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Ordinary Abundance

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Re: Ordinary Abundance

#181

Post by rocketpastsix »

xnx wrote: post #3
carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

We've dealt with a broken water heater, a city wide wifi outage, incredibly hot temps (thats the current thing), and loss of power for 30+ hours in the winter storm that hit the US Southeast earlier this year. It has really made me come to appreciate each of these things more than I did.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#182

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dachris wrote: post #51
carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

I often say that everyone should be on a misery week once a year, where you live like our "ancestors". I.e. like my grandparents, who grew up in the 1920s on a farm, only 1 heated room, privy outside, no running water, limited food options, hard work each day. As my granny used to say to anyone with nostalgia: no, things were definitely not better back then. Misery week would greatly increase happiness for the rest o…

There’s many people who live this this everyday still

The future isn’t evenly distributed

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#183

Post by csours »

globular-toast wrote: post #143
csours wrote: post #97

I can eat better than a king, every day.

Especially if you eat mindfully rather than stuffing your face to get it over with like many people seem to. I can eat like an Indian even though I'm in the UK: fresh vegetables every day and all the spices you can imagine. Meanwhile many people are still eating barely better than Shackleton's men stuck on the ice for months on end.

"better" is really subjective!

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#184

Post by breuleux »

nradov wrote: post #179
breuleux wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm describing a speed limit applied to production , not experimentation. We can progress science, knowledge and technology all we want without necessarily committing every resource we can find to producing ten times more stuff than we need. Moving too quickly in terms of production can be detrimental to progress: first movers can and often do take over entire markets, leaving no room for the often better-designed se…

Nah. Rapid, unconstrained growth in the early production and use of fossil fuels was one of the greatest factors ever in saving lives and improving quality of life worldwide. Stopping that would have condemned millions to poverty, darkness, and death. And it's a moot point anyway because there was no way to slow down even if some people wanted to.

There is such a thing as borrowing against the future. If we fail to keep climate change in check and millions of people die as a consequence, that may just wipe out all the gains you mention.

And let's not mix everything up. Every innovation is different. Penicillin and the Green Revolution aren't in the same category as bottled water and fast fashion. We can certainly fast track technologies that have large, immediate positive effects while throttling frivolous crap.

Or maybe we can't. Maybe humanity can't plan ahead -- being made from thinking agents doesn't necessarily grant a system a capacity to think. But I find it's a strange act of faith to believe barreling ahead thoughtlessly is somehow always going to be fine.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#185

Post by LouisContant »

Every time I see/hear one of these, I think it's very telling that they usually have to go back 100 years at least for the luxury to become apparent. The problems people have aren't that we're back to 100 years ago status it's that over the last 40 or so we've lost an increasing amount of ground

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#186

Post by lanfeust6 »

potsandpans wrote: post #148
Slow_Hand wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so… what? Make a point or leave it be, rather than making vague innuendo about how we should disapprove of them.

Effective altruists are a transhumanist cult filled with people that think an ML degree qualifies them to speak on subjects outside of their domain and make decisions on behalf of humanity. A disclosure should be required next to anything they're working on.

You're projecting. EAs are people interested in EA. That there might be overlap with some "transhumanists" (which is no crime as far as anyone is concerned) has no bearing.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#187

Post by shaftway »

> On merchants who netted ginger, cinnamon and rhubarb from the Nile. In medieval price lists, a pound of ginger sold for the price of a sheep; a pound of saffron, the price of a horse.

A modern horse costs $3000 - $8000. Saffron at the grocery store costs $5 - $20 per gram, but you can get it for wholesale at $1000 - $5000 per pound.

So saffron is about the same affordability now, even though it's more common.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#188

Post by watwut »

techblueberry wrote: post #175
watwut wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people aren’t by and large happier now (because of the hedonism this is sidestepping the argument of how well distributed it is, and I’m talking the past 50-100 years not compared to subsistence farming and the like early Industrial Revolution etc et al Funnily, this range contains WWII, great depression, run up to them and falldown from them. It all involved a lot of royally unhappy desperate people. It is also sh…

I mean it also includes 2008, COVID and the Ukrainian war. I’m talking about material hedonic adaptation, not have things ever sucked in the past 100 years. Suicide rates are also up and s/alcoholism/fentanyl addiction/. Funny you bring up gambling because gambling is also up. Rural areas famously peaked in the like mid 20th century and haven’t recovered. My argument isn’t the typical “gosh the good old days”. It’s m…

Gadgets are not making us happier, but technological evolution is not just gadgets. It allows us to be less in pain, because we can cure diseases and injuries the way we could not before. Ability to avoid domestic abuse is also related to technological evolution - because it allows you to control the number of kids and it allows women to live independently.

My point is that hedonistic treadmill is a theory that holds only for the less important things. Yes, I get used to new better headphones and they do not fundamentally change my situation. But, when the evolution allows me to live with less pain or without disability, gives me more agency, then yes, I will be more happier and it will be durable result.

> Suicide rates are also up and s/alcoholism/fentanyl addiction/

I did not said it goes up all the time, I said it goes up and down. Despite growth of alcoholism it was much worst in some past periods.

> If we keep on the trend we’re on and America has lost its post war economic domination, those numbers are going to keep looking worse, cute cat videos be damned.

America does not need economic domination over the whole world to be happy. The unhappy people have nothing to do with overall world economic dominance. America could have happier people, if that was its political goal.

> I mean it also includes 2008, COVID and the Ukrainian war.

2008 does not compare to great depression, COVID and the Ukrainian war do not compare to WWII and Holocaust. Not even when we judge by what is going on in the Ukraine itself (as bad as it is, WWII was worst there). And specifically Americans did fought in WWII, bud did not in Ukraine.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#189

Post by potsandpans »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #186
potsandpans wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective altruists are a transhumanist cult filled with people that think an ML degree qualifies them to speak on subjects outside of their domain and make decisions on behalf of humanity. A disclosure should be required next to anything they're working on.

You're projecting. EAs are people interested in EA. That there might be overlap with some "transhumanists" (which is no crime as far as anyone is concerned) has no bearing.

I'm not projecting. It's literally what the community is founded on. If you don't like the association, take it up with the group.

Effective Altruism is in of itself a philosophy developed by charlatans that refuse to engage in the tradition that preceded it by about 2500 years.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#190

Post by smallmancontrov »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #116
smallmancontrov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> affordable That's the crux, isn't it? You aren't just dependent, you are dependent on a system that relentlessly stalks you with increased demands. You are tasked with keeping ahead of a pack of hunters who want to take you down -- and not only will your companions leave you for dead the moment that happens, the group will punish any suggestion that we might want to do something about this on a systemic level becau…

Today’s ways of living - no matter how challenging or disillusioning or alienating they may be - are largely preferable to literally being hunted and having your livelihood threatened by predators, compared to the figurative hunters and predators you’re describing. It ain’t perfect - and we’ll work to improve it - but it’s way better than the way it used to be for so many people. Civilization aint all bad.

The Hobbes argument can be used to justify tyranny far worse than what we see. It does not prevent me from believing that substantial improvement is possible.
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