> top 20% of possible ways that civilisation could be.
This sort of an unmeasurable goal. I think we’re certainly in the top 20% of civilization from any time in history. Or top 20% ever attempted.
It’s hard to tell how good all possible civilizations can be.
Yeah; what I wrote was absurd. Most civilisations can trivially be improved; we're definitely pretty high up the possibilities. I meant we're not in the top 20% of feasible possible civilisations anybody currently alive would want to put into place (which is a qualitative claim, not a quantitative one).
If we just eliminated the government, eliminated all hierarchies larger than 100 people, eliminated all nations and laws and institutions… well, most of us would probably die very quickly. But that doesn't mean that what we have now is even in the top 20% of possible ways that civilisation could be.