient cured himself (any affliction) by exchanging, through bodily fluids, the necessary molecules synthesized by the body of another human? Why should humans not install photosynthesis in themselves? No need for fancy electricity, just light. Sure handy for spacetravel. I think people's sensibilities have been numbed, so they don't recognize, for example, that our culture is musically best typified by death metal. The drilling, shrieking, roaring... wait! any modern building site. The reason "it ain't happenin" is that evolution just bumbles along, frame by frame. It has no direction. We see the snail's pace and demand a two hour film. But if you want a film, the answer is to go out and construct it.

Economic weirdtopia . . .after the Ultimate Crash of 2105, the best ems got together and created a new universal atomic currency, based on not just on gold, but on reserves of quark-gluon plasma made from gold nuclei in deference to mankind's historical preferences.

Sexual weirdtopia. . .since death is over through nanotechology or uploading into perfect android bodies you can get on a 3-year-lease, there's no need for birth. If ems want to create a new being from themselves, they just copy different brain modules from the catalog and create the perfect "children" who share all the traits & values they want them to have.

Technological weirdtopia. . .once we found gravitational waves, we decided few things were as beautiful as watching black hole spin-flips. How majestic to see the jets reverse - like Niagara Falls but much much better. They become the new lunar eclipses. The AIs decide for retro-aesthetic reasons to resort to communicating only via gorgeously polished and highly decorated ebony "punch cards."

Cognitive weirdtopia. . .since unlimited thinking power is available via copy & merge for ems, or simple access to AIs, thought has become devalued. Who wants it when it isn't rare? Real physical sensation becomes more highly valued than ever, and people pile hop into giant "cuddle piles" with numerous artificial cats just to feel the warmth.

Governmental weirdtopia. . .we discover the aliens learned long ago how to encode their whole being into several kinds of waveforms. Thus the first message SETI finds is actually the ambassador itself. It informs us of the spectral rules governing the bands given to various alliances and tells us where to find the repeaters. The cosmos is governed by a universal FCC.

All-encompassing weirdtopia:

Humanity continues as it has for the last several thousand years, learning new things, changing its views, constantly refining its thoughts and actions. It makes mistakes and learns from them, or fails to learn and repeats them, repeatedly. It's splintered into many groups who hate each other for no particular reason, create wars, famine, and disease, despite wealth and cures. There is a great disparity in all things between different people in different places, including knowledge, wealth, and enjoyment of life.

Evolution turns out to hold sway even once humanity tries taking over the process, and countless lines of human and technological enhancement become 'extinct' while others flourish to take their place. Utopia, dystopia, and weirdtopia exist together in varying degrees and in different locations among humanity's diaspora, forming a highly complex, dynamic, adaptive universe that continues on despite all the great changes.

Your science weirdtopia seems a lot like how MMORPGs work now, to a large degree. There's an internally consistent set of world-rules, but they won't tell you what they are. Sure, people are happy to share their experimental results with you, but you have to go looking. Spoilers aren't left out in the open.

Why would we need the weirdtopia science to be performed on the physical world? Wouldn't new world-rules, optimized for the fun of learning them be better?

Sexual Weirdtopia: What goes on consensually behind closed doors doesn't (usually) affect the general welfare negatively, so it's not a matter of social concern. However, that particular bundle of biases known as "romantic love" has led to so much chaos in the past that it's become heavily regulated.

People start out life with the love-module suppressed; but many erstwhile romantics feel that in the right circumstances, this particular self-deception can actually better their lives. If a relationship is going well, the couple (or group, perhaps) can propose to fall in love, and ask the higher authorities for a particular love-mod for their minds.

Every so often, each loving relationship must undergo an "audit" in which they have the love-mods removed and decide whether to put them back in. No unrequited love is allowed; if one party ends it, the other must as well...

Economic: everyone owns a nanoassembler but mass production and copy operations are prohibited. Sexual: age of consent is raised to 600 years.

So, the question is "Whose utopia is it anyway?". Clearly not everyone would agree upon these utopia/dystopia definitions, so if future AIs are to be created instilled with the noblest of human values whose value system should their BIOS contain? Of course this requires you to confront the notion that humans have somewhat diverse value systems, not all of which may be friendly towards science or western libertarian thinking.

Let's say this is supposed to be a economic weirdtopia - or something like that.

Let's suppose there is more or less constant connectivity to internet equivalent so that you can 'see' whatever other people are broadcasting as information. Twitters and facebooks of the new era are widely adopted. Essentially this will also make possible to have near perfect sousveillance.

This is world where people find meaning to their lives through stories - endless damsels in distress and knights in shining armor, wise wizards, devious politicians and whatever. People learn to change their roles in search of a meaning - perhaps broadcasting new information on their social networks. Helpful CEO of yesterday might be todays villainous power broker as boredom was creeping to their local social network and something had to be done.

One can use anything that creates a more meaningful story out of the situation. People constantly pay attention to other people to see what kind of stories they living out while trying to experience stories themselves. When someone helps you to find a more meaningful shape to the situation by acting out some role that was apparently missing you reward them with your attention and cooperation.

This would create a world where you can fairly expect that world is pleasantly suprising and complex. Everyone could expect to live out pleasant fantasies and to participate stories of other people. They would create and carve meaning from their social network.

The art of combining several stories would be perhaps most highly appreciated skill - it would mean people can expect that when spending more time around you they can find out new kinds of experiences - surprises of most pleasant kind. Letting those people to use whatever resources they need would be good idea - after all they have created interesting situations previously from whatever has been at hand.

Problem with this skill of combinatorial storytelling is of course that you have to understand what kind of stories other people are experiencing - keep tabs on people - and quickly see how those stories might be combined with stories of other people.

You could still have recurring characters in story of your life as before - and more notably perhaps there would be more chances for having your personal villains and antagonists to whom you appear as a antagonist - match made in story world. Finally killing anyone would hardly make any sense - why kill someone interesting and why kill someone uninteresting? It is so much better just leave them hanging off the cliff just to have them return later back to you with a vengeance.

Keeping tabs on lives of other heroes and villains would be interesting too - most highly talented people living out most extravagant lives would be appreciated as people setting up new standards to aspire to. Not because their trappings are better, but because they have even more fun stories to live through. They might have new and better stories that you could perhaps adapt to your own life.

Existential weirdtopia: We realize that everything that is, including our apparently unique personal identities, is actually part of God's self-made weirdtopia, which hse thought of right before hse discovered that existence is ultimately meaningless and futile, became enlightened and vanished into Weirdvana.

Utopia: Involuntary suffering is successfully abolished. Technology that enables it's controllable inhibition is freely available for all personhoods.

Dystopia: The perversion of paradise engineering technologies for the creation of horrific weapons and torture devices, for instance; a (infinitely indestructible) nanosuit that incarcerates the body and paralyses it. Nanoprobes from the suit invade the body and it's systems in order to inflict the maximum (infinite?) amount of physical and mental pain upon the victim whilst keeping it alive indefinitely (infinitely?). Said suit for an infinitely more horrific version of locked-in syndrome that could never be broken free from.

Weirdtopia: A benevolent, negative utilitarian dictator AI uses time travel in an attempt to prevent the creation of all life in order for all suffering to never occur.

Utopia: Virtual reality/mental augmentation allows for all to move into a cosmos of their own self-created imagination. All is fun and play. Economy and Politics dissolve into an order of creation, art, experience, and discovery. The exploration of the infiniteness of the Universe is the main objective. New profound ideas are generated thousands of times a second. Everyone's minds are perpetually blown. Everyone is a perpetual state of LMAO.

Dystopia: Governments ban imagination augmentation, adding it to the drug war hit list. Imaginations are condemned, and make for poor workers. OR it turns out little value is gained from imagination machines, which merely become the new Television. Humanity continues to wander in samsara.

Weirdtopia: Augmentation opens up human beings the weirdness of the Universe, already populated with vast networks of intelligences, both benevolent and malevolent and weirdevolent. Nearly all of human history and endevour (though brought us here) becomes obsolete. We now must navigate an enormous ambivalent social order that has become aware of our presence.

Meta...

• Utopia: All possible utopias exist simultaneously. On a whim, one can instantly shift one's utopian situation to perfectly reflect one's mind so as produce maximum bliss/happiness/orgasm/utility/LMAO/utopianess/nirvana/whatever you want.

• Dystopia: All possible dystopias exist simultaneously. At every moment, one's dystopian situation shifts in perfect response to one's mind so as to produce maximum dissonance.

• Weirdtopia: All possible weirdtopias exist, but only when you think they don't. At every moment, one's existential situation shifts in perfect response to one's mind to produce maximum bewilderment. The world is always what you think it isn't. Even when you know it isn't what you believe it is. Weirdtopia has nothing to do with this description. To think weirdtopia impossible is for it to exist. Weirdtopia has both and neither everything and nothing to do with paradoxes.

Economic: people assign high utility to work and negative utility to consumption: we trade by agreeing to consume each other's product in return for their using ours. Third world aid takes the form of stealing their good and then secretly burning them.

Governmental: whenever anyone utters a rhyming couplet, that couplet becomes law, taking precedence over all previous laws. However, no couplet can be repeated, so political think-tanks hire thousands of poets to craft elegant new laws. The strongest new couplets are held in reserve for decades, in a MAD scenario.

Utopia/Logical Weirdtopia

There's an infinite number of universes that anyone can teleport between. Thanks to the infinite hotel paradox, each person in each universe find their own personal utopia.

Topological Weirdtopia

We live in a five-dimensional world with a huge curvature. There's billions of people within walking distance. Everyone has a built-in GPS, because otherwise you'd never find your way home.

Even weirder: After we're uploaded, we start just using geometry in games. You get somewhere by willing yourself to be there, and your perception of it doesn't include geometry.

Government Slightly Weirdtopia:

The government is a random sample of the population. I suspect it wouldn't actually be that different, but someone ought to try it.

Government Weirdtopia:

The government is a hive mind. It gives laws using IP over Demographics. People protest against it including the death rate, but it argues that it can't stop that any more than you can stop using certain brain cells.

Economic Weirdtopia:

Money grows on genetically modified spiders, which you have to go around and kill for money. You can buy stuff from other people, in which case they don't have to kill spiders, but mostly you get stuff from NPCs, who just destroy the money. You can also sell stuff to them, in which case they produce money and destroy the item. If you die hunting money spiders, you are reincarnated at the nearest graveyard.

Another:

Everything is free except advertising. You get the money to advertise by putting ads on your products.

Yet Another:

A sort of quantum teleportation of happiness is discovered. It's possible to buy someone else's happiness, and no matter how much you buy, you get the full effect. Billionaires are ecstatic beyond comprehension.

Cognitive Weird... event:

At first luddites choose not to be uploaded, but eventually they're forced to by the eminent domain laws. If they're not going to use that body mass to think, they'd better give it to someone who will.

Cognitive Weirdtopia:

The world is turned into a giant computer that makes the simplest possible extremely happy being. Everyone's extremely happy, but they can't think beyond that.

Another one:

In order to prevent people from modifying themselves so that they can't or don't want to modify themselves back, they're allowed to modify one other person, but not themselves.

I'm not sure which category this goes under, as it has elements of a few. General Weirdtopia: A demonstrably non-sentient species of animal is created, genetically optimised for cuteness and lovableness, possibly tailored to whatever each individual finds endearing. Everybody is given one or more of these Furballs as a pet. Stuff for humans, both neccessities and luxuries, is free, but anything that is to be given to one’s Furball must be earned by working, solving puzzles, or winning competitions. People will empathize strongly with their Furballs and status will depend on how well-groomed, well-fed, well-dressed, etc. your Furball is, so people will work hard to buy them all manner of gourmet foods and toys and little sweaters. Government positions are awarded based on the performance of canditates' Furballs in competitions similar to modern dog or horse shows that measure obedience, agility, and health/happiness. Letting someone else pet your Furball is a deeply intimate act associated with sex, and the genes of children’s Furballs are drawn from their parents’ Furballs.

Suppose we have the capacity to copy and delete brains, but we don't understand the brain well enough to manipulate it "to taste" much more than the clumsy ways we have today. (So no deleting specific memories, changing personality traits, etc.)

It seems to me that people would engage in a lot of "copy-suicide." Is something upsetting you? Make a back-up, activate your copy, delete your own mind. Now it's your double's problem. If you have a big test coming up, you could turn off, let your double study, and only come back after you've passed.

Theoretically, you could fast-forward through life in subjective experience, only sticking around for the good parts. (Sometimes, though, your doubles might not do what you ask...) Emo types would suicide & copy hundreds of times a day, stuck in a loop: the sad version of wireheading.

Sure, I'll play.

Economic: Human desires don't keep up with available resources; the resulting global resource surplus makes efficient resource distribution entirely moot. A vastly (though not quite Vastly) inefficient system emerges which is nevertheless able to maintain everyone in whatever standard of living they choose.

Sexual: Sexual mores vary radically from one community to another. In the absence of resource competition, some subcultures have adopted sexual pleasure -- artificially induced and, by convention, solely induced by others -- as their preferred unit of currency, providing individuals with mechanisms of mutual influence and interdependence... in other words, everyone is a whore. Others have (d)evolved into orgasmium. Others have worked out less overwhelming arrangements. More generally, Rule 34 applies on a vast scale: if you can think of it, there's a community out there somewhere doing it. Mutual disapproval is widespread.

Governmental: There is no single government. In the absence of the need for efficiency, humanity fragments into billions of independent subcultures defined by different strategies for making group decisions. (Many of these are more like large families than anything we would consider governments.) Without any real benefit to either warfare or trade, their interactions are mostly social -- more like forums on the Internet than what we would think of as governments. Obnoxious subcultures are isolated by the collective effort of their neighbors.

Technological: Technology as we think about it mostly doesn't exist. Instead, fully general nanotech packages that extract energy from the Source are integrated with almost everyone's bodies, responding to their thoughts. This is not considered separate from individuals any more than most people today consider their physiology separate from them; mostly, people think of themselves as living simple, uncomplicated lives under their nanotechnologically assembled fig trees, with none to make them afraid. (There are a few subcultures that insist on externalizing technology like spaceships, computers, replicators, houses, supercolliders and so forth; such technophiles, or "tech geeks," are condescendingly tolerated by the majority.)

Cognitive: Some subcultures we would think of as a single cognitive entity... a "groupmind," if you like... while others we would recognize as more normal social structures including distinct individuals. Subcultures of the first type consider those of the second type to be suffering a kind of dissociative identity disorder, and often offer therapeutic interventions, which type 2 subcultures respond to in various different ways. (This sometimes results in cultures being obnoxious; see Governmental above.) The distinction between "natural" and "artificial" cognitive entities is mostly meaningless; individuals (including city-sized ones) consider optimization technology part of their cognition in the same way that we consider families and writing and communities and so forth part of our own.

... You're not taking futurology seriously...

Governmental Weirdtopia: The form of government is an absolute monarchy. The sons and daughters of each monarch are raised in disadvantaged foster families, unknown to them (and even modified so they look like their foster parents). When they come of age, hidden tests ensure that they are sufficiently advanced in responsibility, wisdom, and compassion -- those who fail are killed, those who succeed inherit the throne (if more than one offspring succeed, the realm is split between them, if none succeed, the realm is absorbed by a nearby realm with a successful heir).

Cognitive weirdtopia:

Any time you are making a potentially life-changing decision (e.g. following this career or that one, commit to a relationship or ending it), you can ask an AI to produce several simulations of yourself from 10 years later who made different decisions. Then you can discuss with them, or they can discuss with each other, so that you get a good idea of how each choice will personally change you -- not just in a sense of pure stats (money made, etc), but in the sense of what sort of person you're likely to be.

Inspired by the "20 2020 Pennies" arc in the Penny&Aggie webcomic (ETA: which I discuss to a greater extent in a discussion post of its own ).

Is it my glass-half-empty outlook talking, or is Eliezer taking potshots at reality with several of the dystopic descriptions?

Technological weirdtopia: (This is slightly similar to Eliezer's description of scientific weirdtopia but not quite.)

Each piece of technological equipment is only allowed to those people who've displayed sufficient mastery of the corresponding technology of the previous level. Nobody's allowed a car or motorbike, unless they've mastered driving a horsecart or riding a horse (or atleast a mule). Pens are only allowed if someone can write sufficiently well with quill-and-ink, matches and lighters are only permitted to those who've mastered usage of the flint-and-tinder. Pocket calculators are restricted to those mathematical operations that their user could (given sufficient time) work out with pen-and-paper.

The idea behind this is to increase appreciation of technology, and to also maintain an adequate level of knowledge in the population about former technical levels if there's a catastrophic collapse/decline in civilization that destroys more modern technology.

Economic Weirdtopia: The generalization of Internet blacklists -- think Spamhaus -- to general boycotts and strikes.

Anyone can publish their own blacklist on any basis or none at all. You can subscribe to any blacklist, which will block you from having economic relations with entities on that list. You won't see a blacklisted company's products offered for sale in a store. If you own a store, people on a blacklist you subscribe to won't be able to enter. If you subscribe to a list that just blacklisted your employer, you're now out on strike.

Some blacklists are defined on moral or ethical terms: the Sierra Club publishes one; so does Focus on the Family. Others are defined on reputational terms: Consumerist's is well-followed in certain circles. Again: Anyone can publish a blacklist. If I get ripped off by someone, I put them on my personal blacklist, to which some of my friends and relatives subscribe. Popular blacklists become more and more influential, and people endeavor to avoid being put on them.

Some blacklists block anyone who doesn't subscribe to them. Some blacklists block anyone who subscribes to certain other blacklists. Some blacklists are transitive. The Ku Klux Klan publishes a blacklist of non-white people and businesses that employ them. The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a blacklist of everyone who uses the Klan's blacklist.

One very popular blacklist lists people who change their blacklist subscriptions too frequently.

Sexual Weirdtopia: Truly comprehensive sexual education.

Before you graduate high school, you've fucked and been fucked; flogged and been flogged; received at least one (purely experimental, rather innocuous) sexually transmitted disease and had it cured; experienced monogamy including (artificially heightened) jealousy; cheated and been cheated on; loved and lost. You haven't really been raped, or impregnated, or killed by autoerotic asphyxiation: but you've taken memory tape from people who have. You've been through Leather Week and Furry Week and BiPolySwitch Week and Transvestite Week and Cybersex Week and Quiet Family Week and Asexual Week.

So has everyone else, just as they've been to biology class and civics class and gym class. You've seen a cross-section of all the fetishes, kinks, perversions of human sexual experience -- their risks, their appeals, and the skills you'd need to learn to really enjoy them and be appreciated by others who enjoy them.

You are now expected to choose a sexual orientation in the same way that you choose a career: based on your talents, your interests, and what's in demand.

Guidance counseling is available.

Sexual Weirdtopia:

Everyone is celebate every other year. Because these periods go between birthdays, people arrange relationships on this basis, and there are tragic couples born on the same day but a year apart.

Technological/Cognitive Weirdtopia: Everyone runs on computronium, in a simulation that starts out rather like normal, but everybody has an undo button: at your option you can undo everything except progress made in your own mind, up to any point in your life since the simulation began. There are safeguards in place to prevent two people from doing this at the exact same time, but otherwise there are no limitations on use; you can redo a second or a century, once or a thousand times. It takes a lot of "real" time for the simulation to progress to everyone's satisfaction beyond the first five minutes.

I'm curious as to whether there exists a single intelligence-configuration which would theoretically optimize the ability of such intelligences to have fun (as the term has been used in this sequence.) Somehow, most attempts at Utopia/Weirdtopia give me the feeling of being momentary distractions that people will tire of after a pretty short time of living in them -- perhaps this is a result of evolutionary psychology, as I don't think that [ability to have fun] necessarily increases genetic fitness.

If longevity utopia is an L-year lifespan for some large L and longevity dystopia is a ten-year lifespan, here's a longevity weirdtopia. Divide everyone's L-year life into L/10 ten-year pieces separated by long intervals of "pause" or "hibernation", and make these pause intervals so long that the group of people "awake" at any point in time is only a small fraction of the world population, with different people constantly rotating in and out. (I'm assuming here that total "awake" person-years and not total civilization-years are the limiting resource. And obviously I'm skipping over a lot of things, like procreation. But there's a lot of room to vary the scheme in response to all the obvious objections.)

Some reasons why I find this idea interesting and not just weird: 1) it would help solve problems involving Dunbar's number, 2) it might turn world history into something less massively parallel and more like a story, 3) there's a "deep time" feel, 4) I wonder to what extent it assuages people's sense (justified or not) that death gives life meaning.

Inspired by the forum structure of Less Wrong

Currency has been replaced by a point system based on one's total contributions to society. Points determine one's value allowance of luxuries, but all necessary commodities are provided regardless of point level. A certain requisite level of points is required to hold various positions of responsibility. Points can also be spent for the privilege of breaking various rules or social expectations, or for taking away points from others (thus taking away their right to hold a position of responsibility, as well as their privileges) at a costly rate of conversion. The assumption is that even if people accrue points in order to victimize others or spend them on rule breaking privileges, the conversion rate will still require them to perform net positive contributions to society in the process.

On further reflection, I suppose this isn't that different from the system we already have, but it might be able to beat it if you suppose that we can do better than the free market at judging people's overall contribution to society.

Weirdtopia: sex is private. Your own memories of sex are only accessible while having sex. People having sex in public will be noticed but forgotten. Your knowledge of who your sex partners are is only accessible when it is needed to arrange sex. You will generally have warm feelings towards your sex partners, but you will not know the reason for these feelings most of the time, nor will you be curious. When you have sex, you will take great joy in realizing/remembering that this person you love is your sex partner.

Hi All -

This is my first time posting a comment here @ Less Wrong.

I really liked both this post and Eliezer's story 'Three Worlds Collide' - so much so that I've written my own weirdtopian story, 'Round Robin'.

You can read it at the following link, if you'd like:

http://www.wordcereal.com/serial/?story=18

p.s. I apologize that this comment is kinda spammy - I'm posting it because I actually think you might be interested, not to drive traffic (but you'd just have to take my word on that :)

As the true knowledge of science is kept for the conspiracies then only those that have tried and failed in the conspiracies are able to work on or build technologies as those that have succeeded are busy finding new things and making new technology. To those that have only learned the publicly available knowledge this technology is like magic or religion and as they have never been curious about the conspiracies enough to try to understand the technology it remains that way. The technology provides for their every need and want and while the common people do much of the work that makes the system work they have no clue as to what it is they do or why. For them the founders of businesses, the scientists, and the whatever else the top conspirators are called are as gods that if obeyed provide for every desire and if spurned bring ruin.

Those that failed to reach that elevated status are then as priests; that is the managers and the technicians. As they, the failed, themselves do not understand fully everything that they do they allow for much ritual and elaborate rules to evolve around the technology such that if one is not a member of the conspiracies then not following the ritual can get one banned or forced into gladiator service.

Those in the conspiracies can wear whatever they wish and do whatever they wish with the technology available to them, they are denied access to anything that they have not yet discovered.

Economic: The economic conspiracy has unlocked the secret of predicting the markets with a high degree of accuracy such that only by trading with inside information can one make money by trading on the market. Likewise due to the social rules only those in the conspiracy (or only through the conspiracy) are businesses formed. This leads to moderately inefficient markets such that nearly any common person (or manager for that matter) could tell one of some business they would like to see formed but as they do not see themselves as able to form a business and it is not socially acceptable to do so they wait for some one in the conspiracy to step in and create the desired business. The AI and conspiracy attempt to stay on top of this and are aware of this inefficiency but have not been able to fix it (leaving the top level of that conspiracy empty).

The conspiracies are extremely wealthy as each has access to vast amounts of inside information and each creates unique highly beneficial products and services.

Government The vast wealth and market control of the economic conspiracies has made normal government obsolete. Elections are held in which the winner is known before hand and is powerless to do anything. Luckily due to the vast improvements of the conspiracies no one expects them to do anything so it works out okay.

The legal code slowly morphs into a neofuedalistic system where those that are in the conspiracy are immune against all accusations involving an uninitiated and presumed innocent even among the failed.

However, instead of trial judge or jury a probabilistic model is created with priors that weighs only the empirical evidence to determine who is guilty of what. Once guilt is determined the model simulates the crime to determine lost utility and an equivalent transfer of utility is assigned as punishment. As public gladiator fights provide high positive utility to the spectators and high negative utility to the criminals the most common form of punishment is gladiator fighting for a predetermined number of fights with pain modifiers to ensure a fair punishment. Cryonics and body regrowth ensure one endures the correct number of fights and allows the fights to be to the death.

Cognitive Augmentation to a high intelligence level is done automatically before birth. Basic minimal implants are given while still children but most are reserved until it is known what if any conspiracy will be sought after.

Once it becomes clear that no knowledge is sought after the option is available to turn ones body over to an AI and have the brain disconnected from the rest of the body so that the AI may use the body as an inexpensive cog in farming or manufacturing. The brain is then given infinite pleasure through simulated experiences.

If that is not desired then one must work for ones living and entertainment as a common person. Additional augmentation is given according to the task assigned to you. Family, religious, and sexual activities are only monitored enough to ensure replacement due to accident or suicide. If unlimited children are desired then one is required to join extra planetary colonization efforts.

The conspiracies limit augmentation according to what could provide evidence of information or theories that are being withheld until they are discovered by the initiates.

That is my attempt.

Sexual Weirdtopia:

The government takes a substantial interest in people's sex lives. People are expected to register their sexual preferences with government agencies. A certain level of sexual education and satisfaction is presumed to be a basic right of humanity, along with health care and enough income to live on. Workers are entitled to five days' annual leave for seeking new or maintaining old romantic and sexual relationships, and if your lover leaves you because you're working too hard, you can sue your employer and are likely to win. Private prostitution is illegal, but the government maintains an agency of sex workers, who can be hired for a fee, or allocated free of charge to adults who apply on the basis of "sexual hardship" (defined as having not had sex in the last six months), and form part of "optional field work" for sex education classes at the appropriate level. There are government funded dating and matchmaking agencies. Also, mandatory registration for Creepy Doms and Terrible Exes.

Creepy and more than a little disturbing? Yes. Arguably better than the standard Sexual Utopia in some respects? Yes, if you'd asked me when I was 18 or even 21. What use is a sexually permissive society when you, personally, aren't getting any?

Phys. Ed. Utopia: Everyone exercises regularly, eats their wheaties, has athletic sex with good looking people.

Dystopia: Everyone is big and flabby and disgustingly lazy. Ability to use body atrophies until even standing up is an extreme challenge.

Weirdtopia: Children initiate mandatory ninja training at age 5. The world is full of parkour courses where once there were sidewalks. People are judged harshly if they can't keep up.

OR

Rather than classical "good health," fashionable people sculpt their bodies into interesting shapes with the help of highly specific and commonly-performed exercises prescribed by regimen-planning software.

Economic: Looking at the common factors, it's about high vs low barriers to entry. The idea of non-entry is thus an obvious place to look. The first thought is a "gift economy". Riffing off the idea of the Bayesian Conspiracy, we get furtive students exchanging notes in dark alleys: a world where economy is forbidden. The exact nature of what resources are available to each Bayesian Initiate are left as an exercise for our FAI Overlords, but should presumably be sufficient to avoid students being incapable of building the requisite experimental apparatuses for their latest project.

Sexual: Again, focusing on the common ground, the difference is "readily available" vs "tightly restricted". Thinking about fun theory, the idea of sex as some sort of reward seems obvious - presumably one related to self-understanding and building relationships. Everyone is situated such that they have a genuine route to satisfaction, whatever their desires may be. I'd suspect desires are also tweaked somewhat downwards - it's more a driving force like curiousity, not an urgent biological imperative. It's rewarding to pursue, not just to receive (but, like curiousity, it works best when you actually achieve the goal). Unsure what durations look like, but things are well-enough tweaked that there aren't violent break-ups when one partner loses interest. Probably sexuality is something that ebbs and flows over time, letting people focus on deep, intimate sharing with people at times, and letting them get lost in other challenges at other times.

Government: Centralization vs Democratization of power; the tyranny of the minority vs the majority. Both are seeking to enforce morality on those who desire to do "wrong". Both are seeking a universal system of moral authority. Certainly, a large chunk of disagreement can be resolved between the combination of being led to understand our own extrapolated volition, and the elimination of scarcity. When there are no factual disagreements, and no suffering from the status of others, then I think it would take a fairly abnormal human to still desire non-consensual violence. This still feels more like a fixed utopia than any sort of weirdtopia though.

Technological: Being lazy, we invoke the Bayesian Conspiracy: you start with next to nothing, and can benefit from those technologies you're able to implement yourself. Given a few thousand years, you ought to have computers back! Please consult economics for the question of resource scarcity; we probably don't want to hand anyone who asks for it a chunk of U-238, and it wouldn't be terribly polite to start the students off with nothing more than an unlimited supply of hydrogen (although if they were the omnipotent administrator of a simulated universe, and could thus build stars, then planets, then life, I'd find the resulting projects utterly fascinating!)

Cognitive: For this one, let's assume the Bayesian Conspiracy doesn't surpress anything developed 21st century or earlier. Computers offer prospective Initiates obvious ways to exponentially amplify their understanding of science, and at a certain Level of the Conspiracy, you have to start showing pretty impressive exponential growth. Since you have to understand a problem before you can build a tool to solve it for you, you now have the ability to automate large chunks of the "boring" parts of science. There's still the joy of discovering more-optimized algorithms, although this will only be relevant for programs with fairly long run times, or for the inherit beauty that comes with elegance. Any unfriendly AI, grey goo, etc. is stopped by the FAI overlords and thus the world is kept safe. This is considered a failing mark, and you are summarily stripped of all the knowledge you've learned from the Conspiracy and forced to start over as a Zeroth Level adept once again. Developing a Friendly AI is required to reach Level 10, at which point you can start doing "raids" (group-based adventures, for those unfamiliar with WOW :)). The FAI Overlords, for whatever reason, can only reproduce via this method, and place a strong value on the diversity this adds to their ranks. Guided AI research is, for whatever reason, unsatisfying to them - it has to be someone who went from pre-science to FAI all on their own. Fortunately, the FAI Overlords aren't omniscient, so some cheating does occur (see Economics). Higher level adepts are usually much better at cheating, which helps prepare them for doing raids.

Government Weirdtopia: all nations operate as divisions of a single organization. these subdivisions are further divided into even smaller divisions which are also divided in turn. This pattern continues until it reaches the point of bands approximately the size of hunter-gatherer bands so as to allow full optimization of social relations. each band exerts major control over issues of concern, as well as weaker influence over matters concerning other bands, thus allowing any band to be overruled if it strays too far from what its neighbors consider rational. Bands exert more influence over other communities in nearby locations than those in distant lands. the exception to this is that a community will hold more influence over several communities a random distance anywhere above 2000 miles away than over communities in its immediate vicinity. citizens of one community will be encouraged to simultaneously view neighboring communities as both separate nations and neighboring towns. Any citizen can change the world with a good enough idea that spreads far enough, however more weight shall be given to the opinions of those deemed more trustworthy through carefully administered and highly organized tests designed to test wisdom and competence. Groups of representatives meet to decide issues concerning larger areas, however these representatives must first be proved highly trustworthy and the positions are low paying and temporary, so as to eliminate corruption and ensure that only competent citizens who are truly concerned over the state of the world can hold any real power of much difference from their neighbors.

in this way all states will have complete authority and the power to act swiftly only while making rational decisions, while at the same time being completely restricted when making decisions that can be construed as foolish or malicious. and i DARE someone here to think further outside the box on this issue.

Widespread access to cryogenic suspension and reliable, reversible neuron <=> computer conversion and 'immunological reset' techniques redefine the popular concept of identity to the point that internal organs are considered transferable property rather than part of an individual. Pumping blood with the same heart you were born with is as unfashionable as living in your parents' basement. The law changes to reflect this, so that (for example) any given military surgeon has training in when and how to exercise the option of putting injured soldiers back together using parts from nearby civilians, and hardly anyone objects so long as appropriate monetary compensation is provided. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

Family Weirdtopia: Individual autonomy pairs with a lower-energy, more localized existence built on the framework of dense, diverse urban population centers. The importance of kinship in human social systems diminishes gradually. Projected far enough out: Lineal descent is tracked solely through the direct relationship between mother and child; you do not share a family name with your grandparents or grandchildren. One's romantic and sexual relationships are not typically expected to outlast their natural lifespan; it's always nice when a couple finds themselves together after years or decades, but to pursue that as a goal would be seen as a strange, somewhat immature obsession or possibly an uncommon fetish. Despite this, social units and parent-child families are not isolated; the old saw "it takes a village to raise a child" is taken for granted, and your neighbors, friends and community members are likely to take a direct interest in your children's upbringing. Committed "mentor" and "caretaker" relationships are provided by means of various social institutions to those whose community ties haven't naturally offered up people willing to specifically dedicate to those roles.

Economic Weirdtopia: Bioregional commonwealths become the dominant world-system. This isn't a utopia; one's lifestyle, political and social opportunities become increasingly sharply-defined by where one lives, as do elements of culture and economic opportunity. Trade flows naturally across ecological and economic boundaries, and the existence of air and sea travel mean long-distance trade and travel remain viable, but globalization is a thing of the past, as is standardization. Life is very good in your little corner of the world as long as you fit there comfortably, but if you don't it's a long and difficult process to just relocate. It's not a simple matter of gathering your things and moving, after all -- your destination community needs to have room and someone to sponsor or support you during the transition to a very different way of life. International finance as we know it is dead in the water, but many forms of poverty and lack are a thing of the past. Cultural insularity is checked only to the degree that the citizens of a given Commonwealth engage with folks outside their milieu online.

Cognitive Weirdtopia: Standard cultural practice is to treat most forms of pedagogy or personal development like forms of budo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud%C5%8D#Civilian_vs._military). Early childhood education more closely resembles a freeform series of monastic-type practices guided by one's mentors; the emphasis is on the disciplined practice and refinement of whatever idea is being taught; understanding is the pupil's job. The less-pernicious aspects of self-help culture are seen as basic common sense; most people "know themselves" very well and by adulthood, are very skilled in several major disciplines (though "disciplines" spans the entire spectrum of human endeavor). Rationality is not inherently prized; it is more natural to most people to understand their failure modes and plan life around them rather than strive to change -- which is usually seen as a risky endeavour, less laudable when successful for the sheer inadvisability of teaching the average person to do so for it's own sake.

Economic Weirdtopia: http://xkcd.com/512/ of course. What else?

Sexual Weirdtopia: To maximize heterozygosity, once a month each man aged between 14 and 60 is compelled to have sex with a fertile woman randomly chosen throughout the world.

Governmental Weirdtopia: The winner of the yearly World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing Championship automatically becomes the world dictator for a 12-month term.

Technological Weirdtopia: After a plan to activate a paperclip-maximizing super-AI is uncovered and its participants convicted, paperclips are banned worldwide. Staple manufacturers rejoice.

Cognitive Weirdtopia: All schoolchildren are expected to learn Lady Gaga lyrics by heart, read all Dan Brown books, and stuff like that.

Two possibilities for sexual weirdtopia:

1. As technology finally finishes eliminating the physical risks of sex, the social rules surrounding it break down; preferences, orientations, and fetishes diversify and proliferate until they're beyond hope of easy enumeration. The concept of romance is forgotten entirely, and sexual preference-sets replace religions in the social structure of society as each develops their own subculture and community and infrastructure, in which most everyone can meet and make friends with which they can have their preferred brand of sex. I would call this the fetish-set-as-tribe and romance-dissolved-into-friendship future.

2. As direct and non-invasive brain-computer interfaces reach their potential and proliferate, full-sense full-immersion virtual reality worlds will offer sensory experience equal or better than the real world with none of the risks. As people take the path of least resistance to their desires, interacting with other humans through the virtual worlds, most people stop having sex "with their material bodies" all together, as the real world offers no better sensory experiences and is far worse optimized for meeting compatible personalities. Relationship dynamics don't look all that different from online-intimate relationships today; jealousy proves to be unconquerable human nature, and romantic attachment either endures on its own or is deliberately preserved. I would call this the ultimate-social-internet future.

Homestuck's Alternia probably qualifies as a sexual weirdtopia (as well as a regular dystopia in pretty much every other way). See here for a cursory overview.

10% of women have never had an orgasm.

I think this is way too optimistic for a sexual dystopia.

More than weirdtopia, this article shows to me how easy it is to make a shared dystopia, but how hard it is to make a shared utopia. All your dystopia examples sound horrible to me, but for the utopia, most of them are either "scary", "sick" or "I wouldn't like that".

I would say it's a side-effect of inferential gaps, I come from a different culture, I've a very different view about politics, economics, sexuality or Apple, ... since the naive way of making utopia is taking what you consider positive and extending it, your utopia will look scary/sick/not desirable when those things are negative-sounding to me.

Just for fun, here are some answers from existing writers.

• Economic: There's no such thing as "wealth" or "poverty". Any material good or service can be obtained simply by asking. This is the setting of many SciFi novels about post-Singularity worlds (see Charles Stross or Iain M Banks or even Cory Doctorow sometimes).
• Sexual: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. People have no sex drive normally, and no gender. Instead, they periodically enter a phase similar to estrus, at which point they acquire a gender (male or female) based on environmental factors. (I was going to use the world of Simoun originally, but that might be a bit too blatant).
• Governmental: Administrators, legislators, and other public officials are determined by lottery. Robert Sheckley had a book with that setting, but I forgot the name...
• Technological: Technically, our current world is already pretty close. In addition, any "high fantasy" book with magic in it would qualify.
• Cognitive: Blindsight by Peter Watts, especially the alien parts.

Dystopia: Science is considered boring and possibly treasonous; public discourse elevates religion or crackpot theories; stem cell research is banned.

Dystopia: 10% of women have never had an orgasm. States adopt laws to ban gay marriage. Prostitution illegal.

Is it just me or do we already live in this world?

Educational weirdtopia:

All children start out as fast uploads in a realistic simulation environment that starts out resembling stone-age hunter-gatherer life. They can't die or be seriously hurt in the sim. To proceed, they have to reinvent civilization and science by themselves. The sim is populated by AI-controlled characters, who occasionally nudge them towards the problems, like "this fire thing you sometimes find around sure is handy, too bad we can't make any ourselves" or "I think someone's stealing our cattle, but there are so many it's hard to know if we still have all we had yesterday". The sim proceeds to more advanced environments as the children work through more complex problems like mathematics, mechanics, construction and basic scientific method. Children may stay in any level of the sim indefinitely long if they have not yet figured out how to proceed or just prefer to stay where they are.

Once they have figured things out up to uploading human minds and running them in a simulation, they know enough to recognize the telltale signs that they are currently in a simulation. They can now let themselves out and be recognized as an adult. Young adults out of their sim will be basically speaking a private language and may have an extremely idiosyncratic way of conceptualizing science, but they should be reasonably well-equipped to start figuring out how their new surroundings do things.

(Note: I am assuming no strong AI, and no super-nanotech, though some very advanced bioengineering, Immortality is a given.)

Economic: There's a kind of an odd relationship between massive, faceless companies which mass produce stuff, and every citizen making his own stuff, some very expertly. Higher education over long lifespans and various advances and just higher supply of everything means that even things like design of VLSI integrated circuits and whole infrastructures is within the capability of unfunded individuals. There's a lot of market decision and also government control of the mass producers, which have no identity at all. They basically make the right amounts of what people want. There is a hugely politicized and romanticized process of getting one's own designs adopted by the big manufacturer.

Goverment: The head of the government is a brutal, ruthless individual tyrant who last did anything brutal or ruthless thousands of years ago during the Transitioning. This is actually a very good system.

Sex: Sex actually conforms much more closely to many current norms than it does today, although deviation is much more socially acceptable. Meanwhile, other norms have changed, mainly to eliminate the Cult of Shitty Relationships. However, there is some amount of structure to matchmaking and relationship criticism. There are real-world spaces that are so designated that anyone in them is specifically looking to meet lovers. Arranged marriage is sort of common, comes with decades-long less-committed test relationship, and is pretty stable since you have more-objective friends and family judging critically.

Science: Most citizens are not doing fundamental research or neccesarily knowledgeable about it. Fundamental research is often done by cabals. These do stand on the shoulders of giants, but they never publish anything harmful.

Economic: money is obsolete. Due to the ease of travel, transportation, and communication in this world, the problems with barter have evaporated, and we've gone back to our ancestral exchange of goods and services. For those instances when the only person who has what you want doesn't want anything that you have, you can use a barter broker, which incurs an additional expense no worse than exchanging currency or buying on credit today.

Sexual: we've biologically altered ourselves to not care so ridiculously much about sex anymore. Its still a fun thing to do, and people who want it still have it, but its not something that takes up a large portion of our mental energy. Laws about sex and romance are nearly nonexistent, due to it being seen as trivial. Rape is still illegal, but its also less likely to be committed in the first place (since the people who would be rapists in our world are more likely to commit other, non-sexual crimes of domination in this one).

Governmental: human beaurocrats directed and organized by a powerful AI. The AI has a "constitution" hardcoded into it, but other than that it obeys the voters on all policy decisions. Everyone can vote on every policy question via computer terminals at their local government office. Some policies require a mere majority vote to be put into action; other, more drastic ones require a 2/3 or 3/4 vote.

Technological: we all live in the Matrix.

Cognitive: we've genetically modified ourselves into a caste-based society, with people being born with different cognitive faculties and dispositions that make them ideal for certain careers. No one is forced into a certain career, but they are born with a strong inclination to desire the kind of work that they will naturally excel at. There are three basic castes to this hive. At the bottom are unskilled laborers who are just barely sentient, and cheerfully do mindless work and enjoy simple pleasures. In the middle are specialists with IQ's and personalities tailored for various skilled jobs. At the top are hyperintelligent, omni-benevolent cyborg bureaucrats.

There are no Utopias. There are only differing degrees of Dystopia and Weirdtopia. We are living in a dystopic and weirdtopic reality. The whole problem that sci-fi is facing today is due to this situation.

Culture itself is an alien symbiote of humanity. Culture has an intelligence which is of such an alien and different order to human intelligence, that comparing the two is like comparing human intelligence to information processing in the cell membranes of single celled creatures. Culture has long co-evolved with humanity, but is itself alien and at times starkly inhumane. A human's relationship to culture is like a human's relationship to her gut bacteria. There is a long evolved symbiosis, but also much potential for horror, and no capacity whatsoever for empathy.

Utopias are boring, because there are no unintended consequences. As beings born of unintended consequence, of the evolutionary process, we sense their artifice with every fiber of our being.

Weirdtopia writing is a useful exercise because, at the very least, we are trying to come up with an interesting unintended consequence.

Sexual AND Economic: Conventional AI breaks through and robots do the "boring" work. Natural resources are suddenly abundant and conventional monetary systems starts to loose grips with society. In its stead we begin trading, relishing in, diversifying in and exploring pleasure. Think Slaneesh cult but without the worst bads. I am having trouble putting it into words directly, it is still just a seed for my inspiration modules.

Economic:

Because of the end of scarcity, the economic roles of production and consumption have switched; wealth is now acquired by consuming, and producers pay consumers to use their goods or services. The right to make something is highly coveted and prestigious, and producing without a customer is illegal and severely punished.

Sexual:

You can have as many sexual partners as you want, but only one friend. It is considered good form to break up with your friend before making a new one. People with more than one friend are considered untrustworthy "players." It is very strange to live with or have an emotional connection to your sex partner, and the idea of marriage would scandalize anyone respectable.

Governmental:

Once elected, the president's mind is uploaded and replicated, to staff the entire government bureaucracy for the entirety of their term. At the end of their term, the minds are re-merged. For mental health reasons, no one is allowed to serve consecutive terms. No one has ever sought a second non-consecutive term. However, former presidents often distinguish themselves in the field of literature.

Aesthetic:

There are two types of respectable art: advertising and tragedy. The aesthetic merit of an advertisement is measured by the volume of consumer purchases it motivates. The aesthetic merit of a tragedy is measured by the number of people it inspires to commit suicide.

Technological:

Due to breakthroughs in biological engineering it becomes feasible to replace mechanical and electronic technologies with living ones. The designs are usually heavily modified humans. Nearly all sophisticated equipment or tools that do anything interesting are sentient, and many of them have human-level intelligence. It is frowned upon to use an inanimate object when avoidable, because it takes jobs away from the sentient ones.

Utopia: everyone transacts using bitcoins; dystopia: everyone transacts using government e-money.

Weirdtopia: all money is bacon. Everyone looks down on those crazy 'winebugs' & 'cheesebugs' and their much-forecast 'Great Decay'. Capital consumption becomes a problem.

I tried the exercise, and came up with an interesting werdtopia. http://moshez.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/going-outside/

Future Multi-Weirdtopia in a style remotely analoguous to Platonic Utopia.

Govermental Multi-Weirdtopia

By this point people have achieved immortality and no longer die, which is made possible by whatever future means - not the point. Anyway there's a Global/Solar/Galactic goverment which sets a constitution that at least contains

1. Bans all weirdtopias from manipulating existing data of citizens
2. All weirdtopias retain flexibility of sub-goverment
3. Citizens must not get imprisoned within weirdtopias and must be deported at certain intervals

And the idea is that in the Multi-Weirdtopia there are several different weirdtopias which you can choose to live in, and choosing to do so may or may not include the option of temporarily blocking pre-existing information of citizens. So these types of society sort of transform into fantasy reality - in the case that this is required - with the exception that it's also real and not just fantasy. (In a way similar to secret science)

Sexual Weirdtopia So for an example you would have a local goverment with in a single weirdtopia in which Sex would be banned and infringment of this law would lead to exile into the desert.(which would actually just lead to deporting from this particular weirdtopia - but you wouldn't know that) For citizens choosing to live with in this weirdtopia they would have certain portion of prior knowledge blocked to this fantasy/reality seem real. Anyway back to the point.

So people would live in this particular weirdtopia thinking that sex is banned and that no one actually has sex , except you would break the law and have sex anyway, which would create a thrill of getting caught. There would be SexPolice (Yeah I know) trying to catch criminals and once they would succesfully do that the culprit would get exiled and also get his/her blocked memories back with the possibility of rejoining this particular weird topia or any other.

Also I'm talking about a complete society in which the participants are the members of the society. The rules have simply been modified a little with this addition. The other weirdtopias of the multi-weirdtopia wouldn't need to be similar.

Well I guess this is not a good comment because this example not so much about real socities, rather just fantastic reality about how to pass the time. Does it make me look weird that my only example is sexual? Just joking :)

Economic Weirdtopia: Information is free, everything else is rationed.

Most things that previously required physical human labour are now automated, and 3d printer/assemblers are common place. However scarcity still exists in material resources. So every citizen is given an energy/materials ration that they can use as they wish (equal to the production level of society divided by the population). You can chose to use your energy raton on building things with your printer, travel food etc. Most people produce information of one sort or another (books, blog posts, music, assember designs etc.) and compete for fame via the quality of their creations, you gain status from producing things that everyone enjoys, but status cannot be directly transferred into material goods.

Utopia: The human utility function is worked out by an FAI. Maximal Fun for everyone results.

Dystopia: The human utility function is worked out by a malicious uFAI. Maximal unFun results.

Weirdtopia: Maximal Fun turns out to be the experience of changing utility functions. People have fun by exploring new and strange utilities... from the inside. FAI sets time limits on the state of new utility functions to change people back even if they afterwards don't want to. Time limits are based on the average length required to explore the possibilities of the new utility function.

Common initial examples include "love: time limit 3 years" and "orgasmium: time limit 1 minute".

Sexual Weirdtopia: It's illegal to be a virgin past a certain age, say 25. Each person must show proof that they've had sex at least once before their 25th birthday, or face punishment (which could range from a fine to execution, depending on the level of dystopian-ness desired). Stories could deal with the difficulties faced by unpopular or unattractive people in meeting this deadline, or with the complications entailed by the requirement of proof.

An interesting variation would be for the rule to apply only to one sex, say males.

Cognitive Weirdtopia:

The easiest way to produce a superhuman intelligence turns out to be wiring human minds together into a "Hive Mind" gestalt; gestalts are considered full 'persons' and mere humans are considered more like something between appendages and pets, but a given gestalt's character and personality are entirely dependent on the individual humans that make it up, and the happiness of the individual human members is the result of the happiness of the gestalt. Gestalts frequently solve disputes by swapping members, to promote empathy and share insights. Gestalts effectively function as highly cooperative corporations or family units where everyone with the gestalt cares deeply about the getsalt's goals and brings their own unique cognitive talents to bear solving them, while unconnected individual humans are devalued for simply lacking the capacity to think with as much breadth and depth as a gestalt can.

Technological Weirdtopia:

The nanotech revolution turns out to be very, VERY wet; the most efficient system of controlled nanoassembly is to simply have your own geneformed body excrete whatever you want to produce, if you can't just solve the problem by growing a new appendage. Sex, cannibalism and communication all merge into a single act; people win arguments by trying to eat each other, and the winner absorbs all the loser's memories.

Increasingly exotic biomedical research funded kickstarter-style. First round of patients sign away privacy rights and have their full sensory experiences recorded for the duration of treatment and recovery. "Highlight reel" of the sensies is shared with backers. It's widely understood, though seldom explicitly stated, that the most successful developments are unnecessarily painful and/or invasive in order to appeal to jaded old-money porn addicts. Cost to the patient for elective surgery plummets, and quality rises, until you can get a sex change, or custom 3-d printed replacement limb that exceeds the original spec, from a vending machine for barely above cost of materials... anesthesia sold separately.

Economic:

Everybody is self-sufficient or close to it, so the economic demands of the world are limited. Money is boring so everyone uses barter. The most common economic transaction is trading foods and spices, because nobody can manage to personally hunt/grow all of them. Some people are really good at trading and enjoy it, so they amass huge hoards of a couple of goods over the course of a few days then throw a big party. Doing this well is considered a prestigious thing to do.

Governmental:

People live in small tribes that handle their disputes by talking them out with everyone in the tribe. If people disagree with their tribe too often, they just find a new one that fits them better. Anybody who has a more global idea makes their new thing and sends it out into the wilderness, and if the AI in charge of the world decides it would make the world better, it becomes common to an appropriate extent. The easiest thing to get the AI to accept are new kinds of monsters.

Technological:

Household appliances are closer to modern standards, but mostly technology is pre-industrial. For many of their needs, people live off the land. For everything else, there's magic.

Cognitive:

Continued effort and study raises your raw intelligence at a glacial rate indefinitely, even past what would fit in an unmodified human brain, but people have better things to do than pursue that road until they're scary. Everyone would come across as uncannily smart by modern standards, but much of this is nutrition, happy lives, and access to really good therapy instead of raw brain stuff. There's only one superhuman AI, which mostly stays out of the way except to make sure you bump into people you'd make good friends with and that sort of thing.

Economic Weirdtopia: The economic order of the world has been completely re-arranged. Intellectual Property is the new Oil, Gold, and Food Grain all rolled into one. All natural resources that is found in any one geographical territory is automatically donated/dumped/transferred to a large holding by means of "fancy modern technology". This is done not simply because all countries have banded together to form a socialist unified globe, but because countries are equally keen on avoiding the paradox of plenty.

The global bodies such as the World Bank are overwhelmed with the amount of work they have to do, more specifically computing the value and contribution of each idea that each individual has made to the world. The two key economic schools are (a) those that believe a piece of IP should be accorded a value only based on what it can immediately accomplish, and (b) those that believe that any future ideas that may arise out of one particular idea should be included in the valuation of any one particular idea. Naturally, one limitation/criticism of school (b) is that it favours early filing and is biased towards idea that had been recorded earlier.

Trade barriers exist only with respect to technologies , but not the underlying materials that is used to create those technologies in the first place.

The world is no longer lacking for any basic needs, poverty and world hunger have been successfully eliminated, but there still exist international organisations whose prime function it is to ensure that every individual has a square meal at least three times a day. Unfortunately, the balance of credit is such that any attempt to dissolve these institutions or alter their ownership/functionality in any way carries the very high (and very probable) risk of having the entire system collapse in on itself. Indeed the world reached this phase only with all nations (the ones that survived from this day) pledging support and interest to these supportive organisations.

It is very unlikely for a single individual to amass any amount of wealth with which he might actually make a difference to the world, and stories such as those of the Oracle of Omaha have become stories of an unimaginably tall order, which a lot of the world's population dismisses as "mythology". However, any individual ambition can always be gratified as most people receive credit for the ideas they generate.

Technological Weirdtopia: Artificial Intelligence is deemed to be an impossiblity. Any form of technology that relies on random access is plainly futile. The efforts of humanity over the last 100 years have been proven to be fruitless. Search engines break down and for some reason only begin to function at a very primary rudimentary level, not anywhere near the efficiency of Google. However, data storage is a field in which remarkable strides of progress are made. What once took the entire internet to store can now be stored in a micro chip (even today the entire information on the internet does not take too much space )and the amount of information that has been recorded in human history is increasing super exponentially. However, the amount of information is rapidly reducing. There then develops a technocrat class whose speciality it is to learn and retain in memory large chunks of information, and these are then employed by large corporations in lieu of R&D departments. Smart phones will no longer be smart, but all phone calls all over the world would simply be free.. there is just that much additional bandwidth. No service company exists any more, there simply is just a mass of optic fibres and cables running the world over, giving even the poorest free phone calls. Similarly, its very easy to send your photos all over the world, to anybody at extremely high vivid, life like resolutions. However, it is far more difficult ( to be read as "impossible") to pull out the picture of that cutie pie with blue eyes and dimple smile whom you were "sooo into" last month. Ground breaking inventions are created, perfected and then simply lost, leaving the inventor and the world at a loss until somebody comes along and does the exact same thing ten minutes later. It is ridiculously easy for anyone to change their identity, as plastic surgery , retinal chromatographic surgery, epidermal coloration surgery etc. have all been made possible easy and accessible to the common man. Or at least that was the case last week. No one has a fixed identity any longer as no one can keep track of who does what. The jail system works in a rather strange manner. Terms are extremely short, but horribly unpleasant. Various versions of the Ludovico treatment have been found to be used. No one remembers on whom though. Nevertheless, the fear of such torture is enough to keep people from walking down the road leading to a life of crime. At least for the most part. Surges in renewable energy have made energy so abundant that it would be cheap and affordable for the whole planet, if they could only find an effective way to transmit all the electricity. Unfortunately, most of the energy is wasted and there has not been no advance whatsoever in storage technologies, rendering the entire system a waste. There has been significant advances in biotechnology, not only do they have the know how to create new cells and organs, it is no possible to bio-engineer specific custom designed species, combinations of Darwin's finches and Crocodile Hunters best friends which were not thought to be possible by the illuminati of the previous century.

Technologal weirdtopia:
95% of all innovators have joined one of three factions: Cyberpunk, Biopunk or Steampunk, whose conflicting aesthetics make the Mac/PC debates look like playground scuffles.
As soon as one faction makes a new gadget, the others stubbornly construct their own version based on THEIR tech. (The biological toaster must be seen to be believed, and the continued existence of the Steampunk pneumatic-tube-based Internet is an ongoing miracle.)
Most "Square" technologies have been appropriated by one faction or the other; for example 'zipper' technology is officially classified as Steampunk, 'velcro' is Biopunk, and the easily-fabbed zip-ties are of course Cyberpunk.
A coalition from the remaining 5% of innovators recently TRIED to break out of the mold and form a workshop for neglected Square technologies such as fusion, meta-materials and superconductors, but now everybody else is referring to them as "those Crystalpunk guys" and several of the contributing scientists have recently begun sporting a crystals-and-togas motif...

Sexual weirdtopia:
Sens-o-tape technology can record and play full sensory experiences, and as usual, the porn industry is the first to cash in on the new trend. Naturally, 'amateur' sex pales in comparison to commercially produced, computer-enhanced experiences, and as a result, real-life sex dwindles in popularity, mostly performed by highly trained professionals on each other, or by long-term couples who have had the time to work out each other's specific buttons.

Economic Weirdtopia:
After population pressure have shifted the economic basis for money to "reproductive success", having ten kids is now restricted to billionaires. Harsher inheritance laws and gift laws have not only abolished unequal inheritance, but the money is also 'cashed in', giving heirs an non-refundable increase in allowed children. As a result, the measure of 'real' wealth becomes having a diverse network of affluent relatives to support your commercial endeavors via goods and services.
After a hundred years of this policy, the top 1% have become the top 10% - however, most of those people actually belong to sprawling interconnected clans.
On the bright side, the middle class have been substantially bolstered, and as parenthood shifts to becoming the prime status symbol in society, increasing amounts of time and resources are spent on education and child health.

Governmental Weirdtopia:
Every political candidate who gets even a single vote is elected to office. ("No votes wasted!") Consequently, there are over 5000 presidents of the United States (It would be more, but those with a constituency of less than 1000 people tend to drop out because the hassle isn't worth it.) Some presidents are simultaneously staff members of other presidents. Many presidents elected other people to be THEIR presidents. All presidents dictate policy, which affects precisely those citizens who voted for them.
A special network of supercomputers is continually busy calculating what laws, regulations and taxes apply to each particular citizen.

Cognitive Weirdtopia:
After the secrets of the mind have been unlocked, personality traits can now be bought and sold on the open market. Everyone wants a piece of successful businessmen's brains, and many people pay to have the currently-trending virtues and vices installed. There is a popular movement to mandate Integrity, if not Honesty, in anyone serving as a politician or CEO. (This is heavily resisted by current politicians and CEOs, but the install seems to be a competitive advantage for the up-and-coming politician.)

Utopia:  Sexual mores straight out of a Spider Robinson novel:  Sexual jealousy has been eliminated; no one is embarrassed about what turns them on; universal tolerance and respect; everyone is bisexual, poly, and a switch; total equality between the sexes; no one would look askance on sex in public any more than eating in public, so long as the participants cleaned up after themselves.

Sounds like another flavour of dystopia to me...