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

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

#211

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

>> 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.

Source: Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/08/21/which-ideol...

"Left Wing terrorists killed only 23 people in terrorist attacks during this time, about 0.7% of the total number of murders, but 13 since the beginning of 2016. Nationalist and Right Wing terrorists have only killed five since then, including Charlottesville."

So if you go back historically, across many decades, Right Wing terrorists have killed vastly more people. However in just the past few years, Left Wing terrorists have been outpacing Right Wing terrorists in domestic US killings by 2 to 1.

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

#212

Post by Retric » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #210

Retric wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I did, in a famine people are unable to get enough food. Saying that some people are being unwilling to eat is the same as them being unable to eat is disingenuous.

I'm sure you meant something more realistic and attainable. But that's not really what anybody means by utopia, because by that standard, much of the world is arguably already living in it compared to the ancients.

We don’t have a vast surplus of food by accident. A vast number of people devoted their lives to improving the global food supply. You can read many peoples accounts of trying to build a better world and pretend they where not aiming for utopia, but only if you also ignore what people mean by the term.

Clearly, we think of utopia as more than just sufficient food, the rule of law etc etc, but just because you are used to a better world does not mean those people achieved nothing.

PS: Consider what the world would be if everyone in history said utopia is unobtainable, so let’s burn the world.

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

#213

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #204

stcredzero wrote: post #197

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. 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.

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.

People marching and carrying BLM banners have been caught on video chanting about killing the police.

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

#214

Post by whalabi » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #208

whalabi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Exa…

That does indeed appear to be the core problem in societies in this and the last century (and before, presumably.)

I'd argue that social democracy seems to be doing pretty well at distributing income and wealth and power. It's a shame "social" is a dirty word in the states.

If the EU can develop successfully over the next few decades into something superpower-like, maybe the benefits of such a system will become attractive to other powers and the ideas will spread.

Or maybe the China system of repression and threatening the neighbourhood will turn out to be more competitive globally and we'll see more of that.

And pardon the absurd typos in my last comment, my phone's keyboard is pretty terrible. I'd fix them but HN doesn't allow edits after a certain amount of time so the gibberish must remain.