Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia • Hacker News Board

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#101

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 12:42 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #74

coldtea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a very religious view. Humans are not necessarily flawed Historically they have been. At least they're not up to our own standards. We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. We might not be total bastards, but we're no perfectly fine people either.

> We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions. All of those can be very useful traits. Evolution, promotes using miliple strategies. Now, you can talk about spherical humans in a vacuum, but reality is more complex than that.

If you just squint hard enough, nothing is a flaw. "oh, this can be very useful for self-destruction and suffering, or collapsing under its own weight"

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#102

Post by Retra » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

winchling wrote: post #32

afpx wrote: post #17

A Dystopia is only recognizable when juxtaposed against a state that is much different from it. That is, a Dystopia would develop over time, with many not even recognizing the gradual changes; it's not something that develops suddenly. For example, it's not hard to imagine that our world could be considered a Dystopia to some who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. Or, it could even be considered a Utopia to ot…

>Utopias and Dystopias are only interesting as thought experiments to imagine what Humans could be possible about They both have the property that progress has ended; that we have ceased learning about reality. An undesirable state to be in! Yet ideas of utopias and dystopias have been used to advance the careers/interests/ambitions of the power-hungry, e.g. when they reluctantly accept power. they don't want power (…

I don't think there's anything inherent to a utopia that means you stop learning about reality. If anything, you should expect anything you learn about reality to have maximally broad impact according to its relevance to people's lives. There's nothing about a perfect organization of society that implies a steady, non-adaptive state.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#103

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #72

zdragnar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day?

Which is still no good, because nobody can tell which are those two times when it's right by looking at it.

You can never know if a clock is showing the correct time unless you have another, known good point of reference.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#104

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #31

shoguning wrote: post #21

I've heard the assertion that utopianism is bad, but what about it is bad? Certainly, we should be able to strive for improvement, in ourselves and society? The problem with utopianism is the desire to create a new society out of whole cloth, with no regard for the lessons of the past, or the structure of existing society. Drastic changes, like those of the communist revolutions, rarely bring about positive change (n…

Utopianism is Perfectionism, as opposed to Progressivism. It's unsound to believe that's possible to elminiate all problems, and someone having a belief that utopis is possible is s strong signal of either deceit or stupidity.

Surely you meant to say that it's a strong signal of not being completely candid, or of being disingenuous :)

I like the perfectionism vs progressivism thing. My analogy would have been that it's like "the truth": if you think you're in full possession of the full truth, or ever could be, that's silly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to learn more, be more honest, and so on. "truth" with a small t is still a useful concept. But it's always subjective, and requires people figuring that out both alone, with nothing between themselves and their conscience, and together (which will never change it to being objective, or completely agreed upon by all, or mean 100% the same thing even for two identical twins who "totally agree" on it).

Just like one could say we are the "result" of what our cells are doing all the time (I know you really couldn't simplify it like that at all, but for the sake of argument), society is the result of the daily decisions of the actual people in it - what they think others expect of them, and whether they listen to that or their inner voice, and so on.

It seems to me many want to change society "on" others rather than with them, you might say they would rather attempt to change society on a drawing board to change their neighbours, than get to know their neighbours and themselves in the first place. But societies aren't really that different from personal relations and families. People grow over time, societies grow, decay or heal over time, too -- not as the result of turning a switch or throwing out everything that was before on a dime, just because we really want to.

> Until now the totalitarian belief that everything is possible seems to have proved only that everything can be destroyed.

-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#105

Post by SiempreViernes » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:11 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #91

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "the world is fallen" implies that the world fell from something. It didn't. The same rules of physics, as far as we can tell, have been plugging away since the very beginning. If you mean "The world sucks" then say that instead of saying "the world is fallen". Fallen has a very specific meaning, and using it as a poetic slush word is enough to make me not take the OP seriously.

> Saying "the world is fallen" implies that the world fell from something. It didn't Welcome to the magic world of metaphors and symbolism...

Dude, way to xkcd 169.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#106

Post by jakeogh » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #81

leepowers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to process these ideas on the basis of trust. True, the religious angle is shoehorned at the end. But the author cites secular books and ideas throughout; these ideas and the relationships between them are worth considering.

Imagine that a person was trying to explain to you how we knew that galaxies and so on were a certain distance away. They show that we know how to figure out Standard Candles and luminosity etc etc etc. They also claim, at the very end, to say that the earth is flat. They don't mean the universe is flat. They mean the earth is flat. Now, imagine you haven't read the article, somebody comments, "This guy said the eart…

Paradoxically, by employing that subject, you are in a way falling for it. It's not designed to convince you the earth is flat.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#107

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

jd007 wrote: post #5

More generally speaking, when you optimize on a particular set of metrics to the extreme (when it comes to social issues this is what utopias try to do), you will inevitably cause another set of metrics to be correspondingly de-optimized to the extreme (which can be qualified as dystopian). There is no way to optimize everything simultaneously because many things are fundamentally inversely correlated with each other…

Is there a name for the evolution of parameters being optimized ? one period will improve A, then the next will improve B etc etc

A bit like a 3D spiral slowly going "up" locally (even one might argue it's folding over itself in the long term)

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#108

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #60

sadness2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's a hyper-idealism which rejects the absolutely the idea of allowing a non-inclusive worldview of an individual to rule. Judeo-Christian is the author's specific worldview, but that's incidental to the stance.

In theory. I know plenty of Christians who would agree with his statements about this world being fallen, but who still try to move their country towards a Christian pseudo-utopia where their own values are mandated on others. Of course we can't know whether the author falls into that camp or not. EDIT: To be clear, I also know plenty of Christians who do not try and impose their values on society.

It's only theoretically possible that the author's specific worldview is incidental to their stance because there are people who have the same wordview but the opposite stance? That makes no sense.

> I also know plenty of Christians who do not try and impose their values on society.

Yeah, like the article for example, which raises the question why all this is floating at the top.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#109

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #68

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this world is fallen Makes the entire article essentially meaningless. How can I trust somebody with such a bizarre and unconnected worldview?

Not really bizarre or really unconnected. In fact, for most of history, and with very great many minds throughout history agreeing to that, it would be your objection that would be considered bizarre. You don't have to believe in a specific creator or any specific religious mythology to agree with such a statement as "this world is fallen". Even as atheist like e.g. Emil Cioran could agree with such a statement. But…

It's not so much that it is fallen - you can have a meaningful discussion about whether there was ever a point in history where life was better, or a theological discussion about the nature of any fall from grace.

It's the religious implication in the article that invalidates it. Christian belief is that humanity's fall from grace can only be redeemed through the intercession of christ, and the author links the impossibility of any utopian state with that fall from grace, so obviously the only way to resolve it is theological.

The author's implied statement that any attempt to create a utopia must either come from god, or be religious in nature, is the problem. If, like me, you don't believe in god, and believe organised religions are inherently bad, then at that point the author's credibility is destroyed and the article is just another religious rant.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#110

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #81

leepowers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to process these ideas on the basis of trust. True, the religious angle is shoehorned at the end. But the author cites secular books and ideas throughout; these ideas and the relationships between them are worth considering.

Imagine that a person was trying to explain to you how we knew that galaxies and so on were a certain distance away. They show that we know how to figure out Standard Candles and luminosity etc etc etc. They also claim, at the very end, to say that the earth is flat. They don't mean the universe is flat. They mean the earth is flat. Now, imagine you haven't read the article, somebody comments, "This guy said the eart…

But they're not talking about something you cannot "verify" with your own mind right now, at worst with some additional reading. You're not asked to "trust" anyone.

"That person freaked out just because someone said the Earth is flat, so that their brain completely glazed over and they couldn't understand or care about anything else they said", why is that not a thing, too?

To me this kind of discussion is not intellectually honest, it's not an earnest attempt -- there's plenty brilliant people of faith so I see no reason to dismiss anything out of hand like that. Don't judge a book by its cover, yet this discussion about the cover is the one that the most energy is spent on.