5 ms·

It's sad that instead of talking about what works best and how to solve problems, ideology is injected into the discussion by attempting to make it an issue of

It's sad that instead of talking about what works best and how to solve problems, ideology is injected into the discussion by attempting to make it an issue of 'social-engineering' / 'environmental cause' vs. 'freedom'. I always thought any ideology was dangerous, something to be shunned. It's a primary cause of wars and suffering, and of paralysis like the what we see in the US Congress now. Like anger, often part of current ideologies, it innoculates humans from thinking rationally by ruling out any discussion or thought, and thus it enables people to do dangerous, irrational, and bad things. (Often those effects are the intent of the ideological leaders, to manipulate their followers.) Once upon a time I thought we all learned that in school; if we did, many seem to have forgotten.

marcoperaza 11y ago
Social engineering, environmental causes, and freedom are exactly what this is about (as well as congestion, which I forgot to mention earlier). How should decisions about a society be made? If public transit is a social good, is it okay to encourage it by taxing people out of their cars? Even though people clearly prefer their cars for all of these reasons? What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause? Let's use another issue for example. If we wanted to end Cosa Nostra (the capital-M Mafia), and didn't care about freedom, the cops could tomorrow round up all of the known members and throw them in jail forever. Or better yet, execute them. That would end the whole ordeal. We don't do that because we think there's a greater good in freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. We believe in due process and the rule of law. There's in fact good logical arguments underpinning and supporting the utility of these ideas, but we don't need to trot them out every time we invoke the ideas themselves. They are cornerstones of our very successful civilization.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > How should decisions about a society be made? By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. We might learn something new; I don't see the intelligence in pursuing close-mindedness. A comparison between a government-built mass transit system and government murder of citizens is a good example of how ideology undermines the ability to intelligently discuss issues.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    >By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. And that's exactly what I'm doing. It sounds like you just want to discount all of the arguments of one side for being 'ideological'. That's a specious argument. Freedom is as much a good as environmental cleanliness and the lack of congestion. Why should it be excluded from your cost/benefit analysis?
    - PopeOfNope 11y ago
      It sounds like you just want to discount all of the arguments of one side for being 'ideological'. There are more than two sides to any discussion and not all sides are equally correct.
      - marcoperaza 11y ago
        I agree! But let's discuss the arguments on their merits, not toss them aside for being "ideological".
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Cost/benefit analysis requires defining what "cost" and "benefit" mean, which is a moral/ideological decision.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  How should decisions about a society be made? The way they've always been made: a combination of social and economic pressures. "Social engineering" is a misnomer. The phrase makes us think we can engineer humans into creating a group of humans (ie: a society) that values what we want them to value and behaves the way we want them to behave. Never once in the history of man has this succeeded. What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause? That's how the nonsense of suburbs and extensive car culture began: city planners following an ideology. Instead of selling what was practical for the individual, they coined and sold the american dream.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
PopeOfNope 11y ago
I always thought any ideology was dangerous, something to be shunned. Same here. It's a great way of not having to think for yourself, though. The success of ideologies throughout history makes me think it exploits a mental vulnerability that exists in most of the human population[0]. How do we make that work in our favor, though? At one point is history, we built a great western civilization. There must have been great incentive to do that, despite the ideologies at play over the past several hundred years. How do we recreate those conditions? [0]: "Normal" human brains react to cognitive dissonance by releasing small hallucinogens to counteract cortisol and ignore conflicting information. http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/404.full.pdf http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/404.full.pdf
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  We built a great western civilization largely on the basis of ideology. Chief among them, natural rights. The most beautiful and famous declaration of this ideology is in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." This itself is an evolution and addition to much older Christian ideas about human dignity, care for the poor, love of fellow man, and duty to do good.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > At one point is history, we built a great western civilization. There must have been great incentive to do that, despite the ideologies at play over the past several hundred years. How do we recreate those conditions? The conditions were no different; likely they were worse (much worse depending on how far back you go). Read a detailed history of some past era and you'll see much that is similar to what you see today. It's a very conservative notion that we are somehow worse today, and that our ancestors were somehow greater. That pessimism, which includes pessimism about our ability to act as a community (i.e., about government), keeps us from moving forward: Many people buy it and won't even try. We can't build mass transit because people are sure we can't do anything. Our ancestors were very human (again, read that history), corrupt, confused, political, just like we are, but in many ways worse off because they didn't have the institutions they and their descendents built over the centuries, from democracy to civil rights to education. They did it; so can we. They had plenty of naysayers too. We've been given all that; handed it on a silver platter. What are we building for our descendents?

marcoperaza 11y ago

Social engineering, environmental causes, and freedom are exactly what this is about (as well as congestion, which I forgot to mention earlier). How should decisions about a society be made? If public transit is a social good, is it okay to encourage it by taxing people out of their cars? Even though people clearly prefer their cars for all of these reasons? What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause? Let's use another issue for example. If we wanted to end Cosa Nostra (the capital-M Mafia), and didn't care about freedom, the cops could tomorrow round up all of the known members and throw them in jail forever. Or better yet, execute them. That would end the whole ordeal. We don't do that because we think there's a greater good in freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. We believe in due process and the rule of law. There's in fact good logical arguments underpinning and supporting the utility of these ideas, but we don't need to trot them out every time we invoke the ideas themselves. They are cornerstones of our very successful civilization.

hackuser 11y ago
> How should decisions about a society be made? By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. We might learn something new; I don't see the intelligence in pursuing close-mindedness. A comparison between a government-built mass transit system and government murder of citizens is a good example of how ideology undermines the ability to intelligently discuss issues.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  >By discussing these issues and being open-minded, pragmatic, and rational, and by evaluating them on a cost/benefit basis. And that's exactly what I'm doing. It sounds like you just want to discount all of the arguments of one side for being 'ideological'. That's a specious argument. Freedom is as much a good as environmental cleanliness and the lack of congestion. Why should it be excluded from your cost/benefit analysis?
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    It sounds like you just want to discount all of the arguments of one side for being 'ideological'. There are more than two sides to any discussion and not all sides are equally correct.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      I agree! But let's discuss the arguments on their merits, not toss them aside for being "ideological".
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Cost/benefit analysis requires defining what "cost" and "benefit" mean, which is a moral/ideological decision.
PopeOfNope 11y ago
How should decisions about a society be made? The way they've always been made: a combination of social and economic pressures. "Social engineering" is a misnomer. The phrase makes us think we can engineer humans into creating a group of humans (ie: a society) that values what we want them to value and behaves the way we want them to behave. Never once in the history of man has this succeeded. What if city planners fail to foresee a technological innovation (like fleets of self-driving cars) and end up spending billions and inconveniencing millions over an ultimately unnecessary cause? That's how the nonsense of suburbs and extensive car culture began: city planners following an ideology. Instead of selling what was practical for the individual, they coined and sold the american dream.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

PopeOfNope 11y ago

I always thought any ideology was dangerous, something to be shunned. Same here. It's a great way of not having to think for yourself, though. The success of ideologies throughout history makes me think it exploits a mental vulnerability that exists in most of the human population[0]. How do we make that work in our favor, though? At one point is history, we built a great western civilization. There must have been great incentive to do that, despite the ideologies at play over the past several hundred years. How do we recreate those conditions? [0]: "Normal" human brains react to cognitive dissonance by releasing small hallucinogens to counteract cortisol and ignore conflicting information. http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/404.full.pdf http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/404.full.pdf

marcoperaza 11y ago
We built a great western civilization largely on the basis of ideology. Chief among them, natural rights. The most beautiful and famous declaration of this ideology is in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." This itself is an evolution and addition to much older Christian ideas about human dignity, care for the poor, love of fellow man, and duty to do good.
hackuser 11y ago
> At one point is history, we built a great western civilization. There must have been great incentive to do that, despite the ideologies at play over the past several hundred years. How do we recreate those conditions? The conditions were no different; likely they were worse (much worse depending on how far back you go). Read a detailed history of some past era and you'll see much that is similar to what you see today. It's a very conservative notion that we are somehow worse today, and that our ancestors were somehow greater. That pessimism, which includes pessimism about our ability to act as a community (i.e., about government), keeps us from moving forward: Many people buy it and won't even try. We can't build mass transit because people are sure we can't do anything. Our ancestors were very human (again, read that history), corrupt, confused, political, just like we are, but in many ways worse off because they didn't have the institutions they and their descendents built over the centuries, from democracy to civil rights to education. They did it; so can we. They had plenty of naysayers too. We've been given all that; handed it on a silver platter. What are we building for our descendents?