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Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means. Do I want life-saving medicine? Do I want a soul-sucki

by lukifer 11y ago

Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means. Do I want life-saving medicine? Do I want a soul-sucking job that pays the bills? Do I want to be de-facto-required to participate in Facebook in order to socialize? I may voluntarily choose all of these things, and while that is unambiguously better than being forced to do them by violence, that's subtly distinct from "wanting" them. There are also varied spectra of wants: on some level, I want to pursue self-actualization goals that are years away. On another level, I want to step out of the rat race and read a good book. On yet another level, I want to watch TV, eat candy, and click a button that delivers a dopamine reward directly to my brain. These wants are frequently in conflict, and capitalism is more incentivized (or capable) to satisfy some of those than others. (I remember a good PG essay about the phenomenon of short wants vs. long wants, but I can't find it; neighboring ideas are found in http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html and http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html) I don't think markets are a bad technology, any more than any other technology. But the paperclip analogy fits: people do want paperclips, but they also want a variety of other things that aren't paperclips. If we create social machines that optimize some wants over others, a plethora of human needs and desires may be drastically under-supplied as an unintended side effect.

jerf 11y ago
"Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means." And while that's all very interesting and important in the abstract, it's worth double-checking that you don't get yourself lost in the weeds... which I think you did... and forget that the paperclip maximizer is scary precisely because it has no concept of wants in it. With capitalism, wants can be changed in real time, and the system reacts. The paperclip maximizer does not. They are fundamentally different. There is a memeset that strongly encourages you to fling up whatever word smokescreen is necessary to ensure that nothing positive is said about Emmanual Goldstein, today played by Capitalism, but it's still just a word smokescreen. There is a fundamental different between a paperclip maximizer and capitalism, and you should not throw yourself into a word tizzy until you've confused your rational brain enough that you can fall back on the comfortable emotional judgments about capitalism. Not every bad thing that can be said about capitalism is true simply because it's a bad thing said about capitalism.
- wfo 11y ago
  I think the point here is that in no reasonable definition of the words we are using does capitalism optimize (or even attempt at) giving people what they want. The only way to claim that is to redefine "what people want" as "what capitalism gives them" tautologically, which is I think the point the poster you're responding to was getting at which I think you've completely missed. And telling people they are thinking emotionally and not rationally is unbelievably condescending and unnecessarily insulting and has no place in a discussion forum like this. Please try to be respectful. I think the point to take away is that capitalism is a machine which mindlessly maximizes SOMETHING, disregarding all other things, and that thing isn't necessarily good. I think you're very right to point out that the 'something' is actually dynamic in some sense, though that doesn't save capitalism from the argument here. Dynamic can be bad: I suspect it's dynamic based on the material desires of the particular tiny group of human beings who happen to currently posses a great deal of capital, which is not a particularly good thing.
- lukifer 11y ago
  You are right that the analogy breaks down at the assumption that humans would allow the paperclip machine to run amok; human wants do powerfully change and influence the market machine. At the same time, the abyss gazes into us, and human wants change in response to the machine as well. I'll give an example that intersects the Pavlovian scare words of both "capitalism" and "government": the Prison-Industrial Complex. It's reasonable to want to remove members of society who are dangerously violent, or "cheaters" of sufficient scope. Yet iterate this desire over enough time, and it takes on a life of its own: politicians who want to look tough on crime, parents who want their fears assuaged, private companies who want to profit from correctional tax dollars, and most insidiously, the swaths of police, prison guards, and support staff who want paychecks, benefits and job security. The final product is something we don't actually want: the most populous prison system in the world, which is massively expensive, socioeconomically predatory, and fails to rehabilitate most of its inmates. Yet there are enough stakeholders who do want the institution to persist for reasons of personal benefit (and enough taxpayers who want to imagine a cute moralistic story and are willing to pay for the luxury of ignorance), that a massive machine of oppression is created and sustained out of a simple, reasonable human want. I'm not intrinsically anti-capitalist; I'm in the camp of Jaron Lanier, in that money, markets, and corporations are all technologies, and neither good nor evil. But technology should serve humans, and not the other way around; that means paying attention to the power of unchecked, autonomous feedback loops and their power to influence human behavior and our various social ecosystems.

by lukifer 11y ago

jerf 11y ago

"Implicit in the statement "giving people what they want" is a set of assumptions about what "want" means." And while that's all very interesting and important in the abstract, it's worth double-checking that you don't get yourself lost in the weeds... which I think you did... and forget that the paperclip maximizer is scary precisely because it has no concept of wants in it. With capitalism, wants can be changed in real time, and the system reacts. The paperclip maximizer does not. They are fundamentally different. There is a memeset that strongly encourages you to fling up whatever word smokescreen is necessary to ensure that nothing positive is said about Emmanual Goldstein, today played by Capitalism, but it's still just a word smokescreen. There is a fundamental different between a paperclip maximizer and capitalism, and you should not throw yourself into a word tizzy until you've confused your rational brain enough that you can fall back on the comfortable emotional judgments about capitalism. Not every bad thing that can be said about capitalism is true simply because it's a bad thing said about capitalism.

wfo 11y ago
I think the point here is that in no reasonable definition of the words we are using does capitalism optimize (or even attempt at) giving people what they want. The only way to claim that is to redefine "what people want" as "what capitalism gives them" tautologically, which is I think the point the poster you're responding to was getting at which I think you've completely missed. And telling people they are thinking emotionally and not rationally is unbelievably condescending and unnecessarily insulting and has no place in a discussion forum like this. Please try to be respectful. I think the point to take away is that capitalism is a machine which mindlessly maximizes SOMETHING, disregarding all other things, and that thing isn't necessarily good. I think you're very right to point out that the 'something' is actually dynamic in some sense, though that doesn't save capitalism from the argument here. Dynamic can be bad: I suspect it's dynamic based on the material desires of the particular tiny group of human beings who happen to currently posses a great deal of capital, which is not a particularly good thing.
lukifer 11y ago
You are right that the analogy breaks down at the assumption that humans would allow the paperclip machine to run amok; human wants do powerfully change and influence the market machine. At the same time, the abyss gazes into us, and human wants change in response to the machine as well. I'll give an example that intersects the Pavlovian scare words of both "capitalism" and "government": the Prison-Industrial Complex. It's reasonable to want to remove members of society who are dangerously violent, or "cheaters" of sufficient scope. Yet iterate this desire over enough time, and it takes on a life of its own: politicians who want to look tough on crime, parents who want their fears assuaged, private companies who want to profit from correctional tax dollars, and most insidiously, the swaths of police, prison guards, and support staff who want paychecks, benefits and job security. The final product is something we don't actually want: the most populous prison system in the world, which is massively expensive, socioeconomically predatory, and fails to rehabilitate most of its inmates. Yet there are enough stakeholders who do want the institution to persist for reasons of personal benefit (and enough taxpayers who want to imagine a cute moralistic story and are willing to pay for the luxury of ignorance), that a massive machine of oppression is created and sustained out of a simple, reasonable human want. I'm not intrinsically anti-capitalist; I'm in the camp of Jaron Lanier, in that money, markets, and corporations are all technologies, and neither good nor evil. But technology should serve humans, and not the other way around; that means paying attention to the power of unchecked, autonomous feedback loops and their power to influence human behavior and our various social ecosystems.