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People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

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

#251

Post by megaman22 »

frockington wrote: post #175
Zimahl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not so bad if you stick to some of the harder, or at least more rigidly defined liberal arts areas. Philosophy, Classics, and History (if you pick your way carefully) can be among the less squishy. If you go back to things that are at least 100, 150 years old, but not so far back that written records no longer exist, you can avoid most of the worst excesses of critical theory and similar politicized stances.

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

#252

Post by aantix »

stingraycharles wrote: post #248
aantix wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how you revealed that you dislike joke comments on HN and unintentionally killed it at the same time.

Didn’t intent on killing the joke, I was hoping it would allow more people to appreciate it. But apparently I failed at that. :)

No worries. :)

"Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." -- Elwyn Brooks White

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

#253

Post by hanshan »

loa-in-backup wrote: post #146
hanshan wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we could watch the people that watch us. If this were possible, there would be no authority

Careful, this might sound intuitive but be deathly wrong

Care to elaborate on your concerns? We're obviously speaking theoretically here at a high level of abstraction

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

#254

Post by mjevans »

1996 wrote: post #229
bitwize wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good catch! It reminded me the same thing, Macross. There is indeed something keeping working class humans dependants: a focus on growth at all costs (including population growth). It is pervasive (the ideology is reinforced with ads) and makes you desire for example the latest iPhone X. With a permanent growth, the basic problem is all humans are still born with a dependancy on housing and food (and other fancier th…

"The social contract", how an individual and society interact (and are depended upon each other), is broken.

In the old days if someone didn't like how things were going there were spaces with (far less) people that they could go off in to and do their own thing; if it mattered that much.

In less old days someone was part of a community. They did things that supported the community and return the community supported them.

In recent history people were part of national communities, there were careers with 'retirement' plans and advancement tracks that enabled someone to achieve most of their potential if they wanted it.

Today everyone wants a short term solution with no long term planning or costs. There is no community because you don't know if you're going to be there in 5 or 10 years. There is no investment because you don't know if you're going to be there in 5 or 10 years. There is no sense of belonging because there is nothing to belong to. Everyone is a disposable cog in a machine that doesn't care about them.

-

People have always voted funny, and I think that's what has gotten us where we are now.

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

#255

Post by JumpCrisscross »

notahacker wrote: post #246
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 elected component of the government sector in a properly functioning democracy is far more mortal than large corporations and newly elected Cabinets generally more zealous about reforming (for better or worse) the way agencies and services are run than newly appointed corporate board members. Sure, some services are prioritised more than others; no government is going to get voted out of office solely for running…

> the elected component of the government sector in a properly functioning democracy is far more mortal than large corporations

The elected component of any modern government oversees a vast administrative bureaucracy. This is the part people refer to when comparing "big" and "small" governments.

> the main reason for the institutional inertia is the same scale, complexity and principal/agent problems large corporations also suffer from

Federal bureaucracies only die if (a) the legislature explicitly kills it or (b) the government collapses. Large companies, on the other hand, can go bankrupt. Shareholders are motivated to be ruthlessly efficient in a way lawmakers, somewhat by design, are not.

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

#256

Post by mjevans »

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…

That's actually a strong argument for requiring a 'super majority' to decide any major decision.

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #202
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There is a difference between immortal and slow to change. I don't think people want government to fail fast and be replaced with another government in the span of two years.

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by Fukkaudeku »

extralego wrote: post #204
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…

For similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context.

This, but unironically.

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

#259

Post by opo »

rebuilder wrote: post #234
CuriouslyC wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your choice is between death and jail, or if your life is not significantly better than jail, the duration of incarceration isn't going to matter to you at all. I'd be willing to bet that harsher punitive measures (and more aggressive enforcement) would have a big impact on white collar crime rates.

I would guess that a higher chance of being caught would be a greater deterrent to first-time white collar offenders than harsher punishment. I spent 6 months in prison as a conscientous objector. One thing I learned was, in the relatively humane nordic penal system, the reality of imprisonment was nowhere near as scary as I'd imagined. If I were to commit a serious crime now, I think the social stigma would be much…

I found your comment insightful, but I have to ask about this:

>...I spent 6 months in prison as a conscientous objector.

Could you elaborate? Under what conditions does a conscientious objector face a lengthy prison term?

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

#260

Post by 1996 »

mjevans wrote: post #254
1996 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good catch! It reminded me the same thing, Macross. There is indeed something keeping working class humans dependants: a focus on growth at all costs (including population growth). It is pervasive (the ideology is reinforced with ads) and makes you desire for example the latest iPhone X. With a permanent growth, the basic problem is all humans are still born with a dependancy on housing and food (and other fancier th…

"The social contract", how an individual and society interact (and are depended upon each other), is broken. In the old days if someone didn't like how things were going there were spaces with (far less) people that they could go off in to and do their own thing; if it mattered that much. In less old days someone was part of a community. They did things that supported the community and return the community supported…

The "social contract" was an elaborate way to force people into an agreement. But I agree with you, it was at least possible to leave. It wasn't organized slavery. And the other side of the bargain was more or less kept, so it even made some sense.

I don't think it is possible to leave anymore. Not just that, but we are selling out our young generation and immigrants. We indoctrinate people to borrow a debt that can't be legally discharged, just to acquire mostly useless government sanctionned diplomas. We have rules for immigrant workers that to me look like indentured servitude. And on top of that, we resent these people that make modern society possible. I am waiting for them to shrug like Atlas. I hope they will.

I am lucky to be outside out that, but it still disgust me. Like you said, this is a society that wants to treat people like disposable cogs in a machine, that doesn't care about them. I get that, and I could be on board, if only it was honest and without lies.

I just do not agree that people have always voted funny. Their perspectives were more aligned with the government before. Not so much now, and I don't think it is fair to blame them.

Without bringing politics to HN, I think I have some unpopular libertarian political opinions. But even for me, it goes way too far, and it is not libertarian at all.

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