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> One thing we know about humans is that, as a species, we were never and are not currently capable of making such collective decisions I'm pretty sceptical re

> One thing we know about humans is that, as a species, we were never and are not currently capable of making such collective decisions I'm pretty sceptical re claims of knowledge about complex systems, and human ecology is about as complex as systems get. So I think your statement is way overconfident. Having said that, if I had to make a bet on whether or not we'll make the necessary decisions given how late in the game we've left it, I'd put a decent whack of cash on the prospects of failure. Also that the proximate cause of the collapse of our civilisation won't be global environmental collapse, but war consequent on local collapses. Look at Europe following 2015, convulsions caused by trickles of refugees that were minuscule compared to what's coming. I'd bet on nukes (another can we've kicked down the road for decades) offering the coup de grace.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> I'm pretty sceptical re claims of knowledge about complex systems, and human ecology is about as complex as systems get. So I think your statement is way overconfident. Complex behaviour of systems often arises out of simple rules. Game theory is not always well applicable, but here it provides some simple models that explain this problem very well: multiple people forgoing individual gains in order to cooperate at getting bigger gains is a very unstable state that can be quickly destroyed by free-riders, who defect in order to reap both individual and group gains. The very awareness of this dynamic, which is something we all have as intuition even if we can't put it in "mathy" words, is enough to severely curtail the ability to cooperate. Looking through this lens, you can discover that of cultural customs and social pressures around individual behavior are really mechanisms that deter and punish defection and strive to establish an environment in which cooperation is easier. Scott Alexander explored this topic far better than I ever could: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
- crispinb 7y ago
  I wasn't disputing the plausibility, rather the knowledge. You can't intuit your way to rationally justifiable prediction of future global events by thinking through a few toy models. Even predictions far better founded on reams of real empirical evidence are notoriously shaky (see Philip Tetlock's work amongst others). Your guesses happen to be guesses I share. But they're just guesses.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I wasn't predicting things in my response, just commenting on why something in the past didn't happen and couldn't have (though with a strong implication that this applies to the future). While this is "just a guess", I feel pretty much the entire history of humankind backs me up on this one. I don't see much reason to believe humans will suddenly get better at collective action than they were before - especially now that we've understood and enshrined as holy, in the form of profit-seeking mandate of the market economy, the mechanism of strip-mining any forms of spontaneous coordination and turning them into dollars. I still hope we can get out of this one, but I don't see the solution coming from "the people". If anything, "the people" will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into that future, by governments mandating the right moves, by public and private R&D creating solutions which companies then use to enable the governments to make the right moves.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> I'm pretty sceptical re claims of knowledge about complex systems, and human ecology is about as complex as systems get. So I think your statement is way overconfident. Complex behaviour of systems often arises out of simple rules. Game theory is not always well applicable, but here it provides some simple models that explain this problem very well: multiple people forgoing individual gains in order to cooperate at getting bigger gains is a very unstable state that can be quickly destroyed by free-riders, who defect in order to reap both individual and group gains. The very awareness of this dynamic, which is something we all have as intuition even if we can't put it in "mathy" words, is enough to severely curtail the ability to cooperate. Looking through this lens, you can discover that of cultural customs and social pressures around individual behavior are really mechanisms that deter and punish defection and strive to establish an environment in which cooperation is easier. Scott Alexander explored this topic far better than I ever could: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

crispinb 7y ago
I wasn't disputing the plausibility, rather the knowledge. You can't intuit your way to rationally justifiable prediction of future global events by thinking through a few toy models. Even predictions far better founded on reams of real empirical evidence are notoriously shaky (see Philip Tetlock's work amongst others). Your guesses happen to be guesses I share. But they're just guesses.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I wasn't predicting things in my response, just commenting on why something in the past didn't happen and couldn't have (though with a strong implication that this applies to the future). While this is "just a guess", I feel pretty much the entire history of humankind backs me up on this one. I don't see much reason to believe humans will suddenly get better at collective action than they were before - especially now that we've understood and enshrined as holy, in the form of profit-seeking mandate of the market economy, the mechanism of strip-mining any forms of spontaneous coordination and turning them into dollars. I still hope we can get out of this one, but I don't see the solution coming from "the people". If anything, "the people" will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into that future, by governments mandating the right moves, by public and private R&D creating solutions which companies then use to enable the governments to make the right moves.