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>I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. That is a feature, not a bug. Soc

>I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. That is a feature, not a bug. Society is incredibly complicated and is an intrinsically chaotic system resulting from the beliefs and actions of hundreds of millions of individuals. The system has generations of iterative 'fixes' to problems and with delicate balances negotiated and fought for by various groups across tens or hundred of years. What makes you think you think you can rebuild it better? What makes you think you can account for all the things that the system does well in your new 'paradigm'? We saw with various revolutions (e.g. French, Russia, and Chinese) that when you try to upend even a bad system and rebuild from scratch with a 'new paradigm', it leads to something much much worse.

miltondts 6y ago
The problem I see with the revolutions you mention is the people implementing those changes believe (or at least act like) their new system is perfect. I'm advocating precisely the opposite! I would like for people to view their system in terms of trade-offs and deliberately experiment with new ones and asses the results and not just in an incremental way, but also in radical ways. Because right now, all I see is a sort of headless chicken running around destroying everything with zero regards for the consequences. Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than capitalism. The solution is to consume more! Really? So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and more of a engineering view.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than capitalism. Because through blood, sweat and tears we've landed on a system that is based on market-economics coupled with welfare state to provide a safety net. Changing any of that would require a wholesale destruction of our current system and is no better than the Russian revolution. Our system has a lot of slack. You can adjust market and welfare policies across elections. There's a lot you can do within the system - your problem seems to be that policies you like are not pushed through the system ... but that's Democracy for you. It takes effort and negotiation to make societal level changes. >So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and more of a engineering view. Social systems are not engineering systems. They are messy because they are fundamentally composed of messy individuals with historical baggage to boot. You cannot create a clean top-down plan without it looking like Soviet-style communism. Democracy is messy and requires give and take and negotiation, compromise, and horse-trading between all the thousands of different stakeholders and groups. You cannot clean that up with an engineering schematic. You're falling into the trap that all ideologues fall into.

miltondts 6y ago

The problem I see with the revolutions you mention is the people implementing those changes believe (or at least act like) their new system is perfect. I'm advocating precisely the opposite! I would like for people to view their system in terms of trade-offs and deliberately experiment with new ones and asses the results and not just in an incremental way, but also in radical ways. Because right now, all I see is a sort of headless chicken running around destroying everything with zero regards for the consequences. Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than capitalism. The solution is to consume more! Really? So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and more of a engineering view.

macspoofing 6y ago
>Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than capitalism. Because through blood, sweat and tears we've landed on a system that is based on market-economics coupled with welfare state to provide a safety net. Changing any of that would require a wholesale destruction of our current system and is no better than the Russian revolution. Our system has a lot of slack. You can adjust market and welfare policies across elections. There's a lot you can do within the system - your problem seems to be that policies you like are not pushed through the system ... but that's Democracy for you. It takes effort and negotiation to make societal level changes. >So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and more of a engineering view. Social systems are not engineering systems. They are messy because they are fundamentally composed of messy individuals with historical baggage to boot. You cannot create a clean top-down plan without it looking like Soviet-style communism. Democracy is messy and requires give and take and negotiation, compromise, and horse-trading between all the thousands of different stakeholders and groups. You cannot clean that up with an engineering schematic. You're falling into the trap that all ideologues fall into.