>In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks. And in commerce we prefer relations to transactions, ready to support the local butcher because we feel we are part of a community and we are not alone --we are paid back with a smile and someone who says hello in the street. Indeed the central flaw in optimization is thinking that "everything else" ceases to exist and makes people think the individual, not the collective, is the true unit --when such thinking blows up the system. We humans are punished when we try to optimize, as if we suddenly ceased to be humans.
> In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks.
I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
> we are optimized enough for survival already
Survival up to reproduction age, and maybe a bit more for raising grandkids. Past that, everything is our own making - we haven't ever lived so long, and the current epidemic of heart disease and cancer is as a result of never-before-seen ages and chemical substances - like the Standard American Diet.
I wonder how true the preference for relationship over transaction is. I buy fish from my local fishmonger because it’s qualitatively substantially better tasting. If that stopped being true, my relationship with him would end immediately and “supermarket fish it is now, because that’s about 50% the cost”. He can basically only stay in business by competing on quality because he can’t possibly compete on price and there aren’t enough people who would pay his rent out of a sense of charity for the local fish butcher.
I thought the data in sport stuff was interesting, but the rest of your arguments were fairly superficial and got lost in the weeds.
I guess my main gripe was that a lot of your thesis can be explained by trend. Women looking like Kardashian is simply no different than looking like Sophia Lauren in a bygone era. AirBnB's being sameish? Go back to the 70s and notice the uniformity of interior design with plywood, rockwalls, bright orange vinyl, etc. Brand mascots being smoother and slicker - again - just reifying the values of our era in the same way the original mascots reflected the masculine values of their day.
As for your broader argument about refinement (itself a clumsy descriptor for all this) - is this really anything new? Hasn't optimisation been the fundamental constant since humans started doing stuff?
adamjb|4 years ago
>In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks. And in commerce we prefer relations to transactions, ready to support the local butcher because we feel we are part of a community and we are not alone --we are paid back with a smile and someone who says hello in the street. Indeed the central flaw in optimization is thinking that "everything else" ceases to exist and makes people think the individual, not the collective, is the true unit --when such thinking blows up the system. We humans are punished when we try to optimize, as if we suddenly ceased to be humans.
danuker|4 years ago
I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
> we are optimized enough for survival already
Survival up to reproduction age, and maybe a bit more for raising grandkids. Past that, everything is our own making - we haven't ever lived so long, and the current epidemic of heart disease and cancer is as a result of never-before-seen ages and chemical substances - like the Standard American Diet.
sokoloff|4 years ago
l33tbro|4 years ago
I guess my main gripe was that a lot of your thesis can be explained by trend. Women looking like Kardashian is simply no different than looking like Sophia Lauren in a bygone era. AirBnB's being sameish? Go back to the 70s and notice the uniformity of interior design with plywood, rockwalls, bright orange vinyl, etc. Brand mascots being smoother and slicker - again - just reifying the values of our era in the same way the original mascots reflected the masculine values of their day.
As for your broader argument about refinement (itself a clumsy descriptor for all this) - is this really anything new? Hasn't optimisation been the fundamental constant since humans started doing stuff?
unknown|4 years ago
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betwixthewires|4 years ago