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>> But I don't think that seeing the exclusion of the masses as intentional despotism is particularly helpful. This may be true of the examples you cited for t

by sifar 7y ago

>> But I don't think that seeing the exclusion of the masses as intentional despotism is particularly helpful. This may be true of the examples you cited for the more distant era. However post WW2, with the invention of technologies of mass control, this has really become a default case now. >> Designing good systems that work well for everyone is tough. It's made all the tougher when you want it to serve billions. If one is aware of this then one should factor that into the systems to minimize the harm or refrain from building such systems. We don't see any evidence for that.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
It's extremely challenging to envision the path not taken. Even in cases where you can, it's more challenging still to effectively communicate the other path and that you are, in fact, correct. I don't know that the world would be a better place had we not done x, y or z. When people decry a thing, they routinely focus on the harm it has done without accounting for the good it did. Maybe the path not taken is far worse than the problems we currently struggle with. They built wells in India and Bangladesh, iirc. The intent was to stop a quarter of a million deaths annually from contaminated surface waters, such as collected rainwater. Some of the wells caused arsenic poisoning. The scale of this new disaster was compared to Chernobyl and pronounced worse than that. This comparison largely ignored the millions of lives already saved by the wells. We solve a problem. We find some new bug in the system. We iterate. That's how progress works.
- sifar 7y ago
  Yes we cannot re-simulate the world or do A/B testing with different versions of it. It is what it is. I find Progress to be a nebulous/relative term. Defining it depends whether on you can measure things. Things that cannot be measured are outside its purview. For all our pervasive data gathering capability we lack intuitive understanding of how the complex interconnected adaptive system, that is the real world, works. Some change one would consider minor or harmless might balloon into a crisis years down the line, because the conditions have changed or we didn't consider feedback or were not even aware of it. I agree with you that whether to act or not is indeed a dilemma. But when we do, the question is, are we acting with this humbling awareness, or are we just arrogantly tinkering with it. In hindsight, we find it has been mostly the latter, at least for the last 500 years. And you are right, that is just how it is.
  - sifar 7y ago
    Sorry to bring this up again but this is more as a note for posterity. Often we don't measure what we have lost, except may be weight or net worth.

by sifar 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

It's extremely challenging to envision the path not taken. Even in cases where you can, it's more challenging still to effectively communicate the other path and that you are, in fact, correct. I don't know that the world would be a better place had we not done x, y or z. When people decry a thing, they routinely focus on the harm it has done without accounting for the good it did. Maybe the path not taken is far worse than the problems we currently struggle with. They built wells in India and Bangladesh, iirc. The intent was to stop a quarter of a million deaths annually from contaminated surface waters, such as collected rainwater. Some of the wells caused arsenic poisoning. The scale of this new disaster was compared to Chernobyl and pronounced worse than that. This comparison largely ignored the millions of lives already saved by the wells. We solve a problem. We find some new bug in the system. We iterate. That's how progress works.

sifar 7y ago
Yes we cannot re-simulate the world or do A/B testing with different versions of it. It is what it is. I find Progress to be a nebulous/relative term. Defining it depends whether on you can measure things. Things that cannot be measured are outside its purview. For all our pervasive data gathering capability we lack intuitive understanding of how the complex interconnected adaptive system, that is the real world, works. Some change one would consider minor or harmless might balloon into a crisis years down the line, because the conditions have changed or we didn't consider feedback or were not even aware of it. I agree with you that whether to act or not is indeed a dilemma. But when we do, the question is, are we acting with this humbling awareness, or are we just arrogantly tinkering with it. In hindsight, we find it has been mostly the latter, at least for the last 500 years. And you are right, that is just how it is.
- sifar 7y ago
  Sorry to bring this up again but this is more as a note for posterity. Often we don't measure what we have lost, except may be weight or net worth.