Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#261

Post by bachbach » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

ridewinter wrote: post #236

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very far to the left, but the military made almost all the major inventions that silicon valley has packaged up for consumer use. The iPhone is nothing but a collection of technologies designed for war. GPS, small cameras, the internet, ect were all designed by the military not by Silicon Valley.

The hackers contracting in the 60s for the government and military were hardly conservative. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.html

The point though is that some people in SV think that a monoculture of liberals were/are behind everything and that is just not true. Technology is a full spectrum ideological bloodsport.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#262

Post by baxtr » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

bachbach wrote: post #260

baxtr wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“That’s when progress ended”, really? That alone is enough to discredit Thiel on the topic

You're not reading Thiel's full argument, it takes a while to appreciate it, you won't get it from a couple of sound bites. I've read a slew of his essays and watched his talks - it takes a while to absorb how different this interpretation of reality is. I believe Thiel is correct in what he is saying and that is terrifying. It is going to take Westerners a long time to finally wake up and when it finally does it'll…

Is there any way you could go into more detail on this or refer to some sources? In all honesty, your comment sounds vague and a bit esoteric, still interesting enough that I want to know if there some hidden truth to it. It can’t be that difficult

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#263

Post by bachbach » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #262

bachbach wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not reading Thiel's full argument, it takes a while to appreciate it, you won't get it from a couple of sound bites. I've read a slew of his essays and watched his talks - it takes a while to absorb how different this interpretation of reality is. I believe Thiel is correct in what he is saying and that is terrifying. It is going to take Westerners a long time to finally wake up and when it finally does it'll…

Is there any way you could go into more detail on this or refer to some sources? In all honesty, your comment sounds vague and a bit esoteric, still interesting enough that I want to know if there some hidden truth to it. It can’t be that difficult

Peter Thiel is really a kind of philosopher - the venture capitalism is more of an outgrowth of something else than his primary focus. This is a person who reads widely, has big ideas and is consistently ahead of everybody else - his reputation is wholly deserved.

I've been following, causally at first, his ideas through books written about or by him, many hours of youtube videos and essays in and around the topics he talks about. It is difficult to distill this into a synopsis because although I can provide a TLDR it doesn't mean you'd get any predictive power of it.

I suggest doing your own homework and coming to your own conclusions. I think I'd give a lot for a photo of his bookshelves.

Here's a start.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thie...

A common theme in Thiel's thought is that 'reality is often very different from the mainstream conception of it'. Ron Unz wrote this essay which gives body to this belief.

http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

Another theme is that humankind is highly mimetic - meaning they have a desire to be copying each other. This comes out of the philosophy of René Girard and you'll have to read something of his to fully understand where we're going with this.

https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/

Watch this if you only watch one video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY

Peter Thiel is at the intersection of an unusually large number of obscure and strange topics, that's the reason why he's ahead of the curve over and over. Things like Seasteading, Urbit, if you ferret away at the peripheral you start to see interesting stuff, some of which gets ferried back to the mainstream sooner or later he's not the only talent scout for weird ideas like this but there's surprisingly few people out there in these strange circles - I've found that I keep running into the same people over and over, only a few hundred of them I'd guess. I'm tired now, it's near GMT midnight but good luck on your quest!

A lot of Tyler Cowen's ideas intersect with Thiel, that's another good line of enquiry.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#264

Post by baxtr » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 8:51 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #218

baxtr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you’re right. Nowadays, many people here in Germany can afford a house or an apartment in the big cities only if they get some money from their (grand)parents. I think one major reason for this is the free flow of capital globally. The effect in its extreme form: people get evicted, buildings get built/renovated (“Luxusbeton”), int’l investors buy hoping for ever increasing prices, apts stay empty. Insa…

This is a bad side effect of low interest rates. If the interest rates were high, e.g. 5%, investing into unoccupied real estate would not be a viable investment.

That’s one major reason, for sure. Another big factor seems to be that people are moving their money out of their unstable home countries into save havens