Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

kirkcenter.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 214 posts

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

#201

Post by int_19h »

anigbrowl wrote: post #189
int_19h wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's rephrase it as "when they act in furtherance to committing a crime", then (i.e. the definition of conspiracy sans requiring multiple people). And yes, it does mean that you won't catch all such people, only most. It's the case of diminishing returns - you have to radically increase surveillance and police state intrusiveness to go after fewer and fewer people, while also affecting more and more people who aren'…

That's all true, but only considers state-criminal relations. I urge reconsidering this from the point of view of political conflict rather than simple criminology.

But this story is about state-criminal relations - people like these are terrorists, and we have laws against terrorism, so it's just the matter of enforcing those laws.

If you mean, when one should start worrying about one's political opponents, the answer is, and always has been - as soon as their support starts growing for any reason. In that sense, the time for anybody on the left to worry about right-wing extremist politics has been many years ago, as was the time to translate it into action (i.e. vote strategically to defeat them as the highest priority).

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

#202

Post by anigbrowl »

int_19h wrote: post #201
anigbrowl wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all true, but only considers state-criminal relations. I urge reconsidering this from the point of view of political conflict rather than simple criminology.

But this story is about state-criminal relations - people like these are terrorists, and we have laws against terrorism, so it's just the matter of enforcing those laws. If you mean, when one should start worrying about one's political opponents, the answer is, and always has been - as soon as their support starts growing for any reason. In that sense, the time for anybody on the left to worry about right-wing extrem…

That's true, but it's often not so clear-cut, nor does it line up with electoral goals or established political parties in many contexts.

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

#203

Post by anigbrowl »

stcredzero wrote: post #198
anigbrowl wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how everyone you disagree with you tag as crazy and all concerns about murders are folded into 'there will always be lone crazies' as if their motives were inscrutable. You sure have an odd set of priorities.

Weird how everyone you disagree with you tag as crazy If their disagreement comes in the form of de-platforming, evidence-free defamatory tarring, and violence, then yes, I would say they're in this "crazy" category. This certainly fits all concerns about murders are folded into 'there will always be lone crazies' as if their motives were inscrutable Do ideologies cause crazies, or do crazies latch onto ideologies? I…

However, if you look at what's actually happening in the past few years, there were twice as many killings by Far Left extremists as Far Right extremists in the US

That is not true, or anything close to true. I cannot imagine why you would say make such abundantly false claims, and I challenge you to identify any of these 'far left extremists' or their victims. I also reject your dismissal of all who commit such extreme violence as 'crazies' which suggests they are not in the full possession of their mental faculties and is often referred to as a 'no true scotsman' fallacy.

I can easily point out specific right wing examples of extreme violence, most notably the guy shot shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people just a couple of months ago.

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

#204

Post by anigbrowl »

stcredzero wrote: post #197
anigbrowl wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to say that you sound an awful lot more concerned about anarchists running around Berkeley and giving centrists a hard time in social spaces than you do about the rather large number of murders committed by proponents of some other ideologies.

I've got to say that you sound an awful lot more concerned about anarchists running around Berkeley and giving centrists a hard time in social spaces than you do about the rather large number of murders committed by proponents of some other ideologies. It's easier for many to be concerned about a radiation leakage in a dramatic incident like Fukushima than about the cumulative radiation released in coal plants, even…

Alex Nowrasteh is not any kind of extremism expert and his claims are so unspecific as not to merit discussion. His criteria for inclusion are wildly dishonest, citing BLM as providing motivation for murder even though no BLM discourse or published material advocates attacks on the police. I give up, I feel like I'm reading a comment on Breitbart.

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

#205

Post by Retra »

winchling wrote: post #117
Retra wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can anything have an impact if there are no problems? How can there be problems if the arrangements are perfect? How can anything which is perfect be improved? etc.

Why would there be no problems? What is perfect is the ability of society to solve problems, not the whole of existence. A utopia is a state of social order, not a state of reality.

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

#206

Post by burfog »

anigbrowl wrote: post #203
stcredzero wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how everyone you disagree with you tag as crazy If their disagreement comes in the form of de-platforming, evidence-free defamatory tarring, and violence, then yes, I would say they're in this "crazy" category. This certainly fits all concerns about murders are folded into 'there will always be lone crazies' as if their motives were inscrutable Do ideologies cause crazies, or do crazies latch onto ideologies? I…

However, if you look at what's actually happening in the past few years, there were twice as many killings by Far Left extremists as Far Right extremists in the US That is not true, or anything close to true. I cannot imagine why you would say make such abundantly false claims, and I challenge you to identify any of these 'far left extremists' or their victims. I also reject your dismissal of all who commit such extr…

The synagogue shooter was a leftist who hated Trump and pretty much quotes Farrakhan.

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

#207

Post by winchling »

Retra wrote: post #205
winchling wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anything have an impact if there are no problems? How can there be problems if the arrangements are perfect? How can anything which is perfect be improved? etc.

Why would there be no problems? What is perfect is the ability of society to solve problems, not the whole of existence. A utopia is a state of social order, not a state of reality.

The problem here is that problems are connected to problems in other fields, and that solving problems always creates new problems. So a notionally perfect social and political order could only be achieved by halting progress in all other fields.

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

#208

Post by pas »

whalabi wrote: post #192
pas wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I obviously don't know exactly what OP meant, but maybe there is a difference between simply looking at Norway as a pretty close to utopia versus doing that from scratch in one step, skipping the organic "annealing" of culture and politics. Simply having a few determined goals means the design necessarily have to be biased against the unmentioned goals. And those might be important for the general state, but i…

Bias against the unmentioned goals? Sure, plausible. But theoretically is argue not necessary. There's no reason why all goals could be covered, in some not to hard to imagine system (perhaps a post-secondary society simply allows anyone with a grievance to get in touch with whoever can fix it, if it should be fixed,as opposed to having a bunch of top down goals) Also, I don't see why being optimum in one goal, let's…

It's harder to optimize a system if there are a lot of dimensions.

For example, tax report transparency is bad if you have inequality and also lack an efficient anti-hate-crime enforcement system, because then people will lynch/rob rich folks.

So even just getting closer to the optimum takes time and a lot of resources.

> I just don't think these concepts are as simple as levers, and I think anything is possible.

Exactly. It's a complex dynamic system with path dependence. Trajectory is everything.

> But with enough education, knowledge, and a sprinkle of genetic engineering, maybe?

Maybe :) Though the problem is that without a great society powerful tools will be used to entrench the interests of those that lead the existing not-so-great society.

And it's very hard to align the interests of the leaders with the commoners.

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

#209

Post by Retric »

philwelch wrote: post #200
Retric wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utopia is not about arbitrary metrics. Maximizing choice is more critical than having trains show up on time, to the nanosecond. "A Utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia Suggesting all metrics must be at 100% is thus clearly a straw man. The end to starvation is very mu…

> The end to starvation is very much a realistic and Utopian goal out of reach for our ancestors. That is also an "arbitrary metric": you've set the rate of "people not starving" to 100%. That's what it means when you say "the end of starvation", rather than "reducing starvation" or "minimizing starvation". If you want to end starvation, that means 0 starvation and 100% non-starvation. Not a single person anywhere on…

You can solve world hunger while ignoring hunger strikes. You’re pricing an arbitrary metric of what people eat vs their ability to eat food. As many religious traditions involve fasting, your metric would also require them to be erased. That’s very much out of scope when people talk about Utopia and why no she uses the term 100% in the definition.

PS: Bringing up straw man arguments is not part of meaningful dialogue.

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

#210

Post by philwelch »

Retric wrote: post #209
philwelch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The end to starvation is very much a realistic and Utopian goal out of reach for our ancestors. That is also an "arbitrary metric": you've set the rate of "people not starving" to 100%. That's what it means when you say "the end of starvation", rather than "reducing starvation" or "minimizing starvation". If you want to end starvation, that means 0 starvation and 100% non-starvation. Not a single person anywhere on…

You can solve world hunger while ignoring hunger strikes. You’re pricing an arbitrary metric of what people eat vs their ability to eat food. As many religious traditions involve fasting, your metric would also require them to be erased. That’s very much out of scope when people talk about Utopia and why no she uses the term 100% in the definition. PS: Bringing up straw man arguments is not part of meaningful dialogu…

Please read my comment again, make a good faith attempt to comprehend all of it, and try to respond to the whole thing rather than the first couple of sentences. Being an impatient skim-reader isn’t part of meaningful dialogue, either.

And once you’ve done that—would you agree that, by the “reasonable” standard that you are touting, that most developed countries including the United States are “utopian” in the sense of solving the problem of hunger? If not, why?

Post reply on HN