The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#111

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 8:58 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #100

AlexandrB wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting in the "spherical cow"[1] kind of way like many abstract ideas, but it quickly falls apart as soon as you try to use apply it to any real context. In particular it suffers from a problem similar to the one that plagues the Martingale betting strategy[2], where you might need an infinite[3] amount of resources to achieve a population large enough to make up for the loss in quality of life. So ultimate…

I don't think that's the case at all. The fundamental question of whether the basic low-level life existence of a human being is preferable to a smaller number of high-quality lives is a difficult question and isn't just some abstract spherical cow thought experiment.

Abstract spherical cow thought experiments can be difficult and still be abstract spherical cow thought experiments.

What makes this completely irrelevant to anything I care about, is that "many shitty lives" vs. "few high-quality lives" aren't options that exist in a void. Whatever complex worldwide system you're talking about that would put those two choices on the table would have all sorts of massive side effects, and those side effects matter in deciding which is preferable. It's just not useful to discuss it in some hypothetical infinite blank frictionless flat surface where you've arbitrarily decided that having a baby later is murdering the potential baby you might have had earlier. That's not reality and it has no impact or relation to reality.

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#112

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:07 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #109

kerkeslager wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? I am very interested in philosophy and I do care for thinking deeply about problems. But if you want to talk about philosophy I do insist that we philosophize about evidence that exists in reality, not about hypothetical situations with no connection to reality. And no deep thought was had in coming u…

No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. You seem pretty set in your uninformed ways, so I’m not sure there’s much else to say here, other than: the SEP is a wor…

> No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas.

Okay, so then what exactly is your objection to me saying that what Parfit said was stupid?

> But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me.

Again, I'm not anti-intellectual. I'm anti calling this nonsense intellectual.

> the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars

That's just an appeal to authority[1]. A group of philosophers patting each other on the back can all be wrong. Ideas get evaluated by their logic and evidence, not by the reputation of who said them.

There are plenty of philosophers I respect. Darwin, Chomsky, or Orwell, for examples. But I respect them based on the ideas they came up with (which doesn't mean I always agree). I haven't read any Parfit besides what you've posted, but nothing there warrants any respect.

There are plenty of other "reputable" philosophers who deserve no respect. "If everyone was a philosopher, there would be no farmers and we would starve to death; therefore being a philosopher is wrong." Sound familiar? Why is no philosopher talking about how stupid that idea is?

> that have thought about this much more than you have.

I really do not know why you think that "thinking about something a lot" matters. A program that runs for a long time and then spits out the wrong answer is not a good program.

> Try reading a paper sometime.

I read 3 papers in the last week. Each of them contained data which tied their conclusions to reality.

Try reading a paper critically sometime.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#113

Post by simonh » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:07 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #107

simonh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just did some digging around on the research on this and that doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere, and it's a well studied issue. After all, for example existing housing stock hasn't got any smaller so that's easy to correct for in the data. The main correlative factors seem to be economic affluence, higher education levels meaning more women have careers, and access to birth control. I really don't but the corpo…

Where did I say anything about a conspiracy theory? Corporations care about their profits and shareholders, not on promoting any kind of societal values like family and children. This has nothing to do with a group conspiring in a smoky room. An entity pursuing its interests is not a conspiracy. Honestly if your immediate jump is to accuse someone of conspiracy theory thinking, this isn’t a conversation worth having,…

You're talking about corporations manipulating media ("the particular media being pushed") to discourage people having children. I'm talking about the pushing you referred to.

Even beside that I don't see how that works even from an incentive point of view. Lots of corporations sell things to children, or to parents for their children. There are huge swathes of industries organised around that. How is it to the benefit of companies to have fewer customers?

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#114

Post by globular-toast » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:12 AM UTC

jraedisch wrote: post #12

So when I think “every important thing in my life is scarce”, that is just incorrect imagination? 11 billion people can live on a lake with perfect child and health care?

It's just massively taking for granted what you have and being a sucker for marketing. Food, warmth, companionship/love, these things aren't important to you?

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#115

Post by keiferski » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:14 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #113

keiferski wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I say anything about a conspiracy theory? Corporations care about their profits and shareholders, not on promoting any kind of societal values like family and children. This has nothing to do with a group conspiring in a smoky room. An entity pursuing its interests is not a conspiracy. Honestly if your immediate jump is to accuse someone of conspiracy theory thinking, this isn’t a conversation worth having,…

You're talking about corporations manipulating media ("the particular media being pushed") to discourage people having children. I'm talking about the pushing you referred to. Even beside that I don't see how that works even from an incentive point of view. Lots of corporations sell things to children, or to parents for their children. There are huge swathes of industries organised around that. How is it to the benef…

Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough.

It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.

And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?

Maybe it’s an oversimplified to say corporations “push” stuff into the media; and more of a cyclical process of culture and corporate interests, but I find the examples I mentioned (popular TV shows, etc.) to be pretty obvious and undeniable.

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#116

Post by globular-toast » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:22 AM UTC

I'm really glad to see thought like this. For me, it was the pandemic with its lockdowns etc that made me think, hold on... Aren't we post-scarcity already? How long has this been going on?

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#117

Post by simonh » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:46 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #115

simonh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about corporations manipulating media ("the particular media being pushed") to discourage people having children. I'm talking about the pushing you referred to. Even beside that I don't see how that works even from an incentive point of view. Lots of corporations sell things to children, or to parents for their children. There are huge swathes of industries organised around that. How is it to the benef…

Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough. It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender.…

>Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough.

There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Women want education and careers, I have two daughters so I know this. No corporation is telling them to do it.

Another is competition for middle class jobs requiring an education, there are more jobs like this now in the developed world than ever before, and more educated people people seeking them out so competition is huge. This includes international competition, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world getting added to the global middle class has had a huge effect. It's meant a precipitous collapse in poverty, but devalued middle class jobs so that wages have stagnated.

Another is housing competition. Everyone wants the nicest house they can get for their family, but supply isn't keeping up with demand. As a result all those people with dual household incomes are competing with each other, bidding up the prices of houses. As a result the older generations are now pretty well off overall, but most of their net worth is tied up in their house.

>It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.

How are they expecting to get more individual consumers if people aren't having children? That makes no sense to me. The incentive structure is all wrong, particularly for the whole swathes of industries that cater to families and children.

>And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?

Every company I have worked for has done. The company I'm with now offers flexible hours, subsidises child care and offers far more generous parental leave than required by law. My previous company also had a specific hiring programme to recruit and retrain women returning to work after having children.

People make TV shows to make money. They'll make the show that sells, not ones that push some nebulous economic agenda that wouldn't even have any effect until a whole generation later.

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#118

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:49 AM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #90

kerkeslager wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also worth thinking about in this context is the so-called “repugnant conclusion”: I disagree, elaborate ponderings in the absence of non-hypothetical evidence are not worth talking about. I mean, read the section, "Arriving at the Repugnant Conclusion" with any critical eye at all and it becomes clear that it's total nonsense. They're treating "postponing a pregnancy" (not even aborting an existing pregnancy to ha…

Maybe I'm missing something, but it also seems innumerate. It's possible that the resources needed for each additional person reduces the quality of life for all other people enough to more than entirely cancel out their own contribution to the "sum". The resulting sequence would approach a sum of 0 as the population increases instead of always increasing with population.

I mean, you can make up any model of the situation in a void, which is why this whole discussion doesn't matter. What if it's a normal distribution, and there's a number of people where quality of life is maximized? Since we're making shit up now, what if it's an exponential decay and there's a number of people where quality of life jumps from negative infinity to positive infinity?

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#119

Post by keiferski » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 9:52 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #117

keiferski wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough. It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender.…

>Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough. There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70…

The vast majority of corporations don’t offer the benefits yours does, nor have they for the last fifty years. Your situation is extremely unique and not at all typical.

If this was a conspiracy, your point about not having consumers would make sense. But it’s not a conspiracy, it’s merely entities acting in their short term interests - which they are incentivized to do by the nature of the stock market.

Also remember that this is during the era of increasing globalization, when global corporations are in many ways more concerned with international markets than with local ones.

You also vastly underestimate how social attitudes have changed in the last 70 years, and how this is not at all just something that “naturally” happened.

Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)

#120

Post by simonh » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 10:54 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #119

simonh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough. There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70…

The vast majority of corporations don’t offer the benefits yours does, nor have they for the last fifty years. Your situation is extremely unique and not at all typical. If this was a conspiracy, your point about not having consumers would make sense. But it’s not a conspiracy, it’s merely entities acting in their short term interests - which they are incentivized to do by the nature of the stock market. Also remembe…

Consumerism and media affect everyone though, but even within countries and within specific demographic groups higher wealth and higher education lead to lower birth rates. That's true everywhere.

People aren't all just corporate puppets having all their strings pulled by shadowy overlords. It's not like China with the one child policy, which I'm familiar with as my wife is Chinese. Sometimes people just make their own decisions. They make them for reasons sure, that's why there is a trend because people in similar situations tend to make similar choices overall, but nobody planned for all of this to happen.