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In terms of machine learning money is the opposite of regularization. The more money the less regularization the more over-fitting to your specific self-chosen
by rv-de 8y ago
In terms of machine learning money is the opposite of regularization. The more money the less regularization the more over-fitting to your specific self-chosen environment. A not rich person will have to learn to cope with obstacles. A rich person can remove obstacles. But it is impossible to remove all obstacles which will lead to increased hostility towards those remaining annoyances - like for example with SUVs in traffic. Calling a nice comfy SUV your owns means you removed obstacles like hot and cold weather (thanks to elaborate climate control), people literally look up to you in your SUV (big ego gains - less obstacles in terms of having to deal with disrespect), both due to direct in indirect conditions you won't have to deal with car problems. But when you are in traffic you'll also feel aloof and drive accordingly - like you own the street. But you cannot enforce it. End every so often there will be a conflict with a guy driving a ridiculous, old, little Toyota who won't give you way or won't let you zip into his lane. Now you are heated because this puny peasant isn't acknowledging your ego. And that's just one example.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoMoney is an insanely toxic mental, political, and social poison, for exactly these kinds of reasons. It's also a social reward function that privileges egotism and narcissism over empathy; exploitation, scamming, and rent-seeking over creativity, curiosity and invention; and short-term gain over long-term damage. Like the hardest of hard addictive drugs, it's an almost irresistible modifier of behaviour and attitude.
- charlesdm 8y agoThere's plenty of creativity in tax avoidance and financial engineering. Now, I'm not saying that is the kind of creativity you want to promote, but it certainly is there. There are many people who have fun doing this kind of work.
- rv-de 8y agoThen again few rich people will engage in this creative task on their own - most will probably just hire an accountant.
- cies 8y agoCreativity of the kind that you do not want to display on stage in a theater. Just a very small group being interested in your services, often denoted as a fraction of a percent (when natural people) or a position in a Fortune(TM) list.
- simonh 8y agoIt's hard to square that with the fact that the wealthiest societies are also the most free, the most liberal, that capitalism has lifted a billion people out of poverty over the last half century. If money was a poison, the west should be dying. Instead living in rich societies has isolated us from the realities of life in the underdeveloped world, and from our own past of just a few generations, that 'first world problem' has become a persistent joke. Money can be toxic. Look at the awful social and political problems so many petro-states suffer from. Productive work is the great cleanser though. My wife is Chinese and grew up in a hut with no running water heated by a stove. Since I started visiting her hometown in 2001 it's been transformed beyond recognition, and not by a poison.
- antocv 8y ago> the most liberal, that capitalism has lifted a billion people out of poverty over the last half century. I often hear this about capitalism, but why do same people never attribute the genocide of American natives, enslavement of Africans and Indians, to capitalism? The earliest emergence of stock companies, lay waste and devastation to an entire sub-continent. When the sixth mass extinction is underway, ecological disaster on a global scale, and yet "it be as it be", but this is not attributed to capitalism? Capitalism: it sits to bask in every glory, and all its failures expelled, literally explained away
- jahaja 8y agoI think one need to understand that those kind of things have been said about western capitalism/society for a long long time, even under appalling injustice, segregation etc. Its purpose is to comfort the privileged, not necessarily to be true. The underlying pattern has been there for even longer of course, e.g. Bertrand Russell wrote this in 1932: In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges.
- humanrebar 8y ago> ...why do same people never attribute the genocide of American natives, enslavement of Africans and Indians, to capitalism? Because: - Slavery and genocide predate modern market economics. They are not unique to capitalism. It would need to be shown that they are more prevalent (tough, given Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.). - The slavery and genocide you are probably referencing comes from mercantilism and imperialism, not free market capitalism. - Slavery, violence, and murder are not features of free markets. Property rights aren't exactly established if people and land can be taken by force without compensation or agreement, not that people are property anyway.
- pasta 8y agoSome 2000 years ago this was already the case. 1 Timothy 6:10: "...the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
- roenxi 8y ago'Trying to do the right thing' is a quirky human heuristic that works well in the small but scales terribly. It is evidenced in things like the legal system where 'intent to commit a crime' is often a consideration in the sentencing in addition to the actual outcomes of a criminal act. With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense why money (and the economy generally) rubs people the wrong way. We have here a powerful system in which if you act rationally, selfishly and with intent to maximise your personal outcomes (but within the law), others will benefit. Intent is explicitly not part of the equation of who gets to be wealthy. But the whole thing hangs together because of the intuitive fact that a clever person acting with selfish intent can usually do more good than a clever selfless person acting with noble intent. There is an irony that working to maximise your income looks, in real terms, a lot like dedicating your life to the betterment of others with personal perks. The people who get rich under capitalism do not spend their time sitting in idleness.
- gooslol 8y agoThat sounds very much like the trickle-down argument, which has been proven false – if not directly harmful – many times over. Selfish behaviour run amok more often leads to rent-seeking and a stockpiling of resources at the top, with little benefit to the rest of society.
- WaddyJones 8y agoActually the people who get rich under capitalism SPECIFICALLY DO spend their time sitting in idleness. Source: every lazy billionaire who ever lived. It’s called wu wei brah
- Nasrudith 8y agoI wouldn't be surprised if it also happened precurrency as well. We aren't dogs but one thing known to make them potentially more aggressive is having larger "territory" it thinks it must defend. That was useful behavior for guard animals but not universally For vast periods of time you want them to bark at intruders, cattle rustlers and predators but not mauling small children or innocents who may leave you liable. Essentially it may be the power that does it technically.
- mendelsd 8y agoGood comment, except I'd point out that plenty of creativity and invention gets employed in the service of rent-seeking: e.g. most of academic economics, and the way it gets used politically. Check out Michael Hudson and Richard Werner for a dose of reality.
- honestoHeminway 8y agoIts also self-referential- notice how purer the capitalism process is considered, the farer detached from actual goods it is. You have some fractal fleas sitting upon each other at wallstreet, convincing all the other intelligent beeings, that this is the way to life your life- and any other approach is bogus.
- fouc 8y agoI would imagine the road rage comes more from insecurity. Feeling like a doofus for driving an SUV, and being triggered by someone that's clearly not as insecure.