Problem denial can take the form of claiming there's nothing wrong at all. But more common seems to be the attempt to jump straight to a 'solution', without any trial and error thinking in between. Which is OFC impossible. Either way I guess it takes a certain amount of imagination to perceive problems in the first place.
Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
31–40 of 132 posts
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#32It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. (Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real…
> It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviou…
A common liberal blind spot is the genetic basis of intelligence and other aptitudes, and the extent to which that determines life outcomes.
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#33[deleted]
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Soviet Union built some fairly complex machines too, for example buran the Russian space shuttle, nuclear power plants, large airplanes, submarines etc. I don't think these are significantly less complex than an iPhone. Likely more. Now you could argue they did it less frequently or less efficient and not really benefitting the average consumer in many cases. And that would be true. But there is no denying that a…
Soviet Union routinely failed to sell its nuclear plants, airliners and less complex stuff. Soviet Union was able to produce something that worked, but it was all below price-quality curve. I.e. you could buy same quality product from Western corporations for less money; or you could buy better quality product for same money. Western corporations also had better selection. So only buyers were in communist bloc, and w…
I don't know why we're calling the USSR socialist; is it because they said they were socialist? There are plenty of dictatorial regimes that call themselves democratic republics, too. The USSR was structured like one massive corporation: Everything was owned by the government and the government bureaucracy functioned much like a corporate bureaucracy.
Libertarian socialists sometimes call states like the USSR state capitalist, because economic activity is still dictated by a top-down hierarchy allocating capital and exploiting workers.
Optimal is not the word you want to use, by the way. Not even free markets are optimal, that's why economists talk about 'market failures'.
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#35I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of: http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue, which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", ca…
[deleted]
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally, yes! But it really depends on what you mean by "collectivist". Could iPhone be produced by IBM, a huge corporation with top-down command and control? It's about as likely, I would say. I work at medium American corporation and it's not really that different from what was called "socialist" enterprise here in Czech Republic. It is certainly more efficient, but sometimes pathologically - good ideas get kille…
I think the parent meant it in a more general sense. Apple doesn't single-handedly produce the iPhone, it takes the coordination of millions of people, most of whom have no contact with Apple whatsoever: those who design oil drilling equipment, those who build it, those who use oil drilling equipment, those who then extract the oil, transport it, refine it, transport it, turn it into plastic bits for the iphone, tran…
I don't think the coordination is the problem, frankly, it seems like an ideological red herring (specifically, I don't think it really matters whether you have oligopolistic or free market prices). "Socialist" countries had a kind of "internal market", although it tended to be very regulated. In particular, price mechanism was present, so the information was available to decision makers. I think there were two other causes:
1. The power structure, on the state level and "business" level, not accountable enough to the people it should serve - no democracy, no consumer choice. The latter was somewhat reduced in the businesses that exported (usually to the third world).
2. Tendency of the regulators to "cut down" the expenses and designating single company to produce certain thing as a means to save resources. This caused huge delays in production as the individual delays accumulated, and in fact caused waste. (I think it's actually redundancy, not efficiency per se, of free markets that is one of the causes of their resulting efficiency.)
Democracy and being able to start independent business (which is not the same as free market or capitalism!) seem to be the two main advantages of the West compared to the East. But you can also see that both problems plague large enterprises in the West, yet despite that they are workhorses of the economy. You can also see that many very successful countries have oligopolies, state-owned enterprises, strong unions, and lots of regulation in general.
I just decided to recheck the thread because I thought that parent asked something yet different, namely, how could innovation happen in collectivist system (whatever that is). I assure you there was plenty of innovation going on in the "socialist" countries; the problem was getting things approved, tested, and produced by the people who decided about resources. Similar challenges are faced by innovators at the bottom in a large corporation.
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#37Time to spend some karma.
Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same tactic.
The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as p̶r̶o̶o̶f̶ evidence of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate.
I guess these folks think I must be unhappy about the "necessary solution" (oh hey, it turns out to be reorganizing society according to their political beliefs!) but that amounts to an elaborate and silly ad hominem, nothing more. I think I'll write more about the "psychology journal ad-hominem" because it has become annoyingly common in recent years.
The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your lifetime. Get used to it.
[0]http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00...
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soviet Union routinely failed to sell its nuclear plants, airliners and less complex stuff. Soviet Union was able to produce something that worked, but it was all below price-quality curve. I.e. you could buy same quality product from Western corporations for less money; or you could buy better quality product for same money. Western corporations also had better selection. So only buyers were in communist bloc, and w…
I don't know why we're calling the USSR socialist; is it because they said they were socialist? There are plenty of dictatorial regimes that call themselves democratic republics, too. The USSR was structured like one massive corporation: Everything was owned by the government and the government bureaucracy functioned much like a corporate bureaucracy. Libertarian socialists sometimes call states like the USSR state c…
The USSR was not structured like one massive corporation. Corporation tends to seek profit; while USSR sought survival. Was bad at it, too: built millions of tanks and other military hardware that rusted without any battle, lost the cold war and tanked.
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#39Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…
You should share your beliefs with the geoengineers running seeding programs creating algal blooms in the Pacific before they kill the whole fucking thing...
Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
#40Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…
Very few really big problems are ever settled in our lifetime, and yet we have to act (which can include deciding to not act) on imperfect information. We do our best. Get used to it.