5 ms·

I love the name. For obvious reasons, I've been thinking a lot on this topic, and it's... just flat-out complicated. For any culture -- be it a business or a

by donw 6y ago

I love the name. For obvious reasons, I've been thinking a lot on this topic, and it's... just flat-out complicated. For any culture -- be it a business or a country -- there is both (a) a maximum rate of sustainable change; (b) a minimum rate of necessary change; and (c) the need to walk back from poor decisions. Too much change, and the culture breaks down. Too little change, and the culture can't handle growth. Walking back from poor decisions is super-hard. The harder it is to get a law passed, the more incentive there is to try and justify it for eternity, rather than being able to say things like "Our law proposed to decrease the murder rate faster than it was already. That didn't happen, so we're rolling things back to where they were and trying something different." Not sure what the answers are here, though.

vtkacenko 6y ago
Tolerance and a sense of shared responsibility, perhaps? If all the participants feel like they took part of the educated decision regardless of outcome - they might be more tolerant towards walking it back. One could argue that would be part of the culture.
082349872349872 6y ago
Goldstein explicitly states the mission of Minitru is to enable (c) without the observed disincentive. I've found a number of correspondences between Oceania and Plato's Republic, but am unsure if there was any direct correspondence intended, or if Orwell's tragic satire of society at his boarding school[1] only indirectly implies them, due to ancient greek influence on edwardian mores. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys Being a second rate boarding school, they never read greek or latin works whole (and thus presumably were spared the most cynical, least copybook, bits about power, e.g. δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν?) but were merely "taught to the test."
simonh 6y ago
The answer is democracy. If a policy doesn't work out, elect a new government with no political investment in the old failed policy, and in fact maybe even a platform to fix it, and have them fix it. Prohibition in the US is a classic case in point.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  The answer certainly includes democracy, but having a constitutional republic like the US is not sufficient. Figure 1 on pdf page 10 [1]. [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    "Economic elites" here being approximated by the "affluent", namely 90th income (why not wealth?) percentile. > "To be sure, people at the ninetieth income percentile are neither very rich nor very elite; in 2012 dollars, Gilens’ “affluent” respondents received only about $146,000 in annual household income."
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

by donw 6y ago

vtkacenko 6y ago

Tolerance and a sense of shared responsibility, perhaps? If all the participants feel like they took part of the educated decision regardless of outcome - they might be more tolerant towards walking it back. One could argue that would be part of the culture.

082349872349872 6y ago

Goldstein explicitly states the mission of Minitru is to enable (c) without the observed disincentive. I've found a number of correspondences between Oceania and Plato's Republic, but am unsure if there was any direct correspondence intended, or if Orwell's tragic satire of society at his boarding school[1] only indirectly implies them, due to ancient greek influence on edwardian mores. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys Being a second rate boarding school, they never read greek or latin works whole (and thus presumably were spared the most cynical, least copybook, bits about power, e.g. δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν?) but were merely "taught to the test."

simonh 6y ago

The answer is democracy. If a policy doesn't work out, elect a new government with no political investment in the old failed policy, and in fact maybe even a platform to fix it, and have them fix it. Prohibition in the US is a classic case in point.

rmrfstar 6y ago
The answer certainly includes democracy, but having a constitutional republic like the US is not sufficient. Figure 1 on pdf page 10 [1]. [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  "Economic elites" here being approximated by the "affluent", namely 90th income (why not wealth?) percentile. > "To be sure, people at the ninetieth income percentile are neither very rich nor very elite; in 2012 dollars, Gilens’ “affluent” respondents received only about $146,000 in annual household income."
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]