People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #64

barrkel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of our problems are collective action problems: where it makes sense for individuals to defect on their own, and they can only raise the standard for the group if they act together. At different scales this means unionization and professional organizations, government regulation, and international regulation, to prevent whole countries from defecting - this is in large part what the EU is about, and a signif…

"Collective action has its own problem: power structures encourage corruption and misuse of the pooled power." Exactly. I tend to be wary of concentrating power. The larger the group the more likely that there are conflicts of interest within the group. Perhaps more importantly, large groups just don't make sense in a lot of cases. If I make a union of milk drinkers, we can buy in huge bulk and get a discount. But th…

Post by asdffdsa321 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

skadamat wrote: post #80

I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand h…

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

aalleavitch wrote: post #98

sandworm101 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> collective action to decide No. Once upon a time we nominated experts to make most of those decisions. Groups like the EPA or the IRS were given a mandate to examine what was going on and ban behaviors that did harm. But today "regulation" is a bad word. Everything is political. The EPA and IRS cannot ban anything without massive public debate. In fact, most regulatory bodies are so under pressure to reduce any an…

What we lack is trust. We lack security in each other, in many cases for entirely legitimate reasons. Reestablishing systems of trust is one of the challenges we’re facing right now.

Post by _greim_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

raywalters wrote: post #118

Having worked front line tech support, I have to disagree. People are inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases.

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #110

opportune wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's arguably pretty poor design if the world is only livable for people in the top 2.5% of intelligence (>130 IQ)

High intelligence is nowhere closed to be the most important factor to be successful in our society, gene propagation wise. Or being happy. It's merely a tool.