Is the nation state structure part of our current problems?

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I got to thinking about this last night.

Everything's free and open, people can go wherever they want and do whatever they want (so long as it's legal or so long as they don't get caught).

The result - almost anyone you haven't already known for years has a question mark over their head (potential psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, borderline, dark empath - unknown quantity, non-zero risk).

I'm starting to think this is what makes our culture insane is that we're not set up to do this and have a functioning system.

I then started thinking about the Dunbar number (ie. 150) where this is supposed to be just the right number of people to work but then I remember that even if we artificially forced people into living in units of 150 with heavily filtered contact with the outside world it would just change the scale of the problem and also give an arbitrary amount of power to whatever systems or people are supervising said project.

This almost seems to suggest that either

a) We genuinely are overpopulated and genuinely are dealing with our own version of the Mouse Utopia experiment and runaway social feedback loops.

b) this is a both / and, a) but add - our only solution for finding those Dunbar numbers is that we have to make the leap into space exploration and get off of this rock (that it's a mathematical inevitability if we aren't going to suffocate ourselves as a species.

The best we could do for b) right now or in the next couple centuries, unless we have faster than light travel, would be James Corey's The Expanse - where we're Kardashev 1.x mining the solar system.


Probably nothing insanely novel here but I'm curious on what other thoughts people might add to the hypotheses / ideas above.

Gawd...you're all over the place.

The 'natural' state for humans to live in is a band of about sixty people, who are themselves part of tribe of about five hundred. And you all forage for food and resources over an area of many square miles. Thats how our ancestors lived in the Upper Paleolithic stone age, and how many groups of hunter-gatherers still live today. But the entire global population was only about three to five million in the Ice Age.

So you're right that our current state in which we all have to deal with more strangers than non strangers in "tribes" (ie nation-states) of tens of millions of people is indeed "unnatural".

But its the best we can do. And its a miracle that the nation-state works as well as it does. Dont know if you're proposing going down in size- to smaller units, or going up in size to the whole planet operating as a tribe. But either way it would not work as well.

Space colonization is a whole nother can of worms.

So taking this post at face value, the "problem" is that it's not safe to trust strangers. I suspect there's another set of second-order problems that are being hinted at (perhaps polarisation and so forth), but I wouldn't like to second guess what those are intended to be.

I don't personally feel like I can't trust strangers. I mean, I wouldn't want to bet my life on them actively coming to my aid, but I know most people are not threats to my safety, regardless of how one wants to label them. Ultimately the difference between my friends and strangers is biographical accident. Most people are just trying to live their lives without hurting other people.

I don't actually think our culture is all that insane? You know, considering we're upright apes. I'm generally struck by how well we get along. As Steven Pinker is fond of pointing out, we're becoming steadily less violent, steadily better at respecting other people, steadily richer - life is broadly getting better. Our society has some serious room for improvement, but it doesn't need a revolution.

I think we'll probably see our population naturally plateau before we establish even a permanent moonbase, never mind more sustainable long-term options like space stations. The population is 8 billion now, and I remember when it first hit 6 billion. We're probably going to hit 10 billion in the 2050s and might not hit 11 billion ever. There's lots of room for more sustainable city living without jumping straight to space.

In reality....the very few people who are truly cuckoo ruin it for the vast majority of us who are not cuckoo.

I wrote my OP with the understanding, in the words of Thomas Sowell, that in most cases there are no solutions only tradeoffs. It's just something that caught my attention, ie. how familiary vs. lack of it, safety and threat heuristics, that are making it both so that normal people are afraid of who they don't know and then the actual nasties can vomit projections all over people who they don't know, think might be a threat to their power, and can get their toadies to jump on them because they have the plausible deniability of not knowing their lying or manipulating (the problem that causes coercive social movements to gain traction by cowing people with stochastic terrorism - made easier because in an individualist society people have far fewer largely or completely unconditional supports).

One has to take advantage of the "trade-offs." I sort of did---when I settled for being a civil service clerk.

I agree there are no permanent solutions.

Overall, I'd prefer living under a "nation-state" than under anarchy.

I think what happens with a lot of NT's is they don't do this. They see life as a competition for survival first and foremost and then they see other men or women as hungry dogs yet to prove they aren't hungry dogs.

On a different topic, how this has effected the difficulty for women to look after their own safety, I've seen a lot of non-red pill commentators who typically talk about completely different topics talk about how we seem to be moving to something almost like a closed society, where if a guy used to walk past a woman and say 'Hey how are you!' there were ways he could prove that he was okay but it sounds like even those have been hacked and this is now no longer the case (they have to see every man they don't know as a 2.5% rapist or at least see him as an unknown probability whose potentials are constantly shifting with each nonverbal gesture and micromotion).

It's a lot of feedback loops that poison the well.


We have sublimating structures, like video games, porn, Youtube, Netflix, Amazon/Etsy/Ebay, Spotify, online discussion, etc. which help reduce some of the friction and perhaps in some ways have allowed for certain things to get significantly worse (like economic scalping by WallStreet, corporate buyout of US congress, etc.) like Mark Blyth mentioned in both his 2016 and 2019 Global Trumpism lectures where populism is coming from a hard squeeze on the middle and working classes.


Oh, we're even at risk in a way right now because in most places outside of sub-Saharan Africa population downsizing is happening fast enough that we're at risk of inverted demographic pyramids - ie. large elderly / retired population, smaller adult population trying to take care of both elderly and themselves through their taxes (and manual efforts), having even fewer kids, and that might spiral downward for a while with a lot of strain on people who are in the 15 - 64 'working aged adults' category.

On a side note - for information on the topic of demographic decline / depopulation I find Paul Ehrlich saying a lot of interesting things but I've also seen Stephen J Shaw outline similar concerns in a slightly more pop-culture friendly less 'think tank' sort of way.

One effect of this "demographic shift" is that health care jobs are rather abundant these days, and can be lifesavers in certain circumstances.

Basically, I'm saying that thinking microcosmically is frequently more useful than thinking macrocosmically. Take advantage of the prevailing conditions, rather than lament over what could occur in 10 or more years as a result of the "demographic shift."

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 15 Feb 2023, 9:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

If we ever did that we'd need the following handled:

1) a way of dealing with other 'Dunbars' without killing strangers on sight because they're true unknowns (shouldn't be that way - maybe the best way to solve it would be to have most sane / competent adults in any given Dunbar be a point of contact for someone else in another given Dunbar).

2) It would never happen unless it somehow boosted something we could materially measure like productivity savings or decreased cost of policing. It would have to be persuasive enough in terms of $$ to make such a change, instead of a hypothesis or philosophic musing, being something like the need to own a smartphone in 2023 - ie. the only practical solution to a given problem.

3) You'd really need to make sure that such a divided network of people still had some sort of hierarchical control, voting upward, as well as the ability not to be dominated by tyranny. There's a cautious impulse right now to see Web 3 advocates as wide-eyed true believers and moonboys/moongirls but in another few decades - if Ginsler is really just shaking out retail investors right now rather than trying to stop crypto in the US full-stop, it could be that this technology (truth not trust) actually does live up to this ethos and does help solve multipolar agency problems without exorbitant side-effects (and that's the part I don't know, we still don't know what the trade-offs will be if blockchain becomes a standard part of daily life everywhere).

Another odd speculation I might add:

Straight-jacketed forms of social conformity (for social conformity's sake - where if you don't watch all the same shows you're a serial killer, cannibal, or both) are probably, for the most part, a bad patch for the scaling issue and, if we really did globalism proper - ie. went full-Soros - this would probably dial up to eleven.

I pestered OpenAI a bit on this question earlier:


Me: Is it possible that nation state scaling of civilization is driving humanity a bit crazy in terms of not knowing most people around them and the difficulty of solving multipolar traps under such conditions?

ChatGPT: It is certainly possible that the nation-state scaling of civilization is contributing to some of the challenges that humanity faces, including social isolation and the difficulty of solving multipolar traps.

One of the primary effects of nation-state scaling is the creation of larger and more complex societies, which can lead to increased social fragmentation and isolation. When societies grow to a certain size, it can become difficult for individuals to maintain close relationships with everyone around them. This can lead to a sense of disconnection and loneliness, which can have negative effects on mental and physical health.

Additionally, the complex web of relationships between nation-states can create what are known as "multipolar traps." These are situations where no individual state can achieve its goals without the cooperation of other states, but where each state has incentives to act in ways that are detrimental to the collective interest. These types of situations can be difficult to resolve because there is no clear solution that benefits everyone involved.

However, it is important to note that while nation-state scaling can contribute to these challenges, it is not the only factor. There are many other social, economic, and technological factors that contribute to these issues as well. It is also worth noting that while large-scale societies can create challenges, they also provide many benefits, including access to resources, information, and opportunities for collaboration that would not be possible in smaller societies.



Me: Could an artificial architecture of sub-scaling nation states, for example at Dunbar level with delegates across Dunbar-sized groups, help solve some of the social scaling issues that nation states cause? If so what would be some suggestions for making this a safe process that helps both minimize risk of nation state scaling and risk of small group scaling?

ChatGPT: It is possible that an artificial architecture of sub-scaling nation-states, organized along the lines of Dunbar-sized groups, could help address some of the social scaling issues caused by larger nation-states. The idea of delegating representation across Dunbar-sized groups is not new, and it is similar to the concept of federated governance, where different levels of government share power and authority.

One advantage of this approach is that it would create more intimate, tight-knit communities that would allow people to form deeper social connections with those around them. This, in turn, could help address some of the social isolation and disconnection that can occur in larger societies. Additionally, by breaking down larger nation-states into smaller, more manageable units, it may be easier to address the multipolar traps that can arise in larger international relations.

However, any attempt to implement this type of architecture would need to be done carefully, to minimize the risks of both nation-state scaling and small group scaling. One way to do this would be to create a federated governance structure where each Dunbar-sized group has a delegate that represents them in a larger governing body. The larger governing body could be responsible for managing larger-scale issues, such as national defense or foreign relations, while the Dunbar-sized groups could have more autonomy in managing their own affairs.

In order to ensure that this type of architecture is safe and effective, it would be important to carefully monitor the power dynamics between the different levels of governance. It would also be important to establish clear rules and guidelines for how decisions are made and how conflicts are resolved. Additionally, there would need to be mechanisms in place to ensure that the rights and needs of individuals and minority groups are protected, both within the Dunbar-sized groups and within the larger governing body. Finally, education and training programs could be put in place to help individuals navigate this new system and to promote effective communication and collaboration between the different levels of governance.


In a way we already have at least a large-ish version of this with states, counties, and representatives at state and HoR level but a county or city is still a pretty big block and has most of these issues.

Bolded one part for emphasis.

I've generally not found that most people are any of the above. You certainly wouldn't tell a stranger all your personal information, because you don't know them. However, it strikes me as irrational to assume they are trying to hurt you. If, as you get to know them, you start seeing red flags (frequent dishonesty, self-aggrandizement, etc) it may be wise to disengage or at least choose not to tell them anything sensitive.

Of course, there's always a risk. Some people are very good at hiding their true nature. Basically, it's not possible to have an interaction with zero risk. Hell, even a person you've known a long time could undergo a personality change due to illness, injury, paranormal vision, etc.

But if you assume that people you don't know are dangerous, you're probably going to have a very lonely life.

Birth rates are going down around the world except in parts of Africa. I'm actually not that worried about overpopulation. Underpopulation will be a major problem in the developing world, but I think it's simply one we have to confront and deal with. It's not feasible for the population to keep going up endlessly.

The small minority who are out to harm or exploit others seem to have an outsized impact however on how people treat each other and the degree to which people have to internalize a virtual narcissist or virtual psychopath to stay ahead of the game theory and not get mugged. Similarly women might hate needing to keep up a high wall between themselves and men they don't know, it's perhaps true that only 1 in 40 men are a real threat, but if she gets that wrong even once the costs are both very high, long-lasting, potentially even life-ending.

It's that later, ie. the need to constantly scale up one's own game theory to deal with state-of-the-art weaponization of language and bad faith, is the bigger cause of the general mistrust problem (non-sociopath people start trying to look the part to mask their vulnerability) and in addition people's ability to bond gets damaged.

In my questions ChatGPT seemed to prefer resizing multipolar traps to the between nation states level of activity but multipolar traps exist between individuals as well and the ways in which dark triad poisons society is a version of the multipolar issue not just of knowing who will backstab for personal gain but who will or won't reliably do such things since most people are mystery boxes.

This is true. But you still have to accept a certain degree of risk in any social interaction.

And I'd point out that in earlier days, people in positions of great power could do nearly anything they wanted to you. While it depends a bit on the society, a sociopathic noble could get away with some horrific things. They'd either be covered up, or even openly praised (and people would assume you deserved it).

This still exists. But there are generally more legal avenues to go against people in power who abuse said power. Doesn't mean that the situation is good (it's not), but arguably better than many eras before.

Yes, there are the online mobs. In the old days, the mobs had pitchforks and torches and gathered on your doorstep. Jackass Twitterati aren't as bad as that.

Fully agree with all of the above caveats, like I mentioned with respect to my OP I hold the Thomas Sowell principle in full effect - ie. for the most part few solutions, mostly trade-offs. With 8 billion people divided into Dunbar sized groups the most obvious concern is intergroup conflict followed in short order by divide and conquer from above strategies (power and dominance grabs, sadly, rarely rest).

I threw this one out there because while I've heard people suggest that Dunbar-sized groups tend to be healthier I've never heard anyone reverse it and ask whether the nation state is a problem, and I think shining a flashlight on questions I've never heard anyone ask is good for exorcising 'unknown unknowns'.