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The Swerve

locusmag.com

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Re: The Swerve

#201

Post by mistermann »

dredmorbius wrote: post #200
mistermann wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to act. With significant effect. Now. Perhaps. But what action(s) are optimal? Are the top 5 most optimal actions contained within Doctorow's essay? Consider his ending: > We’ll swerve. The bus will roll. It will hurt. It will be terrible. > But we won’t be dead on canyon floor. > We’ll fix the bus. We’ll make it better. We’ll get it back on its wheels. We’ll get a better driver, and a better destination. >…

"Let's roll" is an allusion to a self-sacrifice made on the moring of 11 September 2001, in which a group of unorganised civilians aboard United Airlines flight 93 stormed the cockpit within which armed hijackers were piloting the aircraft toward Washington, DC, having already killed the flight crew and several passengers. The group stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers, crashing the aircraft into the gro…

Sure, I realize all this, but my point is that recommendations of what we should do tend to be excessively abstract, at least in my opinion.

"What "let's roll" resolves to is principled sacrifice for the greater good" is all well and good, but what does it look like physically?

And, as you note: what if we do come up with a viable strategy, but substantial portions of the population are not interested in going along? It happened once, I'd feel extremely comfortable wagering top dollar that it will happen again - does anyone have a plan for this? "Sacrifice!" seems rather underpowered.

Re: The Swerve

#202

Post by mistermann »

majormajor wrote: post #136
mistermann wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So that's why you make sure your assumptions and claims match what happened. Ah yes, of course. Like everyone in this thread, and every other culture war based thread on HN eh? Everyone is super seriously making sure that their statements are free of error, and signs of uncertainty are far more plentiful than high confidence. > For instance, anyone who claims that the economic impact was solely the result of govern…

I'm not saying I think everyone on HN is doing their homework. I'm saying that if you want to make sure you're not running yourself in circles and letting your own previous assumptions dominate your ongoing judgment, you should be doing your homework. If you don't keep doing your homework you will almost certainly fall into that trap. It wouldn't surprise me if the level of correlation between intelligence and "doing…

> I'm saying that if you want to make sure you're not running yourself in circles and letting your own previous assumptions dominate your ongoing judgment, you should be doing your homework.

This seems a bit like "just" focus on your breath in meditation.

Re: The Swerve

#203

Post by dredmorbius »

mistermann wrote: post #201
dredmorbius wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's roll" is an allusion to a self-sacrifice made on the moring of 11 September 2001, in which a group of unorganised civilians aboard United Airlines flight 93 stormed the cockpit within which armed hijackers were piloting the aircraft toward Washington, DC, having already killed the flight crew and several passengers. The group stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers, crashing the aircraft into the gro…

Sure, I realize all this, but my point is that recommendations of what we should do tend to be excessively abstract, at least in my opinion. "What "let's roll" resolves to is principled sacrifice for the greater good" is all well and good, but what does it look like physically ? And, as you note: what if we do come up with a viable strategy, but substantial portions of the population are not interested in going along…

Stop. Burning. Fossil. Fuels.

Re: The Swerve

#204

Post by TaylorAlexander »

imtringued wrote: post #189
SequoiaHope wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read the book Walkaway? Where the first chapter is called "Communist Party", where the protagonists of the book take over a furniture factory to produce free furniture for their friends, then go off to live in a world where machines provide for everyone and no one is required to work for their survival? Are you familiar with the Marxist concept of "worker ownership of the means of production?" That is what they a…

Why can't we just make the people with the means of production (land and money) pay for the right to own them? You wouldn't need to steal the factory, in fact you wouldn't even want to.

This is basically my theory. It’s complicated because the sum of all the money of the bottom 90% of people is still way way less than the value held by the top 1%. So you can’t just have them buy everything. They can’t afford it.

However we don’t need to buy everything. We can buy some of it, and build other parts from scratch for cheap, and skip some parts of it entirely because lots of manufacturing capacity goes towards making things which don’t really materially improve peoples lives.

Under this scenario, you still fight over control of land and intellectual property. Control of land is essentially political. I think we should find ways to distribute land to all people. And I think we should abolish or severely limit intellectual property restrictions.

Re: The Swerve

#205

Post by mistermann »

dredmorbius wrote: post #203
mistermann wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I realize all this, but my point is that recommendations of what we should do tend to be excessively abstract, at least in my opinion. "What "let's roll" resolves to is principled sacrifice for the greater good" is all well and good, but what does it look like physically ? And, as you note: what if we do come up with a viable strategy, but substantial portions of the population are not interested in going along…

Stop. Burning. Fossil. Fuels.

And if mother nature says "no", what do you counter with? More rhetoric? More democracy?

As the saying goes: "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride".

Sometimes success takes hard work and skillful thinking, this is well demonstrated by history. And time's a wasting.

Re: The Swerve

#206

Post by TaylorAlexander »

andybak wrote: post #143
SequoiaHope wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I was responding to a comment that just said "What?" so I didn't have a lot to go off of. I am not just getting this from that article. I am stating that he writes books about a post-scarcity society where everyone has their needs met without needing to work, and that this is intended to be a form of communism, In his book Walkaway, the title of the first chapter is "Communist Party" and it is about a party (t…

In which case, I apologise to some degree as I completely misjudged the intent of your original comment.

Hah sure. I was surprised my simple and very factual statement was being contested!

Re: The Swerve

#207

Post by dwiel »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #137
dwiel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even a book by that title, it's an interview of him where the interviewer included the word communism in the title of the interview. I've read the books referred to in the interview and they definitely aren't about communism.

You read the book Walkaway? Where the first chapter is called "Communist Party", where the protagonists of the book take over a furniture factory to produce free furniture for their friends, then go off to live in a world where machines provide for everyone and no one is required to work for their survival? Are you familiar with the Marxist concept of "worker ownership of the means of production?" That is what they a…

You are right, I was mixing up authoritarian communism and anarchist communism, thank you.
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