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On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

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Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#61

Post by microtonal »

hojofpodge wrote: post #47
watwut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not explain radicalization and anti-democratic turn of billionaires. Ordinary people who are turning fascists are not turning fascists because of economic anxiety. They reject party that make economy better.

Business owners turn fascist over economic anxiety. Hitler's funders were afraid they would be irrelevant in an international context. The people have real grievances but tend to follow any * hole who has been the visible problem all along but can say the problem is that they were blocked from creating the ultimate vision of a perfect **hole. I don't know the answer to representational democracy but I think there is…

Business owners turn fascist over economic anxiety.

The grandparent said billionaires though. Some of them may have economic anxiety (not being in the government's graces might damage your company), but it seems most see a possibility of operating in an environment where they are not constrained by 'pesky' rules. E.g. leveraging Trump's wrath to pressure the EU into dropping laws like the DMA/DSA that protects citizens against the power of large tech companies.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#62

Post by racktash »

grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

I think you've described the problem (or one of them) very well.

We've seen how misinformation -- including ideas that were once fringe, believed only by a minority of cranks -- spreads and becomes acceptable, becomes a "legitimate alternative opinion".

We've seen, too, how hostile states, populists within, spread falsehoods to sew havoc and division.

My only hope, really, is that I think some of the younger generation are slightly more alert than some Gen X and millennials (my own generation) as to the dangers of misinformation online.

I wish I knew the solution too. Like you, I feel quite helpless even in terms of what to WANT. Can the Twitters of the world be regulated? If so, are we as a society able to agree on how it should be regulated, or are we too divided to agree on anything?

It's a mess. I don't know how we get out of it.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#63

Post by qarl »

dash2 wrote: post #24

I predict that in 25 years (or 50 or 100): - human society will be even richer, more prosperous and more technologically advanced - people will still be desperately worrying that this is a time of crisis and collapse Let's see.

I think most Americans agree with you. And that itself will answer where we go from here.

Let's see indeed. I'll reach out to you again each year on this date and we'll see how your prediction is holding up.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#64

Post by fc417fc802 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #19
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

Even if everybody agreed on the basic facts (which is only possible if they're all drinking from the same well, eg impossible if the press is free) there would still be huge disagreement on what political course of action to take in response to those agreed upon facts, because different people have different values. Take your global warming example, and suppose we have a magic wand to make everybody agree that it's h…

> In fact, many of those selfish people

Is it selfish to take the attitude that humanity will deal with the consequences of its actions as they arise? That rather than expending vast amounts of capital reorganizing and regulating society to prevent disturbances before they happen we can instead accept the disturbances and deal with the consequences as necessary?

I don't personally think very highly of such a plan but neither do I think that it is reasonable to apply a blanket label of "selfish" to anyone who speaks in favor of it.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#65

Post by Spooky23 »

watwut wrote: post #26
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

That does not explain radicalization and anti-democratic turn of billionaires. Ordinary people who are turning fascists are not turning fascists because of economic anxiety. They reject party that make economy better.

The more extreme billionaire types see the world as a zero sum game. If they lose a third of their paper wealth, they are still billionaires. The more extreme ones want to gut the middle class, because political power is the only threat to their existence. They see a path where they become merchant princes, and another where they are stood up against the wall and meet their fate.

German and Italian fascism took a similar path. In Italy the state even took over some industry, but the big industrialists with power did great. It didn’t end well for them, but their pal Franco was smarter and hung in there for decades.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#66

Post by _heimdall »

dash2 wrote: post #24

I predict that in 25 years (or 50 or 100): - human society will be even richer, more prosperous and more technologically advanced - people will still be desperately worrying that this is a time of crisis and collapse Let's see.

Wealth as we describe it today is effectively directly correlated with consumption of natural resources. Look up graphs of countries' GDP and oil consumption if you're ever curious.

If society does continue to be richer and more prosperous, and those concepts aren't somehow fundamentally redefined, continued worry about crisis or collapse seems reasonable as that wealth came at the expense of further increase the amount of resources we burn through.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#67

Post by [deleted] »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #56
watwut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not explain radicalization and anti-democratic turn of billionaires. Ordinary people who are turning fascists are not turning fascists because of economic anxiety. They reject party that make economy better.

> They reject party that make economy better. I didn't realize there was a cut and dry "correct" answer. Has it occurred to you that perhaps you are subject to similar biases as other people without being aware of it?

[deleted]

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#68

Post by raincole »

grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

> You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That by itself is a hard ask.

But it's more or less the premise of democracy.

A professor in our school jokingly said that the key of functional democracy is to distance average voters from decision making processes. Now I am not so sure whether he was joking at all.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#69

Post by npunt »

seu wrote: post #34

I studied computer science and worked in and around software for a good 20+ years. Then I slowly started realizing how apolitical almost everyone around me in software was. I was fortunate to have had other influences and interests beyond CS, but it seemed like others didn't think much about society or politics, beyond how "great" everything could be made with tech. I started gravitating out of the software bubble. F…

Yeah, after a period of general stability where power was more even distributed among different groups of people (pols, media, finance, labor, edu, etc), we've found ourselves at the mercy of this dangerous new concoction of naive software engineers and business sociopaths that has escaped the lab and run amok over the world. Sociopaths always find a way to harness the ignorant but powerful, and this time its the software engineers.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#70

Post by cycomanic »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than the population growth? If yes how come that this was not the case when population growth was significantly faster (even 30 years ago). I don't recall there being more building going on when I was young than now, in fact if anything my impression is it's the other way around.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/germany-popul...

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