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We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

erikmcclure.com

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Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#351

Post by WalterBright »

maxbond wrote: post #246
WalterBright wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could you prove to me I'm mistaken? By having a conversation with you. I'd point out your pride and self-satisfaction at being unselfish. If I knew of you more than that, I'd point out your selfish behavior. It's not hard, look at the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the cookie you ate, your grooming, and so on.

You wouldn't think much of my clothing. I've never owned a car. My grooming is minimal, my appearance just doesn't cross my mind. But I do like a nice cookie. I behave selfishly sometimes, no question. Does that really define the entirety of who I am? Why would it define me more than, say, when I feel bored, or when I behave generously, or when I do things on impulse? Afterall, I try to avoid behaving selfishly, so I…

> I try to avoid behaving selfishly

Why?

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#352

Post by WalterBright »

throwaway290 wrote: post #279
WalterBright wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US in WW2 invaded two other continents across oceans. Hitler thought the US wouldn't fight, and that the Soviet Union was too weak. Having a strong military and a willingness to fight, means you don't have to fight.

Are you alluding to Allies vs Axis? Because I don't think US have invaded a country unilaterally in that war. It would be similar if Mexico/Canada/Cuba together declared war at US and then Russia joined them. Because then sure Russia can have a decent chance of successfully invading US across a sea and then strong military could make a difference. But Mexico and Canada won't and countries who could are inconveniently…

The US has had territorial wars with both Canada and Mexico.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#353

Post by nvm0n2 »

panick21_ wrote: post #341
nvm0n2 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US two party system isn't that obviously broken. Americans like to say it's broken, but they often aren't that familiar with the alternatives. You could have FPTP but with more than two parties, like the UK does. The downside of this is that the reason there are more than two major parties in the UK is that the parties are much more closed off to outside influence, and due to the presence of a major independence…

> The downside of this is that it guarantees that politicians can never actually do any of the things they campaigned on doing That's a bold and total wrong claim. > with the result that politicians tend not to take policy development seriously. Ah that's why Europe is such a shithole and the US is an enlightened kingdom. > Parties end up standing for extremely vague positions even during election campaign periods Th…

> Ah that's why Europe is such a shithole and the US is an enlightened kingdom.

The USA is both richer and more democratic than Europe. You will need to accept this fact before mocking the Americans.

Europe is a place where most countries are partly run by Brussels, which is a totalitarian system. Consider the energy that Americans put into their Presidential elections vs the entirely secret and inexplicable process that led to von der Leyen being able to legislatively control Europe. People may not like Biden or Trump but they can at least explain the process through which they became President, and it is at least theoretically democratic. Nobody outside of Germany even knew who vDL was before she suddenly turned up as the most powerful woman in Europe.

> That is just wrong. Parties often commit to specific things.

Which nobody takes seriously because the best that can be hoped for is for the party to enter coalition, at which point everything is up for negotiation and they are guaranteed to have to discard many of their commitments.

>> Because the system is in some sense inherently unstable you have a lot of government collapses

> That's why Angela Merkel was only in her position for 2 years.

Merkel is an excellent example of the problem: after a deadlocked PR election she presided over an entirely mandateless caretaker government that lasted half a year, because German politicians couldn't form a workable coalition. In theory she was meant to do nothing during this time and simply preserve the status quo, but that is impossible to constitutionally enforce and in fact she continued to rule exactly as before, including signing Germany up for new foreign policy commitments.

The USA simply never has the problem of the previous president continuing to rule after losing support in an election. It is a problem largely unique to PR (the UK went through a coalition setup in 2010 but it only lasted 5 days).

> even if its the case, its not necessarily wrong.

The primary point of PR is to try and ensure the views of minorities are represented. If you disagree with that goal, you may as well just support the much simpler and more stable FPTP system.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#354

Post by drdaeman »

solatic wrote: post #177
drdaeman wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then, sadly, you’ll most likely get beaten by some foreign country’s slap-shit-together-and-ship-it junk. Because people don’t think in terms of TCO and product lifespans, they see that “-30%” and “$X.99” and buy things that possibly even unable to do what they really need them to do, because ad made a different impression. Solving junk requires much more than licensing and certifications (unless somehow it’s don…

I would have agreed with you before COVID and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization. There is increasing understanding, at the national policy level, of the value of more localized supply chains, where local manufacturing is encouraged through tariffs. This is besides newfound focus on privacy and data sovereignty, and the race by cloud providers to build globally-acc…

> Today, the world is slowly changing direction on globalization.

I'm not so sure about this. The world is slowly realizing heavy dependence on exports of autocratic countries was not exactly the brightest idea - and this superficially polite wording is very intentional here, because that's how it goes. Even the war hadn't stopped trading - worse, on the contrary, Russian trading boomed after the invasion. And it's not something unique that money beats anything - oil deals are advertised at climate conferences, and somehow this doesn't surprise me at all. And I think WTO also wouldn't do a thing that won't benefit its stakeholders - not the consumers. There's barely any global consensus about anything important, and international institutions like UN look dysfunctional at best.

And in terms of money, cheap junk beats consistently anything else out of the market. The homeostasis of price-regulation-quality is very hard to maintain, and consumer products either fall down towards cheap junk extremum, or towards regulatory capture extremum (but still junk under the hood - just see how banking and medical apps are doing).

Sorry to be this pessimistic - I really wish I'd be wrong here. But unless somehow there's bigger money in making changes than in maintaining the status quo, I doubt anything would happen.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#355

Post by wizzwizz4 »

me_me_me wrote: post #301
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biden is barely capable to string two sentences together. A speech impediment is not necessarily an impediment to governance ability. Please, criticise him for the things he's actually done wrong (being a politician, I'm sure those are many), not for a life-long disability.

Speach impediment? He is old. He keeps forgetting things around him, looses his thought mid sentence. Was caught with cue card written for a 'child'[0], his 'handler' on many occasions whisk him away when he starts rambling [1]. I don't know how people are unable to acknowledge basic fact you can see for yourself. Would you like to be in a car driven by Biden? Or a company run by trump? > Please, criticise him for th…

> Speech impediment? [list of things that are not speech impediments]

When I'm concentrating hard on a tricky problem, I often forget my surroundings. I've been known to get distracted mid-sentence, and I would love if somebody would discreetly interrupt me when I go off on unnecessary extended tangents. I write myself cue cards one might give a child because I learned how to write cue cards while I was a child, and it's a pretty good system that works for me – but, because my vision is good, I can write them small enough to palm discreetly. I would not want to be in a car driven by me.

None of these things render me unfit for governance, organising, leading people, or understanding laws. In fact, I dabble in all of these things and, where I'm practised, I'm not half-bad. (Not exceptional, mind, but mostly competent.) I can even give speeches that appear memorised, given a month to write and a week to rehearse.

I am not yet old, so nobody calls me senile. But if such attitudes are what I have to look forward to, even if I myself do not change at all, I think we should improve society somewhat.

> > Please, criticise him for the things he's actually done wrong

> Thats the thing. […]

Thanks! This looks like it's about politics, not ableist ageism. (No comment on the validity of your criticism.)

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#356

Post by panick21_ »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #353
panick21_ wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downside of this is that it guarantees that politicians can never actually do any of the things they campaigned on doing That's a bold and total wrong claim. > with the result that politicians tend not to take policy development seriously. Ah that's why Europe is such a shithole and the US is an enlightened kingdom. > Parties end up standing for extremely vague positions even during election campaign periods Th…

> Ah that's why Europe is such a shithole and the US is an enlightened kingdom. The USA is both richer and more democratic than Europe. You will need to accept this fact before mocking the Americans. Europe is a place where most countries are partly run by Brussels, which is a totalitarian system. Consider the energy that Americans put into their Presidential elections vs the entirely secret and inexplicable process…

I don't really want to get into a big argument. Government organization is a gigantic field with lots of questions and we would have to go into more detail. Both systems have lots and lots of issue. I don't like the EU and have no interest in defending it either.

> The USA is both richer and more democratic than Europe. You will need to accept this fact before mocking the Americans.

Politics and government organization has something to do with that, but not everything. If the US had the current government style after WW2 then they would be equally or more successful then they are.

If its more democratic is questionable on lots of fronts, specially comparing with individual countries and not the EU specifically.

And frankly GDP is one thing, I rather live in most places in Europe either way. And I much rather live in the richer parts of Europe then in the US and I much, much rather live in poor part of the Europe then the poor parts the US.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#357

Post by manx »

mistermann wrote: post #323
manx wrote: post #133

The solution to the collaboration problem is achieving collective intelligence, e.g. making a crowd smarter than the sum of their parts. I'm part of a small group who are working on algorithms for achieving that. We're applying system's thinking, game theory, bayesian statistics, computer science to find an algorithm that creates collective intelligence. Latest creations: https://social-protocols.org/global-brain/ ht…

Do you have a document that gets into the meat of things yet, I wasn't able to find anything other than short introductions....

The first link (https://social-protocols.org/global-brain/) is the best we have so far. Other than that, there's the almost finished prototype implementation on github (https://github.com/social-protocols/social-network). Where would you like to dive deeper?

I can also offer to jump in a call to discuss.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#358

Post by nolongerthere »

johnnyworker wrote: post #344
tptacek wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamas is the ruling body in Gaza.

They're a fig leaf and asset [1] for those who use them as an excuse for collective punishment and genocide. With predictable and predicted [2] results. [1] Smotrich: "In the context of delegitimization, Hamas is an asset and the authority is a burden" -- https://twitter.com/pgosh_MTP/status/1741169302051402195 [2] https://twitter.com/Rachael_Swindon/status/17417897483670733...

[flagged]

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#359

Post by prometheus76 »

croes wrote: post #314
prometheus76 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running from death out of fear is the very definition of cowardice. There are higher goods that call one to put away their own fear and serve, no matter the cost.

That's interesting because I remember lots of people fear masks and vaccines and refuse to use any of them even despite the mention of the higher goods. The ones vaccinated and masked didn't run, they stayed especially in the health sector.

Different set of "higher goods". I'm not a humanist. I'm a Christian. So going to church to worship God is more important than staying home to stay alive.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#360

Post by nolongerthere »

maxbond wrote: post #166
nolongerthere wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fascinating take: what do you suggest the proper response would be to the current event you referenced in light of your opinion that any response will only radicalize the local population?

First let me say, I'm not trying to make a policy prescription. I'm pointing out what I thought was a misconception about how terrorism works. But to answer your question, I have absolutely no idea. I follow a military news YouTuber named Ryan McBeth, and something he says that makes sense to me is that effective strategies present adversaries with dilemmas rather than problems, where each option is terrible but you…

When I initially engaged with you in this conversation I did so because you appeared to be discussing things honestly but based on other comments you've made here its clear you are in fact trying to push an agenda that denies reality and instead excuses murder.
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