Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 453 posts

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

#411

Post by dv_dt »

dbingham wrote: post #114
gascan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it, the corruption challenge of collective action is because it is so often not carefully, purposefully structured. Government is constructed with the express purpose of checking power. I read a bit I liked a while back about early feminism, in which members rejected wholesale the idea of power structures & authority, and established no authority. The author relates, however, that the power vacuum was natura…

As someone who's participated in many organizations and movements that were purposefully against power structures and authority, I can tell you that it can go either way. I've seen it work, where people found ways to fluidly hold each other accountable and natural leaders gently stepped into the power vacuums with out any kind of formalized authority. And I've seen it fail catastrophically in a myriad of ways. It rea…

Are there examples or reading you might be able to give regarding this? I'm interested!

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

#412

Post by joncrane »

rebuilder wrote: post #270
opo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In Finland, as a male, refusal to perform military or civil service is a crime punishable by approximately 6 months of imprisonment. I understand that very recently that has been put on hold as a result of a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment.

I thought that in Finland you could do other public works (something along the lines of Americorps in the USA) instead of serve in the army if you were a conscientious objector.

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

#413

Post by simonh »

Rainymood wrote: post #365
simonh wrote: post #358

I think people are dumb, and I'm not being derogatory about 'the 'masses' or any such crap. I'm unbelievably dumb. It often takes me a ridiculously long time to come to a solution to a problem, where the answer seems like it should be obvious. Instead my slow, feeble mammal brain takes forever to grope blindly around the issue before getting any traction. Lets say there is a scale of sentience that goes from 1, which…

To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb". I like to view our intellect as a tool for survival of our species. By that measure, we are doing fairly well. We used to get wiped out by minor stuff like not enough food, not enough protection from the elements and other animals, diseases, we have eradicated the majority of these things hinderi…

>To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb".

That's exactly what I just did - the level of intelligence necessary to build a technological society. On that scale we only just register above the threshold, as a species.

I'm not saying our intellectual capacity is rubbish or useless, we make the grade to be significant on this scale. Yay us!

I'm just trying to put our intellectual achievements in perspective given that we have no other intelligences on the planet anywhere close to competing with us on this scale. Making a comparative analysis of a single data point is alway difficult, but I think this is a useful way to think about the problem.

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

#414

Post by freeflight »

wool_gather wrote: post #389
freeflight wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we are literally at the dumbest, most intellectually feeble level of sentience required to get where we are, otherwise we'd have done it sooner. But do we all want to be "super thinkers": Is that actually progress? Especially in the context of "sentience", maybe it's not just a blessing but also a curse? Imho animals mostly run on instinct in a kind of "intuition mode", this even applies to humans. What makes hu…

Though I hesitate to suggest it because it's a fad right now, you might want to give "mindfulness" meditation a try for a month or so. > sometimes I wish I could just turn the thinking off I have this same feeling, a lot. Sometimes it just goes into overdrive. It's so easy to get wrapped up, when I want to be doing something else. It's fun, but doesn't always have a positive result. Taking 10, 15, 20 minutes every da…

I've seen "mindfulness meditation" getting mentioned, and suggested, a couple of times on HN. I guess it's something I really should get around taking a look at.

Probably also a way more healthy and sustainable solution than trying to medicate the issue away.

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

#415

Post by simonh »

dasil003 wrote: post #402
simonh wrote: post #358

I think people are dumb, and I'm not being derogatory about 'the 'masses' or any such crap. I'm unbelievably dumb. It often takes me a ridiculously long time to come to a solution to a problem, where the answer seems like it should be obvious. Instead my slow, feeble mammal brain takes forever to grope blindly around the issue before getting any traction. Lets say there is a scale of sentience that goes from 1, which…

How do you quantify "sooner" on an evolutionary time scale?

I'm not sure I understand the issue. The same way you quantify 'shorter' on a height scale. Sooner isn't a quantity, it's just a direction.

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

#416

Post by aeorgnoieang »

simonh wrote: post #358

I think people are dumb, and I'm not being derogatory about 'the 'masses' or any such crap. I'm unbelievably dumb. It often takes me a ridiculously long time to come to a solution to a problem, where the answer seems like it should be obvious. Instead my slow, feeble mammal brain takes forever to grope blindly around the issue before getting any traction. Lets say there is a scale of sentience that goes from 1, which…

> I discussed this with my brother and he pointed out most of us are below that, because we get taken along for the ride by people who are at 1.0 or higher. They're the geniuses that truly drive innovation forward.

This is basically the theme of "Atlas Shrugged".

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

#417

Post by aeorgnoieang »

ucaetano wrote: post #156
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…

> 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.

> There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

Harsher punitive measures are often meted out to those with the weakest reason.

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

#418

Post by aeorgnoieang »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #288
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…

I really wish this notion of "society by survival of the fittest" would die its long-overdue death. What actually happens, in the real world, in situations like this, is that people suffer and die. They don't become Ayn Rand's ideal man; there's just lots of needless suffering. And because people are capable of violence, and because people don't like suffering very much, they commit violence against each other to imp…

> What actually happens, in the real world, in situations like this, is that people suffer and die. They don't become Ayn Rand's ideal man; there's just lots of needless suffering.

There are many many counterexamples to this. See [Seeing Like a State - Wikiwand](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Seeing_Like_a_State) for many good ones.

There's a lot of good evidence that people are in fact capable of taking care of themselves pretty well. But violence, especially organized violence, is tho a very real problem for basically everyone. But that's basically what a government is, fundamentally, so it's not obvious that 'more government' always rebounds to the betterment of everyone or even most people. As with everything, there are tradeoffs to be weighed!

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

#419

Post by dasil003 »

simonh wrote: post #415
dasil003 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you quantify "sooner" on an evolutionary time scale?

I'm not sure I understand the issue. The same way you quantify 'shorter' on a height scale. Sooner isn't a quantity, it's just a direction.

I'm saying within the lifetime of a species I'm not sure it's fair to say it's taken us a long time. It could have taken way longer.

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

#420

Post by qkls »

deltron3030 wrote: post #380
Rainymood wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb". I like to view our intellect as a tool for survival of our species. By that measure, we are doing fairly well. We used to get wiped out by minor stuff like not enough food, not enough protection from the elements and other animals, diseases, we have eradicated the majority of these things hinderi…

> Anyway, humans, compared to other animals we compete with for survival, food, and territory, are doing really well. I don't see any cows on the moon yet. Would all this be possible without other mammals? Or is the ecosystem (including mammals) the enabler for us?

Probably yes, but on a longer timeline. Humans don't need other mammals to survive.
Post reply on HN