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Resilience requires helping each other out

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21–30 of 92 posts

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tend not to fail when religion is a pillar in the community. The Amish and Mennonites are great examples.

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

I think the trick is to learn how to scale it up. One view of human history is to see it as increasing scales of fellow-feeling and practical cooperation.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#22

The question is how to organize reciprocity in large, complex and evolving systems. The canonical approach is through various contracts. But those can be too specific and poorly adapted and even worsen outcomes under stress. Flexible contracts designed to perform when the "unknown unknowns" materialize are intuitively the "solution", except they dont mesh well will the more typical transactional arrangements that aim…

Social norms are really good at this stuff as long as people do actually spurn people who violate them. There’s been a recent spate of celebrities in the US who’ve “succeeded” by staying arguably within the bounds of legality while well outside the bounds of the norms we ought to want. Too much of those conversations end up about the legality and not about the much more powerful and more precarious norms being attack…

> There’s been a recent spate of celebrities in the US who’ve “succeeded” by staying arguably within the bounds of legality while well outside the bounds of the norms we ought to want.

This also accurately describe a very large portion of silicon valley firms.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

That's not true. That's common misinformation, but it's not true. In fact it's not just wrong, but it's the exact opposite of what happens. You just have to look at pretty much any disaster. Communities come together. They do not become cannibalistic hordes like peppers think. This has been proven again, again, and again. There's entire studies on it.

[deleted]

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

We are all related to each other. A pandemic can wipe us out. A major climate event or a nuclear accident can wreak havoc, increasingly high tech wars can eliminate billions. We choose to downplay our common dependencies and exaggerate the differences. Its a social game we have learned to play when the stakes for our collective survival were lower.

This is an improperly low level of abstraction to the problem, akin to "we're all made of atoms". True and useless.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

That's not true. That's common misinformation, but it's not true. In fact it's not just wrong, but it's the exact opposite of what happens. You just have to look at pretty much any disaster. Communities come together. They do not become cannibalistic hordes like peppers think. This has been proven again, again, and again. There's entire studies on it.

Both happen, you'll get both neighborhoods organizing as tribes, and the roving gangs of looters and arsonists, the former may spring up in response to the latter.

At least that was the experience in Chile in the most affected localities of the 2010 magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

We called down the breakdown of social order that happened "the social earthquake". Eventually the military had to instate curfews to restore public order, though it was taken to be a display of cracks existing in society that the looting happened in the first place rather than just taken for granted as what will happen in face of disruption of social order, which is the prepper view.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this behavior has ever been observed in a regliously and ethnically diverse population. People have to be basically related to one another, sharing a core common belief for it to work.

That's not true. That's common misinformation, but it's not true. In fact it's not just wrong, but it's the exact opposite of what happens. You just have to look at pretty much any disaster. Communities come together. They do not become cannibalistic hordes like peppers think. This has been proven again, again, and again. There's entire studies on it.

The Cajun navy, for example, is well documented as going out to other communities including out of state communities that do not share the same ethnicity and have helped people for years in flood conditions. Only helping people out because of the religion they follow is utterly barbaric anyway.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#27
If only positive reciprocity wasn't so easily gamed way too frequently. Its basically given that somebody will use your kidness/help for its own benefit leaving your with nothing in return. There is number of people I personally know that just let it happen over and over again... Its almost like some good deeds are invisible to some people.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#28

This is sort of the fundamental building block of many socialist and anarchist movements. The concept of "mutual aid" as put forward by folks like Kropotkin is basically we should build communities that help one another, offering our communities excess when we have our, and gracefully accepting aid when we need it.

>This is sort of the fundamental building block of many socialist and anarchist movements.

It's also the fundamental error that all of the "self reliant, self sufficient" doomsday prepper types make. When the apocalypse comes, your little homestead will be nothing but a supply cache for raiders. It doesn't matter how many guns you have. Without a functioning, hierarchical, tight knit community to aid in defense, you and your family will be sold off to the first band of roaming slavers that come through.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all related to each other. A pandemic can wipe us out. A major climate event or a nuclear accident can wreak havoc, increasingly high tech wars can eliminate billions. We choose to downplay our common dependencies and exaggerate the differences. Its a social game we have learned to play when the stakes for our collective survival were lower.

This is an improperly low level of abstraction to the problem, akin to "we're all made of atoms". True and useless.

on the contrary, everyone of us needs to realize that we are part of a global community and that all of our actions accumulate to have an effect across the world. so instead of saying that this will never work because we are to diverse, instead we need to strive and MAKE IT WORK! put aside our differences, find common ground and build a global cooperative community that includes every human being on this planet.

Re: Resilience requires helping each other out

#30
There's lots of communities where this is true and it doesn't require a full scale "end to capitalism" or whatever. Ultimately, you can get quite far with Coase's Theory of the Firm as a model.

Nail salons for immigrants, the motel business, the Afghan tamale business. These all have massive graph interconnectedness in their social structure. You can have it, too, if you'd like.

Since I found it quite possible to do in the Bay Area, I'm going to say it's quite feasible and the problem is entirely down to what your inner self permits. You have to be very comfortable offering and accepting favours. And the second is as important as the first.

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