Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
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Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#2[flagged]
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#3[flagged]
Please don't do this here.
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#4I've replaced the baity word "crookedness", which was likely to lead to uninteresting associations and arguments, with the phrase "crooked timber" (from Kant) that the article itself mostly uses. I know it's pretentious, but in a case like this, having the title be a bit of an obstacle is probably a good thing - and at least I didn't make it say "Embrace your crooked timber of humanity".
Edit: never mind I've got a better idea - let's just put Kant's line in the title.
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#5Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#6Wonderful post.
I have this loose hypothesis that stacking a lot of crooked timber builds something that you could almost call straight. But it takes time and it may not be stable.
In any case if biology gives you crooked timber you better become an expert carpender.
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#7I think you can apply the author's thinking to also looking at how our societal and economic outcomes relate to our circumstances of birth. People want to delude themselves into believing they succeeded from "hard work" where others were lazy rather than recognizing that had another seed been planted in your place and nurtured with the same resources (or lack thereof) it'd probably have equal chances of having surpassed your success as it would have of having withered in failure.
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#8Sympathize with view in article. But straight things can be made from crookedness. Classic example: Single cake. Two crooked children. Greedy. But rule is one cuts; other chooses. Perhaps argue that humanity stripped. I think not.
Of course, meta-problem: how to ensure that is technique? How to ensure exploitation of technique: "you cut" (because I know you can't cut straight).
Still, meaningless for technocrat to feel "annoyance with the recalcitrant human element, which eludes their total mastery". Behaviour such as this is roughly modelable.
First-order planning is "Here is a plan that will work if all will abide". Second-order planning is "Some will not abide. Here is a plan that will work given that". Third-order planning is "Some will not abide. Both the plan and compliance with it will alter the conditions of the plan. This is how the plan works given that." ad inf.
You can hew great stability out of the unstable: A logical network reliable to some degree out of an unreliable physical network. Nothing is perfect: not knowledge (you can only reach some falsifiability), not networks (you can only get some reliability), not even logic or mathematics (since the proof is subject to our human fallibility).
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#9I think you can apply the author's thinking to also looking at how our societal and economic outcomes relate to our circumstances of birth. People want to delude themselves into believing they succeeded from "hard work" where others were lazy rather than recognizing that had another seed been planted in your place and nurtured with the same resources (or lack thereof) it'd probably have equal chances of having surpas…
In a free country, the circumstances of one's birth matter the least.
Re: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made
#10I think you can apply the author's thinking to also looking at how our societal and economic outcomes relate to our circumstances of birth. People want to delude themselves into believing they succeeded from "hard work" where others were lazy rather than recognizing that had another seed been planted in your place and nurtured with the same resources (or lack thereof) it'd probably have equal chances of having surpas…
People still deserve credit or blame for their actions even if some percentage within their demographic will do more than them and some percentage will end up in jail. (Whether you deserve any credit for making money is another question...)