People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard • Hacker News Board

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#171

Post by StanislavPetrov » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

jknz wrote: post #152

rvern wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

> Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. Typically, voting results are highly skewed towards 50/50, say in most elections in democratic regimes with fair elections. This was the case for Brexit or the popular vote in the US 2016 election for instance. For an electi…

One of many reasons that offering false, contrived, binary choices in a world defined by its complexity is always a losing proposition.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#172

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #86

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just do like you do with children who sign contracts, invalidate any obligations the child has to the adult, but the adult is still bound to any obligations they have, and punish the adult for trying to take advantage of the child. Ideally, the ability for individuals to sign contracts with corporations should be forbidden. Maybe a single 1 person corporation that doesn't involve a lawyer either direct or as a co…

I don't think the world could function without contracts. I get into a restaurant, I order some food. That's a contract where I get into the obligation of paying, and they get into the obligation of serving the food. It's much more likely that the justice system needs a complete rework.

You would still have contracts, they would be limited to being between people of similar power, and a lot stronger protections for someone being taken advantage of.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#173

Post by wavefunction » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #132

enraged_camel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asimov’s Foundation series is an excellent commentary on this very phenomenon. One of the antagonists is a galactic empire that is technologically advanced, but has been stagnating and decaying slowly as those in power start viewing scientists with disdain and distrust. Over time the empire loses the ability to develop new technology, and ends up with those who can only maintain/repair existing technology (which even…

I'm a bit reminded of the Zentraedi from Macross , who know how to fly and fight with advanced spaceships/mechs, but not how to repair them or how they work. Except in that case it's because their patron race, the Protoculture, deliberately kept them dependent; Protoculture factories supplied as many ships and weapons as the Zentraedi might need, meanwhile, the average Zentraedi was kept at about a five-year-old huma…

The Zentraedi were cloned super-soldiers designed to serve the Protoculture and nothing else. Then the Protoculture lost control of their weapons.

Lin Meimei I guess awakened the emotions they'd never required nor experienced before.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#174

Post by frockington » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137

ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

> This is probably the greatest argument for big government The article talks about institutional inertia. The advantage of a market economy is your Blockbusters get replaced by Netflix. Imagine if film renting were a public agency. It would be much harder to disrupt. Governments are, by design, immortal. A crucial design decision is choosing what, in our society, we want to be immortal and what we want to be replace…

The "immortal" term and Blockbuster are great concreate examples. I will have to keep those in mind as it accurately portrays some of the pros and cons of government

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#175

Post by frockington » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #154

dqpb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with liberal arts education is that it teaches you how to talk and what to say, but not how to think.

That's the anti-college talking point that republicans like to preach to the uneducated masses. It's absolutely designed to devalue what is actually being taught in higher education, allow for the easy dismissal of soft sciences. And once you can dismiss soft sciences, you can certainly dismiss the hard sciences with guilt by association. I earned my CS degree from a liberal arts college and took my share of liberal…

Majoring in a soft science is one of the least helpful things a human can do to themselves and society. As an engineer, sitting in on the required liberal arts classes felt like a seminar on group think and what aboutism

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#176

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

I admit I only skimmed the article, but I still throw in a potential controversal counterthought (even though I don't disagree with the article from what I read):

People* are dumb.

Why?

They have been breed like that for many generations. Because all the classic Civilisations and Empires needed lots of dumb workers and peasants who were able to do their simple work, but not smart enough, to organize any opposition against the current empire.

And this in many different forms, from total slavery to all kinds in between.

Now with the Hypothesis, that smart people don't want to get exploited, they would rise up sometimes, where they grew in numbers - and got beaten down and crucified, hanged, quartered, etc. - so strong selection pressure for smart people not born into the elite and not wanting to become a monk.

Now with all that being said, I believe it is probably more a cultural mindset of "stupidness" than "stupid" DNA in the people, because smart people also keep their heads low and pretend to be stupid, when they can't win a fight. But this got into a habit of not wanting to think. So the solution to all the complex problems in the world I don't think is a super government, thinking for all their dumb sheeps, but rather smaller systems, less complex - and letting people get smart again, by giving them the opportunity to make decisions again about their life. Not just a allmost meaningless vote which allmost counts nothing among the millions of other votes, but voting the decisions down at their very local lifes. When you have to think for yourself, you will start thinking again. And then you don't want those decisions taken away from you. Thats only comfortable when you forgot how to do it.

* with "people" I mean the average person in the street, the one from the famous Churchill quote

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#177

Post by expertentipp » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #165

I understand that a nobel peace prize winner can NOT say that people are dumb. However, there are people on this planet that believe the earth is flat.

There are just periodical hysterias orginating from America (vaccinations, the earth is flat, religious sects, bucket challenges, etc) which like a shockwave created by the explosion of Tsar Bomba travel around the globe multiple times but finally, most extinguish.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#178

Post by frockington » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #165

I understand that a nobel peace prize winner can NOT say that people are dumb. However, there are people on this planet that believe the earth is flat.

Intelligence like everything else in nature has outliers on both sides. I have no idea why people seem to disagree with you, it's simple biology and statistics

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#179

Post by jokoon » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

This scene of ex machina describes what human intelligence is really about:

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/the-t...

"imperfect, impulsive, chaotic, fluid, patterned"

This is where the politics of emotion and marketing are winning the most. Rational economics are only serving our moral standards, sense of merit and our fascination with order.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#180

Post by dEnigma » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

throwaway37585 wrote: post #167

ucaetano wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. This isn't strictly true, and I'd love to see you provide extensive data on such a exceptional claim. There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

I don’t think the claim is exceptional, but I’d love to see more studies on this. Check out the Centipede Game ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game ): “Parco, Rapoport and Stein (2002) illustrated that the level of financial incentives can have a profound effect on the outcome in a three-player game: the larger the incentives are for deviation, the greater propensity for learning behavior in a repeated si…

The Nash equilibrium in this case being immediately taking the larger stash, instead of waiting (or even cooperating) with the other player for much higher payouts.