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We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

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Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#11

Post by jmcgough »

V__ wrote: post #4
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #2

China seems to do a decent job of it. Why can't we?

Because 15min cities are Soros funded projects to imprison us and the sheeple don't understandit. Renewable energy is a "gina" scam to destroy our economy. Healthcare is communism, socialism, fascism. Everything sucks but I don't want anything to change... /s If a society makes every problem a culture war, there can't be any progress until it gets so bad it can't be ignored anymore. But I feel even that is bit too op…

Billionaires can spend unlimited money convincing people to oppose anything that benefits them, and we have an entire industry of social media influencers who get rewarded for stoking conflict. Citizens United passed in 2010 and everything has gone dramatically downhill since then.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#12

Post by aswegs8 »

graemep wrote: post #3
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #2

China seems to do a decent job of it. Why can't we?

Does it? There are plenty of disastrous decisions in the last 70 years at the level of major policies. There are plenty of failed projects. The west in general used to be a lot more efficient. IMO the main cause is exactly the problem the Soviet Union used to have, and China still does: centralisation.

That is exactly the point, though. Centralization starts to offer real advantages because the cost of complexity has increased significantly in decentralized Western societies. Yes, centralization can be inefficient, but it also makes decision-making much easier.

Public opinion in Western societies has become far more fragmented and heterogeneous, largely because of the internet. There is much more internal disagreement and constant contestation. I think that is a strong example of a factor that significantly increases the cost of complexity.

In a way, that is why we are now trying to emulate certain aspects of centralization. The United States does a relatively good job at this, and I am not making a judgment on whether that is positive or negative. But here in the European Union, we are so decentralized that we often struggle to reach agreement on major issues.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#13

Post by Juliate »

eimrine wrote: post #6
V__ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 15min cities are Soros funded projects to imprison us and the sheeple don't understandit. Renewable energy is a "gina" scam to destroy our economy. Healthcare is communism, socialism, fascism. Everything sucks but I don't want anything to change... /s If a society makes every problem a culture war, there can't be any progress until it gets so bad it can't be ignored anymore. But I feel even that is bit too op…

What is more important for you - economy or ecology?

Why should any be exclusive of the other?

My take is that it is kind of exclusive today, because the economy is designed and limited against the ecology, but that's not a fundamental given. It comes down from the choice of humanity to extract itself from nature. That's a choice and a story we can identify, criticise, and counter with another choice. Which would take some time, but... that's all we have.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#14

Post by InsideOutSanta »

graemep wrote: post #3
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #2

China seems to do a decent job of it. Why can't we?

Does it? There are plenty of disastrous decisions in the last 70 years at the level of major policies. There are plenty of failed projects. The west in general used to be a lot more efficient. IMO the main cause is exactly the problem the Soviet Union used to have, and China still does: centralisation.

Centralization is an information problem. You can't make good centralized decisions if you don't have good information to base this on. China still has this problem; the data coming up the pipeline is often much more rosy than reality. But it has the problem to a much lesser degree than the USSR, because surveillance technology and data management are improving.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#16

Post by kuerbel »

eimrine wrote: post #6
V__ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 15min cities are Soros funded projects to imprison us and the sheeple don't understandit. Renewable energy is a "gina" scam to destroy our economy. Healthcare is communism, socialism, fascism. Everything sucks but I don't want anything to change... /s If a society makes every problem a culture war, there can't be any progress until it gets so bad it can't be ignored anymore. But I feel even that is bit too op…

What is more important for you - economy or ecology?

You frame this as an either-or choice. It's a false dichotomy. economic prosperity and environmental protection are often interconnected.

That said, ecology is more important to me in general. The economy exists within the environment, not the other way around. It's definitely a more nuanced relationship than "either-or" suggests though...

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#17

Post by panick21_ »

nilirl wrote: post #8

I've been thinking about this too: why aren't we able to run safe political experiments? We're missing guardrails to allow safe experimentation and we're missing institutions to provide affordances. I think the difficult bit is figuring out how to seperate the goodness of centralized decision shaping and the badness of centralized power accumulation.

Many things don't really need 'experiments'. You can just do them. Like run good buses.

The US already does run experiments thanks to the states, and we run many simply by having many countries.

The problem is not lack of experiments the problem is lack of political will to implemented known good solutions.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#19

Post by energy123 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #14
graemep wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? There are plenty of disastrous decisions in the last 70 years at the level of major policies. There are plenty of failed projects. The west in general used to be a lot more efficient. IMO the main cause is exactly the problem the Soviet Union used to have, and China still does: centralisation.

Centralization is an information problem. You can't make good centralized decisions if you don't have good information to base this on. China still has this problem; the data coming up the pipeline is often much more rosy than reality. But it has the problem to a much lesser degree than the USSR, because surveillance technology and data management are improving.

This is called the Local Knowledge Problem. It's why centralization can't work and has never worked, at least not until we have some ASI they can overcome it.
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