elemenohpee's comments

I'm a marxist as well, so you're preaching to the choir there. I also happen to be an anarchist, and rather than putting laws in place (which would be impossible to enforce), I think the first step to changing these issues is to change the culture.

I'm not advocating politeness, I'm advocating for an egalitarian society. Women have historically been less free to express themselves, and sexist jokes and other discriminatory language continue to silence them. Douche was not the correct term, you are a coward. Rather than defend the freedom of those who have had to fight for it, you hide behind your own narcissistic conception of freedom and unexamined privilege.

Wow, that's literally insane. Yes, let's see if we can undermine this elegant and stable natural process that has evolved over billions of years so that we can avoid the uncomfortable experience of reexamining the assumptions of our economic system.

Yeah, it's still not the best way to put it, it's kind of tautological in itself. Maybe the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy fits better.

> For most of us, it's just paycheck to paycheck now.

Everything is going according to plan. When you see how perfectly all of this lines up with the interests of the plutocrats you just have to wonder to what degree it is conscious collusion. What lies do they tell themselves in the pursuit of economic power and the subsequent subjugation of the population, or have they completely dispensed with even the pretense of plebeian morality?

That's what's so twisted about the American Dream™, is that it's the desire for a certain type of individual freedom, but a freedom that is always based on the subjugation of others. It's not a universal freedom, which to me is the only kind.

That's how I see it too. The article seemed to focus on, yeah you can buy more stuff but stuff doesn't make you happy. Yeah, we know that, what money really buys you is the freedom to pursue your own goals and not be slave to someone else's. Especially if your goals are things that are not "profitable" in the pecuniary sense, pursuing them full time is just not an option when you need to eat.

It's quite simple to explain the causality. When you break everything down it eventually comes down to physics (ok so it's not that simple to explain, but it's conceptually simple).

However I vehemently deny that we can manipulate genes to control the evolution of society. At least in any positive direction, manipulating genes would certainly have some effect on our evolution, but I would argue that our limited knowledge would make this far more likely to be detrimental. This returns to my original point, removing ego from the equation. Evolution has proceeded over the last 4 billion years to create remarkable beings, all without our guidance. This blind progression is in fact the strength of the process, since shifting selective pressures are inherently unknowable, and any attempt to consciously control genes in any direction would lead to a reduction in biodiversity and overall fitness.

This then extends to memetic evolution. When mutations are made more rare (by channeling people into stagnant status quo sustaining pathways), and selected against too strongly (by punishing heterodox positions with starvation), memetic diversity is reduced and the risk of succumbing to new selection pressures rises. Any attempt to preferentially allocate resources is in this way self-sustaining (read incestual), and commits the same egotistical error as trying to manipulate genetics. Absent the knowledge (and the hope of ever attaining the knowledge) of what genes and memes will be long-term beneficial, the only reasonable course of action to my mind is the sort of universal support and equality of economic "opportunity" that I mention.

No, no, I'm all about the discussion. Shit, this is more to test my ideas than to assert any sort of truth.

Maybe another question will get us closer to the root of the issue:

Whose agency are we talking about, the individual's, or the genes'?

I've been thinking about that idea as well. Would it make sense to see them less as "useful lies" and more as "self-referential truths", wherein the statement can be either true or false depending on whether or not it is accepted axiomatically?

I think this misses the point of the article and these types of discussions in general. To me, the value of this perspective is that it takes the ego out of this self-directed narrative, and places it in the proper context as a local manifestation of a long running evolutionary process. To see people not as god-like conjurers but as products of whimsical evolutionary circumstance is, I think, the proper seed for developing a deep and universal compassion, the type of compassion that renders the answer to your question of "where to assist" quite obvious, and exposes the goal of creating people with this "willing to fail" attribute as hopelessly naive.

The ability to "fail happily" is less an intrinsic trait as it is having support structures in place that allow for an individual to take bold action without jeopardizing their ability to eat or provide for their family. In this way it is much easier for a kid from a rich family to take the kind of risks that in rare cases lead to great success than it is for a kid from a poor family to do the same. No one can deny that the successes lead to the creation of great social wealth, and so it is in our species' interest to remove the various pressures that keep people locked into safe but stagnant pathways, and allow everyone to take the kinds of chances that produce new mutations for evolution to select from.

Note that I don't think the state should be providing this safety net, this is more of an abstract observation. I have my own ideas on how I think it should be implemented, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to the point here. I'm not particularly convinced by arguments about incentives, although I realize that may be the main objection people have and I think that does have a place in the debate.

> Yet the "witch hunt" that seems to permeate through society seems to suggest that they should.

Huh, it's almost as if people realize that the legal system is not in line with our ethical system.

I agree that the buying of political influence is the root problem here, but are there any proposals to deal with it? What are the models that are used in investigating it?

Not blindly imitating European countries is one thing, being ignorant of their policies and their effects is another. The latter is the case here, and it would take some pretty convoluted rationalization to spin that as "diversity".

Individualism has historically been correlated with urbanization. Just because people are living closer together does not a community make. In fact, urbanization has tracked with the breakdown of old communitarian social relations and its replacement with market relations. If anything is going to erode that, it will be new "solidarity economies" and things of that nature rather than the simple concentration of population.

I can only assume that you missed the part where I linked to the evidence you said didn't exist?

The Einstein quote comes to mind:

"We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them."

There are a whole host of assumptions that your arguments rest on, from our ability to predict and control non-linear dynamic systems, to what we even mean when we say "cost" or "quality of life". It's great that you're optimistic, but I fear this is more of the same arrogance that got us into this mess in the first place.

> Just because we happen to be alive for this one?

Uh, yeah, that'd be it. What with all the massive extinction events and all, it might be in our interest to minimize the effects.

But that doesn't stop the ideologues in power from running companies as if it is.

Obviously the circumstances are different, you wouldn't use this as a one-to-one model, but that doesn't mean there aren't things we can learn, and it certainly doesn't justify the scant media coverage.

Creditors were left to deal with the mess that they were complicit in creating while ordinary people who just wanted a house to live in were freed from crushing debt. Some limited austerity measures were put in place that didn't cut into core social spending. The people were taken care of while financiers were told to take a hike, and just as all the experts didn't predict the crash, none of them predicted Iceland's recovery. Maybe the big lesson here is that economists don't know what the fuck they're talking about, and there are other factors in play than neoclassical theory. That is why this hasn't received coverage, because it would lead to self-reflection that would make those in power uncomfortable.

They took the exact opposite course during the financial crisis and experts from the IMF and other Nobel laureates have credited that for their remarkable recovery. As our economy continues to flounder, I don't buy that this is something everyone should not at least be aware of.