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We've made the world too complicated

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Re: We've made the world too complicated

#151

Post by j_maffe »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #70
j_maffe wrote: post #38

> I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand in a building with rooms I can never enter, living in a country dictated by laws I can't control. We spend the majority of our waking hours and lives in an abstract world of compressed life. The moment I walk through my door I'm in a zoning area on a city-owned sidewalk, flanked by ugly metallic monsters, floating through a sea of strangers. This has be…

I hate this genre of comment. Sometimes the pace or tenor of something that's always been around quickens or otherwise causes new, qualitative change that we do need to discuss and reckon with.

Perhaps so. But then one would need to argue that it is not inherently bad to be unaware of how different element in our lives work and that somehow there's an optimal amount that we're exceeding. The blog post does no such thing.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#152

Post by j_maffe »

BirAdam wrote: post #125
j_maffe wrote: post #38

> I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand in a building with rooms I can never enter, living in a country dictated by laws I can't control. We spend the majority of our waking hours and lives in an abstract world of compressed life. The moment I walk through my door I'm in a zoning area on a city-owned sidewalk, flanked by ugly metallic monsters, floating through a sea of strangers. This has be…

This isn’t entirely true. A stylus is easy to understand, as is paper. Buildings of stone are relatively easy to grasp as well. Being a polymath was once doable. Today to truly master anything requires a lifetime of dedication.

But did the writer understand how the language got created and how the words shape her thoughts?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#153

Post by cityofdelusion »

_nxwj wrote: post #73
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #36

Well that's how you get convenience and comfort. That's how you build civilizations. Specialization started many millennium ago, when people probably didn't know much, if anything, about other careers. I'm sure we all want to throw away working laptops, get out and enjoy nature sometimes. But no, LIVING in the nature is completely a different thing. Camping for a few days or even a month might be fine, but most peopl…

I've read many accounts of the lives of mostly hunter-gatherer tribes living far more care-free and convenient lives. Yes they had no way of treating most diseases, facing natural disasters, and preventable deaths, but from what I understand the reports of scarcity and constant danger are far overblown, at least within certain periods. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/09/anthropological-summer/

Survivorship bias. All the corpses aren't here to tell us anything. Just 100 years ago, most parents would bury at least one of their infant children. People back then were tough, because the physically and emotionally weak died off. Humanity's "natural state" is like the animals, to kill or be killed, to wage war, to reproduce, to die. The difference is we have a big brain that strongly incentivizes us to try to leave that world behind. Its not perfect, but we've improved in basically every measurable way on the scale of our species.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#154

Post by cityofdelusion »

collingreen wrote: post #112
rrgok wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man that's what I've been asking people all the time: what is our end goal? When will we say "this is enough", we can stop here? If we don't know the answers for these question, then we better find answers before going "forward" blindly.

There is no collective goal, just emergent behavior. It might be our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. We're technologically capable of shaping our world for the better and incapable of cooperating or even agreeing enough to pull it off.

I think people forget we are primates and that our roots are very much encoded into our more primitive brain parts. It would be nice (in some definition of that word) if we operated as a social hive like ants or bees, but that is just not the world we live in. The neocortex is a powerful evolutionary thing, but it doesn't (and in many ways, cannot) override our baser instincts.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#155

Post by intralogic »

"To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. " I am learning that a "Just this" attitude, like in these words, improves our experience of life. You may enjoy a Kwan Um school (or other) Zen group, where this is reinforced continually.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#156

Post by socalgal2 »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #150
pj_mukh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get into the this conversation a lot, when you point out the obvious historical context to "all this change", the response is always "Oh so you want to do nothing?" or "helpless to stop what's happening". That's not the implication of historical context. But it screams for a change in narrative, we aren't helpless, we live in the greatest time, and it can be even greater. If we are to continue the march of civiliza…

Beginning of the end seems a tad hyperbolic. We aren’t running out of humans.

We aren't?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#157

Post by bethekidyouwant »

pj_mukh wrote: post #143
patcon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this with respect and appreciation for your thoughtful framing, as I also feel for the author: I'm not a young man, but I believe your this-has-always-been-the-way-ism, is equally clueless, in shared lineage with all the old-dog elders of past who've been helpless to stop what's happening, as the naive fools do the work of imagining it might be otherwise Blindness goes both ways (a certain type from the end, as…

I get into the this conversation a lot, when you point out the obvious historical context to "all this change", the response is always "Oh so you want to do nothing?" or "helpless to stop what's happening". That's not the implication of historical context. But it screams for a change in narrative, we aren't helpless, we live in the greatest time, and it can be even greater. If we are to continue the march of civiliza…

The amount of women having children hasn’t changed since the 80s about 80% the difference is how many they choose to have

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#158

Post by csallen »

patcon wrote: post #115
globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

I say this with respect and appreciation for your thoughtful framing, as I also feel for the author: I'm not a young man, but I believe your this-has-always-been-the-way-ism, is equally clueless, in shared lineage with all the old-dog elders of past who've been helpless to stop what's happening, as the naive fools do the work of imagining it might be otherwise Blindness goes both ways (a certain type from the end, as…

In what way is understanding the historical context in which we live "blindness"?

Correcting someone who believes an old phenomenon is a new phenomenon, is not the same as giving up and saying we should do nothing about said phenomenon. In fact, understanding something is the first and most important step to changing it, especially a pattern or a habit.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#159

Post by cityofdelusion »

_nxwj wrote: post #3
Terr_ wrote: post #2

Everything has always been "too complicated", it's the default state of the natural world. Just imagine the baffling profusion of problems that occur from questions like "is that the same plant", or "is that berry safe to eat", or "which kind of sickness is everyone catching and which thing is going to help?" The complexity never went away, we simply made ways to manage it so that it's not seen as often. So now we do…

The difference I'm trying to discuss is when humans started molding the world to our desires in the forms of agriculture, raising animals as resources, and interfering with ecological cycles. You are right, living in the natural world today would be impossible for most people, requiring generations of local knowledge spread across the community. I should have clarified my meaning of complexity as that which is purely…

Every species molds the world to their desires -- we are just much better at it. Competition and being killed by another species is the only thing that keeps things in check, and even then, you get parts of nature that end up being shaped and dominated by one species (beavers, ants, some fungi/bacteria). The world used to be a molten blob, to eventually an ocean full of mostly one species, to now, and eventually, a dead husk.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#160

Post by bethekidyouwant »

deadonarrival wrote: post #123
manoDev wrote: post #109

> Our internal intuition about right and wrong seems to leave us at an early age. I think it’s the opposite - Kant did too. But modern way of life don’t leave time and space for people to think about right and wrong. One really has to elevate his spirit to begin pondering about that, most people are living for the next paycheck.

>most people are living for the next paycheck. and that's exactly how the ruling class maintains it's power and siphons more and more wealth away from the working class.

Also introduce him to mercantilism.
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