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The End of Industrial Society

palladiummag.com

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Re: The End of Industrial Society

#131

Post by [deleted] »

Angostura wrote: post #128
mike4ty4 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important question that needs asking is what happens if we run into a situation where that "slowness" of democracy gets more people killed and only a well-paced solution with some cadence to it could do the job (not "super fast", but like say a major change with a 1 year debate period and 10 year implementation period sustained steady progress)? Not arguing for a dictatorship, but out-of-the-box innovative thinkin…

I think we saw the answer to that in February/March 2021. Apart from the USA where the situation was politicised by a rather special president, most advanced democracies moved remarkably quickly to institute unprecedented emergency measures in theface of the pandemic. Democratic processes were temporarily simplified with the executive taking more power for a short time.

[deleted]

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#132

Post by pavlov »

tablespoon wrote: post #123
pavlov wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s uncomfortable for the Thiel-funded new right movement that their dream state is essentially realized in present-day Russia, and they’re not able to explain how their ideas would lead to a different outcome. Protectionist policies, focus on national identity, celebration of traditional values and gender roles; a “national CEO” whose transformative powers transcend the slow, frustrating democratic machinery. This…

> Putinists love to make the claim that Ukraine isn’t a real nation (and Steve Bannon went on record to agree). It’s worth noting that the same arguments would apply to Canada. If the Thiel-funded right succeeds, they’ll eventually need a war to fuel the nationalist fire. Why not a reunification of the North American colonies? Canada is obviously controlled by decadent forces that need to be purged, just like Ukraine…

Russians didn’t think about Ukraine either twenty years ago. The ancient Slav connection mythology is manufactured by the Putinist project.

When a place is a void in the public’s mind, that’s the ideal target to fill it with nationalist fury. The people of Belgrade didn’t think very often about Bosnia in 1980; thirteen years later their leaders were running a genocide to cleanse Bosnia of the elements that supposedly threatened Serbian unity.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#133

Post by TrispusAttucks »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #96
shswkna wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “big idea” that sounds abstract to a literal thinker, should be seen as a hunch or an intuition about a situation. It can never be explained in satisfiable depth to a literal thinker. Only in hindsight will it be obvious. You expect proof, or a literal pathway of thought and explanation, because it has served you well. This is the guaranteed route to proving an idea, if such a literal route exists. Such ideas are g…

You've hit the nail on the head with this. I often see "big idea" thinkers who I find to be brilliant, like Jordan Peterson, criticized, and I think a lot of that comes from literal thinkers who 1. apply a rigorous evidentiary standard when assessing their writings, when they should instead see them as well-articulated cases for a "hunch" and thus not expect them to contain proof for their theories, and/or 2. don't s…

Most of the people who hate Jordan Peterson never read his books or listened to his lectures.

They were told to hate him and that if they agreed with his positions they were bad people.

There is an effort to get people to rationalize their hate but when they try to rationalize it they realize it's complete cult ideology not based in reality. Ending up as fans of his.

It happened to me. I was told how bad he was. In fact he is super reasonable to the majority.

https://youtu.be/XQR6rDOCxM0

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#134

Post by thematrixturtle »

> The COVID-19 pandemic showed East Asia to be the best place to put key elements of the supply chain. ... Importantly, authorities see it as vital to enable the gathering of many people together in crowded spaces. ... Because of this, you cannot simply send everyone home forever.

Meanwhile, the 25M people of Shanghai are approaching their third month of complete welded-apartment-door level lockdown.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#135

Post by tablespoon »

pavlov wrote: post #132
tablespoon wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putinists love to make the claim that Ukraine isn’t a real nation (and Steve Bannon went on record to agree). It’s worth noting that the same arguments would apply to Canada. If the Thiel-funded right succeeds, they’ll eventually need a war to fuel the nationalist fire. Why not a reunification of the North American colonies? Canada is obviously controlled by decadent forces that need to be purged, just like Ukraine…

Russians didn’t think about Ukraine either twenty years ago. The ancient Slav connection mythology is manufactured by the Putinist project. When a place is a void in the public’s mind, that’s the ideal target to fill it with nationalist fury. The people of Belgrade didn’t think very often about Bosnia in 1980; thirteen years later their leaders were running a genocide to cleanse Bosnia of the elements that supposedly…

Even so, I think Mexico would be a far more logical first target in that scenario than Canada, especially if the Canadians took pains not to annoy the new leaders.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#136

Post by pavlov »

tablespoon wrote: post #135
pavlov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russians didn’t think about Ukraine either twenty years ago. The ancient Slav connection mythology is manufactured by the Putinist project. When a place is a void in the public’s mind, that’s the ideal target to fill it with nationalist fury. The people of Belgrade didn’t think very often about Bosnia in 1980; thirteen years later their leaders were running a genocide to cleanse Bosnia of the elements that supposedly…

Even so, I think Mexico would be a far more logical first target in that scenario than Canada, especially if the Canadians took pains not to annoy the new leaders.

Climate change makes Canada much more useful than Mexico. The United States has enough arid desert already.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#137

Post by donkeybeer »

tablespoon wrote: post #129
donkeybeer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember the basic idea behind a lot of these word salads is that "We need to return to kings and aristocracy" and that "Of course I am a high iq intellectual who will be the nobility and not a feudal worker, why is there any doubt?". Everything starts making sense then.

> You have to remember the basic idea behind a lot of these word salads is that "We need to return to kings and aristocracy" and that "Of course I am a high iq intellectual who will be the nobility and not a feudal worker, why is there any doubt?". Everything starts making sense then. A real king would probably slaughter people like Thiel and his hangers on and take whatever money they have. The schadenfreude from se…

The best solution for people proposing autocratic solutions is to give them exactly what they want, good and hard. (Of course the collateral damage to innocent people is not worth it.)

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#138

Post by Thorrez »

zozbot234 wrote: post #124
notahacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of those who favor "kings and aristocracy" is more that we'll always have people around with more power than others (elites), and that formal transparency about who these people are ultimately improves accountability But this is of course palpable nonsense. The entire point of kings and aristocracy was to formalise the notion that the de facto elite was in fact a class of people so superior to everyone els…

There are plenty of people in current government who are de facto not accountable to the public. Sometimes that lack of accountability is even intended by design. Are Supreme Court Justices accountable to the public for their interpretation of the law?

They can be impeached. So I think if their interpretation was wildly wildly wrong, they could be impeached.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#139

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

shswkna wrote: post #36
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I found an interesting thesis that made me think "OK, parts of this sound plausible to me, help me connect the dots." But then there were no dots to be found, let alone connections. I am a very literal person, and in my youth I used to think this was a bit of a handicap, as "big thinkers" needed to be able to think of things in more abstract ways. As I've gotten older, though, I think I've become more aware o…

A “big idea” that sounds abstract to a literal thinker, should be seen as a hunch or an intuition about a situation. It can never be explained in satisfiable depth to a literal thinker. Only in hindsight will it be obvious. You expect proof, or a literal pathway of thought and explanation, because it has served you well. This is the guaranteed route to proving an idea, if such a literal route exists. Such ideas are g…

I disagree, or rather, I don't think I did a great job describing how I define my version of "literal thinking".

To use a specific example, virtually all big, new ideas are some version of the "underpants gnomes" meme: (1) collect underpants, (2) ???, (3) profit. That is, all of these big ideas have a big helping of unknowns that need to be figured out - after all, if things were already all known, it wouldn't be much of a new, big idea.

However, in my experience, big ideas that are likely to come to fruition are ones where proponents are actually able to break down the unknowns in the "2. ???" step into discrete problems that need to be solved or elucidated. This is in direct contrast to "bullshitters" who have a distinct inability to even identify what the critical unknowns are in the first place.

For example, take the crypto space (low hanging fruit I know because there is so much BS and grift in the crypto space). I think there are some areas where crypto ideas will prove useful - I've commented before that finding a replacement for the antiquated backend settlement our financial system uses in the US is a perfect application. But I contrast this with tons of crypto ideas where proponents care barely explain why setting is a benefit over existing solutions, or else they conveniently ignore all the issue the existing system solves that they pretend somehow don't exist with crypto.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#140

Post by WBrentWilliams »

zozbot234 wrote: post #124
notahacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of those who favor "kings and aristocracy" is more that we'll always have people around with more power than others (elites), and that formal transparency about who these people are ultimately improves accountability But this is of course palpable nonsense. The entire point of kings and aristocracy was to formalise the notion that the de facto elite was in fact a class of people so superior to everyone els…

There are plenty of people in current government who are de facto not accountable to the public. Sometimes that lack of accountability is even intended by design. Are Supreme Court Justices accountable to the public for their interpretation of the law?

On paper, SCotUS _can_ be held accountable by the public through their representatives. The process is called impeachment. The house _can_ impeach a sitting Justice, and the Senate _can_ vote to remove them from office. This currently is unlikely, but the it _is_ possible.

The "easier" route is for the legislature to "see" the ruling and pass a law that counter-acts it. The general public can _also_ call their own Constitutional conventions and pass amendments to the Constitution to hold SCotUS responsible.

The real "problem" is all of these solutions, by design, require significant effort. If you want changes, you will need to make them happen.

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