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We've made the world too complicated

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Re: We've made the world too complicated

#251

Post by [deleted] »

_nxwj wrote: post #79
scotty79 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's cognitive overload. Everyone, every so often, exceeds their momentary cognitive capacity and wants everything to go away to reduce complexity. It might be that due to rapid pace of development in 2026 more people experience that than usually and as always, percentage of them are eager to write down their thoughts at this moment of weakness. Usually a good night's sleep helps. But in modern day where peop…

I agree with the cognitive overload and funnily have experienced what you describe. These thoughts are easier to fall into when I've been tired for extended periods. Out of them I feel more motivated to contribute to the economy and reach for material goals, at least temporarily. Then something just reminds of these thoughts, even when well-rested and lucid.

[deleted]

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#252

Post by bigupthewhole »

Aurornis wrote: post #187
terbo wrote: post #141

"And here you find civilized man. Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But he some how didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced to 1…

There are many parts of the world that are less civilized: Where children do not get 10-15 years of schooling and life is reduced to more simple survival. Not many people try to move toward those civilizations. The people in those civilizations usually try hard to leave them. Underneath the elegant writing style in that quote is just another variation of nostalgia for a past that didn’t exist. We like to romanticize…

Some of the hadza tribe left for school only to return to hunter gatherer lifestyle. Living in poverty on a farm isn't really how we used to live, that was already step 1 of industrialization. We used to live in decently large groups hunting.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#253

Post by pibaker »

qsera wrote: post #250
Aurornis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many parts of the world that are less civilized: Where children do not get 10-15 years of schooling and life is reduced to more simple survival. Not many people try to move toward those civilizations. The people in those civilizations usually try hard to leave them. Underneath the elegant writing style in that quote is just another variation of nostalgia for a past that didn’t exist. We like to romanticize…

>casually describe the number of their siblings who didn’t survive until adulthood and the number of their childhood friends who died working hazardous farming jobs at young ages. That is the point though. Most of the atrocities of modern world is justified as a way to "save lives" and "in pursuit of more safety". Would you choose to live as someones slave if that ensures a boring life of a hundred years? >Modern lif…

> Would you choose to live as someones slave if that ensures a boring life of a hundred years?

There were more slaves and serfs 250 years ago than today. It takes some tremendous mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you are actually a slave when you are not, in fact, being shipped off to a foreign land in shackles just to pick cotton and get whipped because your owner got bored.

I wish your kids the best. Living under parents with this level of delusional paranoia can do some incredible damage to the minds of young people.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#254

Post by pibaker »

bigupthewhole wrote: post #252
Aurornis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many parts of the world that are less civilized: Where children do not get 10-15 years of schooling and life is reduced to more simple survival. Not many people try to move toward those civilizations. The people in those civilizations usually try hard to leave them. Underneath the elegant writing style in that quote is just another variation of nostalgia for a past that didn’t exist. We like to romanticize…

Some of the hadza tribe left for school only to return to hunter gatherer lifestyle. Living in poverty on a farm isn't really how we used to live, that was already step 1 of industrialization. We used to live in decently large groups hunting.

The fact that one (1) tribe refuses to live in modern society is such big and shocking news affirms GP's point. Preference for industrialized life is so normal that those who choose otherwise are made newsworthy, just like the news will tell you about any plane crash big or small but never the thousands of flights that landed safely everyday.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#255

Post by gspr »

> The more we learn, the more destruction seems to follow.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the author, but I don't follow this (quite popular) line of thinking at all. No doubt there's large amounts of destruction and cruelty in the world that wouldn't be possible without "complexity". We should never minimize or forget that.

But more destruction with more complexity? It's only a lifetime ago that minor infections had a good chance of killing you or your loved ones. A few lifetimes since we complexified statecraft into one where the powers that be couldn't just off you on a whim. A few lifetimes ago that we figured out more or less reliable ways of not starving. A few generations since we built a complex system to (try to) prevent genocide. You could go on and on.

Sure our world is complex. And full of destruction. I'm not at all buying the leap that it had less of the latter when it had less of the former.

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#256

Post by qsera »

pibaker wrote: post #253
qsera wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>casually describe the number of their siblings who didn’t survive until adulthood and the number of their childhood friends who died working hazardous farming jobs at young ages. That is the point though. Most of the atrocities of modern world is justified as a way to "save lives" and "in pursuit of more safety". Would you choose to live as someones slave if that ensures a boring life of a hundred years? >Modern lif…

> Would you choose to live as someones slave if that ensures a boring life of a hundred years? There were more slaves and serfs 250 years ago than today. It takes some tremendous mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you are actually a slave when you are not, in fact, being shipped off to a foreign land in shackles just to pick cotton and get whipped because your owner got bored. I wish your kids the best. Livi…

So using your perfectly working and well adjusted mind, you can only imagine a single kind of "slavery"?

Would it have helped if I said "bondage" instead of "slavery"? I think so, because you seemed to have latched on to some imagery strongly associated with that word, without trying to understand the point that is being made.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#258

Post by pibaker »

_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…

> humans started molding the world to our desires in the forms of agriculture, raising animals as resources, and interfering with ecological cycles

What makes human unique in this respect compared to any other species that modify their environment? Is a patch of lichen not interfering with ecological cycles when it breaks down the rocks it lives on into soil?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#259

Post by BoorishBears »

scoofy wrote: post #240
BoorishBears wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ll take scrolling myself to death at 80 over smallpox and dying of a trivially curable infection at 40 every time. I think we could have stopped somewhere between dying of smallpox at 40, and children scrolling themselves into eating disorders and suicide at 13 so Zuck can go for some moonshots.

Smallpox was eradicated in 1980.

80s would be a fine place to have stopped, you even get the Gameboy!

But I also feel obligated to point out... the last time smallpox killed as many people in the US as social media does was well before 1980. The final US death was in the 40s.

There's a lot of meat between "We beat smallpox!" and "I can click a button and expose myself to commentary from any of 3 billion people." in terms of technology.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#260

Post by pibaker »

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.

And yet the stylus was useless to the overwhelming majority of humans who ever lived because they were illiterate. And the stone houses required specialized knowledge held by the masons. And you can walk into any major research university and bump into scores of curious and driven people each holding more knowledge than Pliny the elder.

People seem to have this conception that the average premodern person could do anything from growing crops to coming up with Newtonian theories. No. The average premodern person died before the age the average modern person learned algebra.

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