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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#271

Post by pdonis »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #253
BurningFrog wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. 2. Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and lea…

"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society chang…

> society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse.

That's not what the GP said. He only said the consequences of societal change are unknowable. That doesn't mean we should never change society because we're afraid it will break. It means we should change society slowly, gradually, recognizing the limitations of our knowledge, instead of forming grandiose plans and trying to impose them top-down.

Women's rights is actually a good example of gradually changing society. Women didn't insist all at once on changing everything they thought was wrong. It took centuries for changes relating to women's rights to happen (and they're still happening). And even then we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences of those changes. But I don't think any reasonable conservative would say we shouldn't have made those changes.

> society changes all the time from technology and market forces

Yes, that's quite true. And we're still figuring out how to deal with unintended consequences from those changes as well. And I would say that the changes that are the most problematic in these areas are the ones resulting from some one person's top-down intentions, rather than from bottom-up evolution based on the natural interactions of many people. For example, Facebook isn't a problem because of gradual social evolution; it's a problem because Mark Zuckerberg has grandiose visions about how social media and society should work.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#272

Post by rjbwork »

WalterBright wrote: post #231
danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.) Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

The Socialism and Capitalism dichotomy has nothing to do with markets or planners. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production. Capitalism is when there is an owner class that owns the means of production and extracts profit from the workers' labor.

Socialism can be enacted with markets or it can be enacted with central planners. Capitalism can be enacted with markets or it can be enacted with central planners.

The point I'm making is that the mechanisms by which an economy chooses what to produce are distinct by the mechanisms which determine who is in control of those choices are distinct from who the proceeds from the production accrues to.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#273

Post by pdonis »

tshaddox wrote: post #263
pdonis wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence No, you should give up the idea that you can justify tearing down the fence by any intellectual investigation. If you really believe it would be better if the fence came down, then you need to work to convince everyone who has an interest in the fence to agree with you. If you succeed, then th…

I think you’re conflating multiple things here. As far as I know, Chesterton’s fence is not about anything like property rights. We’re not talking about justifying entering your neighbor’s land and tearing down their fence without permission. Presumably the analogy is a fence on some land you’ve just acquired, or a fence on public lands. The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fe…

> The debate isn’t about whether you have the right to unilaterally tear down a fence, it’s about whether it’s a good idea for the fence to be removed.

And the point is that no individual person can figure out, just by using their own reason, whether it's a good idea for the fence to be removed. The only way to know that is for the long-winded social process of people interacting with each other to either eventually convince them that the fence should be removed, or not.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#274

Post by ClumsyPilot »

generalizations wrote: post #96
jfrunyon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty LOL okay I literally can't go any further than the first sentence. Very good much wow so projection. I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - Document1". Very classy.

Didn't even bother to read the citation for that statement? > This has now been true for over a century, and as early as 1855 J. S. Mill could say (see my John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216) that "almost all the projects of social reformers of these days are really liberticide." > I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - Document1". Very classy. Textbook example of an a…

"almost all the projects of social reformers of these days are really liberticide"

Utter nonsense, we've had escalating financial de-regulation since 1970's, we removed Usury laws, Interest Rate Ceilings, Repealed Glass-Steagall, etc.

Maybe if we didn't, house prices would still be suborbital.

https://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/dereg-timeline-2...

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#275

Post by xvilka »

jvanderbot wrote: post #26

The underlying issue, and one that bugs the hell out of me, is Policy vs Truth. You can say true things all day, and convince nobody. You can enact policy based completely on Truth (e.g., Trust the Science), and completely fail. People don't care about Truth, they care about what changes they need to make, and who is asking them to make them. Good policy is only partially based on truth, it's more based on easy imple…

There are two ways to improve situation, both are for the very far future (assuming humanity will survive long enough). Either change the human brain itself artificially, to remove hacks and shortcuts made by the mother nature, and make people really rational (I am not speaking about removing emotions, just removing their ability to cloud the judgement) and with minimum of cognitive biases and fallacies, or to make an AGI to rule the humanity (probably a worse solution since it will be uneven relationship).

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#276

Post by WalterBright »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #265
WalterBright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.) Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

"the free market works well" Unless there is too much inflation like in Weimar Republic, too much corruption like in Russia, too much monopoly like with Standard Oil, too many shenanigans leading to 2008-style meltdown (imagine that without central bank support), given working police and the justice system which is missing in many developing countries, given basic infrastructure like roads and electricity etc, etc.

> Unless there is too much inflation like in Weimar Republic

The government money printing press is not free market.

> too much corruption like in Russia

The government's role in a free market is to prevent corruption.

> too much monopoly like with Standard Oil

Standard Oil was very good for consumers, as SO brought about something like a 70% reduction in kerosene prices. Besides, SO never was a monopoly. It was accused of attempting to create one.

> imagine that without central bank support

Don't need to imagine it. It happened several times in the 1800s. Recovery tended to be as quick.

> given working police and the justice system

Free markets require a working police and justice system

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#277

Post by ganbatekudasai »

czbond wrote: post #256
timeon wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is enlightened do you even need to be believer?

One will not know, but the downside risk is greater if you must at least believe.

You can make up arbitrary properties about the god you believe in all day. Some very mainstream beliefs include such ideas as "you have to spread your religion over others". You cannot chose which arbitrary properties you make your wager on.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#278

Post by BurningFrog »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #253
BurningFrog wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. 2. Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and lea…

"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society chang…

> Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint.

I don't think you fully got my point.

The idea is not to oppose every change, but to change incrementally, letting society adapt, and learn from it when you do the next change.

Women's rights changed gradually over the whole 20th century as society gradually changed. To me that's a very well executed set of incremental changes!

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#279

Post by cheschire »

norswap wrote: post #217
taraskuzyk wrote: post #188

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me understand what the last few sentences of it meant, it kind of flew over my head: "So I guess this is kind of an argument in favor of humility, or against open-mindedness. If you have high openness to experience (and if you read this without a gun to your head, you probably do) you might wonder why so many people have low openness. Maybe this is part of why." What…

A big part of "the normal way" things are done is related to subtle (and by-design, unspoken) social reasons. If you are open-minded, you're open to considering that the normal ways things are done might not be the best way -- which it is not along all axes, but it does incur some advantages for reasons that must remain unspoken for the advantages to be incurred. This has two potentially bad consequences: (1) you mig…

I'm fairly certain that not all marriages are based on fear of the potential pain of open relationships. Sure, some folks may be motivated along the lines you speak of, but there's plenty of us who got deep into it because we value the depth that comes from that one forever-friendship that is intimate on a level that can't be experience with the guys from the bar.

So, yeah, careful about painting with too broad a brush there.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#280

Post by WalterBright »

rjbwork wrote: post #272
WalterBright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.) Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

The Socialism and Capitalism dichotomy has nothing to do with markets or planners. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production. Capitalism is when there is an owner class that owns the means of production and extracts profit from the workers' labor. Socialism can be enacted with markets or it can be enacted with central planners. Capitalism can be enacted with markets or it can be enacted with central p…

> Capitalism is when there is an owner class that owns the means of production and extracts profit from the workers' labor.

That's Marx's explanation, all right.

What free markets are, is when people freely decide to make transactions with each other, without using force or fraud.

The simplest case is you have an apple tree, I have an orange tree. You have too many apples, and no oranges. I have the reverse problem. We trade. We are both better off. I exploit you for apples, you exploit me for oranges.

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