[card_zero]

That's an interesting one, "imagine if we could all agree not to violate each other's rights". Thing is, rights aren't fixed and absolute, unless stated so vaguely as to be useless, like "the right not to be coerced". It wouldn't just be a problem of trust and consensus, but of shared knowledge. I mean we'd have to have consensus about what our rights are, and more specifically, what constitutes a violation. Not to mention consensus about how reality is. So you get all these edge cases where clarification is needed, and that's why we have law courts: legal cases that set precedent are edge cases. Also, the situation, I mean culture, keeps changing, and we have to invent new rights to keep up. We're going to continue violating one another's rights so long as our mutual understanding is imperfect and so long as we're not a hive mind.

Not sure if this means we have to have locks, prisons, and militaries for all eternity.

[erikerikson]

Indeed. I tried a few phrasings before landing there and it's not satisfactory.

The underlying problem is that social knowing doesn't scale yet. A system which could solve the consensus problem to facilitate coordinated pockets of exploration of the possibility space would be required.

[card_zero]

Does this system fly through the possibility space in the form of a giant cube and say "resistance is futile"? The weird part is that my gut says I should resist taking part, and presumably cause trouble and perpetuate fighting. Maybe being pugnacious is part of human purpose.

[erikerikson]

It would seem to do the opposite to me, allowing diversity and allowing exploration, though the theoretical maxima of reality might have something similar to say. A key feature of such a system would be having no notion of right/desirability/etc. but only identification/observation/clarification of what is.

To your end statement, is purpose defined or, through us, created? Hopefully your attachment to pugnaciousness serves you.