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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

#511

Post by NumberCruncher »

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…

> "You may not understand the forces that have led society to be organized the way that it is, but you should respect that sometimes the order of things reflects knowledge you may not have."

I just imagine Moses saying "Who am I to question our being enslaved in Egypt, our society being organized this way, the order of things may reflect knowledge I may not have, hence I have to respect it. Let's just stay here, for ever."

Our society revolves around and is being organised by people challenging, bending or breaking social practices. If I have to choose, what to respect, I gonna respect this.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#512

Post by nickpp »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #330
WalterBright wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> possible alternatives Asteroids, vulcanism are the usual culprits. There also could be cosmic ray bursts from exploding stars. > the Oxygen Catastrophe There seem to be many hypotheses about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event and it isn't clear to me there was a collapse, but a gradual replacement.

"Asteroid and vulcanism are the usual culprits" That is nature, thats my point - it is brutal and murderous. If you don't want to die from them you don't rely on Darwinism and if you don't want economic collapse and famine every time a new strain of flue evolves you dont wait for 'muh free market' to save you.

Nature is unpredictable and always changing. This is why any attempt at planning markets is destined to fail. And it has - the specter of famine was always-present during my life under communism.

Darwinism means adaptation. In markets, when people are free and allowed to keep their (majority of) gains, they will struggle to learn, change and adapt. Planners are neither motivated nor able to do either. They are the ones bringing the economic collapse. Look at the ham-fisted way they "avoided" last year's crash: not only we all paid a 9% tax, but we are now in a more fragile position than ever, dependent on a monetary policy we know is completely unsustainable at best.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#513

Post by cookieswumchorr »

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…

the thing is, there is no way for the workers to own the means of production, unless its a set of tools or stuff like that. But with a factory, you only have 2 options: owned by capitalists, who's goal is maximizing gain, and owned by the state, who's goal is in theory common wealth, in reality it depends on the people actually making decisions. And those people can be corrupt, or ideological lunatics, or just unmotivated clerks waiting to hit the clock at 5PM.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#514

Post by coldtea »

csours wrote: post #257
ren_engineer wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You may not understand the forces that have led society to be organized the way that it is, but you should respect that sometimes the order of things reflects knowledge you may not have sounds like Chesterton's fence to some degree https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence >In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will p…

The good form is protective, the bad form just normalizes something that is common at the time. Is there any particular reason a woman cannot lead a prayer? Is there any particular reason why we exchange work for money? Is there any particular reason why not to eat pigs? For each of those, the answer may be yes or no depending on your time and place. The reason yes or the reason no may also be different.

Yes, this is key: even the "bad examples" you gave, might have particular (non explicitly obvious) reasons behind them.

Things that are normalized because they're "common at the time" is not the only failure (false positive) mode.

Another is the (false negative) of "things denormalized because they're not popular anymore" (when they have utility that people can't readily see).

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#515

Post by raxxorrax »

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 don't think monogamous relationships have something to do with them being sacred and more with partners that have incentives and expectations for their emotional involvement. I believe open relationships are the opposite of maturity and lack commitment and of admittance to yourself and your own needs. But I have no experience here, it just seems silly to me that if two people are unhappy to pull even more people into it.

To equate open mindedness with your preference in relationships or sexual ambitions is quite reductive. Might have been different just 30-40 years ago, but today it seems to be more controversial to say that you do not want to see displays of sexuality everywhere or that you look for classic relationships. There are also almost no expectation of society towards any forms in relationships. I could not name you a single one aside from some tax laws.

Your definition of conservatism is turned around in my opinion.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#516

Post by widespace_ »

BurningFrog wrote: post #380
vkou wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, most revolutions of the modern age has resulted in somewhat of a worse outcome for the citizenry. 'Most' revolutions of the modern age were anti-colonial revolutions, in places like India and Africa, in the aftermath of WWII. Life under colonial rule in those places was, as a rule of thumb, not great. We then had a large string of revolutions in Eastern Europe, in the late 80s/early 90s[1]. Would you also…

A war of independence is a quite different thing than a revolution! For one thing, when it's won, the losers go back home. After a revolution, they stay around. Which is you often end up killing them.

>the losers go back home

It should be noted that often when wars of independence happen there are still many people who identify with the side of the "losers" whose homes are on the "winners" side, and vice versa.

For example Greek independence did not magically transmit the Turks living in their borders to Turkey, nor did it transfer the Greeks living in Turkey to Greece. What was needed to resolve that situation was ethnic cleansing via the deportation of the populations to their respective countries, in such that a country where they hadn't lived before can be called "theirs".

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#517

Post by rjbwork »

cookieswumchorr wrote: post #513
rjbwork wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the thing is, there is no way for the workers to own the means of production, unless its a set of tools or stuff like that. But with a factory, you only have 2 options: owned by capitalists, who's goal is maximizing gain, and owned by the state, who's goal is in theory common wealth, in reality it depends on the people actually making decisions. And those people can be corrupt, or ideological lunatics, or just unmoti…

Why is there no way for workers to own the means of production? Do many of us software people not own shares in the companies we work for? All that needs happen is that all shares are owned by the employees of the company and, voila, the workers own the means of production. Obviously this is quite a simple and un-ideal implementation of said concept, but the practicalities of worker owned enterprises are not some kind of far fetched impossibility.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#518

Post by ejb999 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #264
the_doctah wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccines don't prevent spread of Covid.

They do reduce it , by a lot, enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals -- which are borderline right now in many countries and being filled up by anti-vaxxers. Those freedom loving people are taking up valuable beds, putting the lives of people at risk that have other medical issues. Essentially, all of these anti-vax arguments boil down to: "You cannot definitively, absolutely, completely prove that the vaccines are 1…

I don't think there is any proof of that - look at VT, or in fact most of the New England states - among the highest percent of vaccinated people anywhere in the US and yet for many of those states, the cases are at a much, much higher level than at any time during the pandemic.

Look at Florida, decent % of people are vaxxed, but nearly as many (as a %) as in most new england states and yet the spread of cases is much more muted on a population adjusted basis. These data anomalies need better explanation from non-political scientists - one is not an anti-vaxxer for pointing these inconsistencies out.

I agree vaccine seems to be keeping people alive and that is a good thing, and despite your snide remarks, it is actually possible to be in favor of people getting the vaccine (I am tripled vaxxed myself) and yet still valid to question the official (and always changing) narrative we are being fed that this is only a pandemic of the unvaccinated - the facts don't back that up.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#519

Post by jlawson »

rjbwork wrote: post #517
cookieswumchorr wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing is, there is no way for the workers to own the means of production, unless its a set of tools or stuff like that. But with a factory, you only have 2 options: owned by capitalists, who's goal is maximizing gain, and owned by the state, who's goal is in theory common wealth, in reality it depends on the people actually making decisions. And those people can be corrupt, or ideological lunatics, or just unmoti…

Why is there no way for workers to own the means of production? Do many of us software people not own shares in the companies we work for? All that needs happen is that all shares are owned by the employees of the company and, voila, the workers own the means of production. Obviously this is quite a simple and un-ideal implementation of said concept, but the practicalities of worker owned enterprises are not some kin…

Because owning something means you have the right to trade it and sell it. Most workers, if they came into ownership of such shares, would quickly sell them to a few people who would build up many such shares: Capitalists.

You can't declare who will "own" what in the long term. The people who own it decide whether they will continue to own it - not you. They will decide not to.

If you say the workers can't sell the shares of their workplace, then they don't really own those shares. In fact, it's more like the shares own them. They are forced to continue "owning" part of their workplace, which someone decided should be their workplace. Variations of this are how authoritarian communism work.

(This is ignoring lots of other such issues with worker ownership, e.g. it becomes very complicated or impossible to bring new people on even if desperately needed since existing workers/owners don't want to dilute their shares. Also how can a new worker join if he cannot afford the shares to do so?)

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#520

Post by jlawson »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #425
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…

How does ingrained racism line up with that reasoning? Um, not too good. How about ingrained wealth inequality? Not so great. Or, as I already harped on elsewhere, how about an economic-industrial system structured in such a way that your future is looking quite bleak and the people currently charged with its control have no incentive to change it because they'll be dead when the consequences come to roost? Really no…

Simple example, but racism is simply a form of genetic ingroup preference.

Can you imagine, perchance, how groups who practiced ingroup preference would, over time, come to outcompete and ultimately defeat/destroy/dissolve groups that didn't?

Does it seem clear to you why all historical societies practiced ingroup preference, and the vast majority still do? Or are you confused on how that works?

Our society's concept of who the ingroup should be defined as is novel and still in flux. In fact it's pretty much the core question that is dividing our civilization at this point. Confusion on this point may well still lead to our downfall in the long term, so don't feel so certain about the simplistic moral narratives that are taught in school.

We still don't know how any of this will turn out. Certainly rival societies like China are not following our path - be humble enough to recognize that they may turn out to be right.

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