> The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy.

> The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy. Already in 1947, Georges Bernanos wrote: "it's always more profitable to satisfy man's vices than his needs" in his essay "France against Robots" (La France contre les robots, no idea if there's a good English translation though). Slightly off-topic but I can't recommend this book enough, it's quite forward-thinking and the chapters on freedom and privacy in an increasingly technological society might interest some of you here. I especially remember a brilliant rebuttal of the 'nothing to hide' argument that is still relevant nowadays. So yes, I agree with you, good ideas by themselves rarely happen to actually change how things work. Like you said "a good marketing campaign" might be more impactful. Is there still hope? I've had this question for quite some time now: how do you efficiently implement some change in a system that won't cooperate? Seems to me that it requires some hacker mindset to find how you can exploit the rules of the game to trick the system into working towards your goals. I've been given a great book full off details about what should be done if we are to improve our world in the coming decades, but it's a bit of a let down for me: what should be done is rarely a secret, how you actually manage to pull it off at scale is the real issue.