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> it's less Orwell and more Huxley. This point comes up so often when discussing Orwell/1984 it's almost meta in itself. 1984 seems more scary to us for some r

> it's less Orwell and more Huxley. This point comes up so often when discussing Orwell/1984 it's almost meta in itself. 1984 seems more scary to us for some reason, perhaps because it's more foreign/further from our reality than Huxley's fears/Brave New World?

wombatmobile 5y ago
Nobody wants to be controlled. Everybody wants to be entertained. In a democracy, this is a recipe for mediocrity, because reaching consensus and buy-in is so difficult, it is easier to ignore hard problems than to solve them.
- yann2 5y ago
  Have you heard of Bounded Rationality? There is an upper bound on what the chimp brain can do. No big diff with a group of chimps. There is always an upper bound. Pretending there is no bound leads to a big trap. Its like telling second graders they can solve tenth grade problems. They cant no matter what they are entertained by, how well they built od consensus or how hard they work. All that it archives is make them feel useless or angry and plants the seeds for pointless blame games. Huxley and Orwell are irrelevant as they focus on things beyond the bound. Naturally they have no workable solutions out of the trap. Bounded rationality however does recommends a way out of the trap - work on simple problems. Thats how the ants thrive.
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    > Bounded rationality however does recommends a way out of the trap - work on simple problems Climate change is a simple problem, reducible to just one number - the percentage of C02 in Earth's atmosphere. What is difficult is not the technical challenge of how to reduce C02 emissions. We have known that for thousands of years, and all societies practised it until recently. They went about their business without burning fossil fuels. What is difficult is to get people to walk back from convenience. Once you've driven on the freeway to the beach in 30 minutes, stopping by the supermarket on the way to pick up a bbq chicken and a can of asparagus imported from Argentina for $1.50, nothing will convince you to go back to the old way of living. Most people would say the pursuit of convenience is at the core of their definition of rationality. If that's the case, we aren't limited by an upper bound on rationality so much as condemned by our perpetual desire to exceed it.
    - loopz 5y ago
      It's complicated. CO2 and other greenhouse gases raise evaporated water concentrations and initial warming, which trigger several one-way thresholds that we can never undo. It gets complicated/impossible after each threshold breakage, as warming will mostly drive itself and chaotic flux from there on.
  - IIAOPSW 5y ago
    >Its like telling second graders they can solve tenth grade problems. They cant no matter what they are entertained by, how well they built od consensus or how hard they work. Child prodigies exist.
    - orestarod 5y ago
      And they're few.
nostrademons 5y ago
It's beyond that. Arguably Huxley's vision of the future is closer to reality. The thing is Huxley's vision is ego syntonic - it's compatible with our self-conception. The characters in Brave New World aren't struggling against anything, their self-conception has adapted so much that they accept the brave new world as right and natural. Orwell's vision is ego dystonic - there is still a "me" in Winston that recognizes the world he lives in as corrupt and struggles against it. In that way the characters of Brave New World are farther gone than Winston and Julia. There is no need for a Thought Police in Brave New World, because everybody has so internalized the value system of the World State that it's not necessary.

wombatmobile 5y ago

Nobody wants to be controlled. Everybody wants to be entertained. In a democracy, this is a recipe for mediocrity, because reaching consensus and buy-in is so difficult, it is easier to ignore hard problems than to solve them.

yann2 5y ago
Have you heard of Bounded Rationality? There is an upper bound on what the chimp brain can do. No big diff with a group of chimps. There is always an upper bound. Pretending there is no bound leads to a big trap. Its like telling second graders they can solve tenth grade problems. They cant no matter what they are entertained by, how well they built od consensus or how hard they work. All that it archives is make them feel useless or angry and plants the seeds for pointless blame games. Huxley and Orwell are irrelevant as they focus on things beyond the bound. Naturally they have no workable solutions out of the trap. Bounded rationality however does recommends a way out of the trap - work on simple problems. Thats how the ants thrive.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  > Bounded rationality however does recommends a way out of the trap - work on simple problems Climate change is a simple problem, reducible to just one number - the percentage of C02 in Earth's atmosphere. What is difficult is not the technical challenge of how to reduce C02 emissions. We have known that for thousands of years, and all societies practised it until recently. They went about their business without burning fossil fuels. What is difficult is to get people to walk back from convenience. Once you've driven on the freeway to the beach in 30 minutes, stopping by the supermarket on the way to pick up a bbq chicken and a can of asparagus imported from Argentina for $1.50, nothing will convince you to go back to the old way of living. Most people would say the pursuit of convenience is at the core of their definition of rationality. If that's the case, we aren't limited by an upper bound on rationality so much as condemned by our perpetual desire to exceed it.
  - loopz 5y ago
    It's complicated. CO2 and other greenhouse gases raise evaporated water concentrations and initial warming, which trigger several one-way thresholds that we can never undo. It gets complicated/impossible after each threshold breakage, as warming will mostly drive itself and chaotic flux from there on.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  >Its like telling second graders they can solve tenth grade problems. They cant no matter what they are entertained by, how well they built od consensus or how hard they work. Child prodigies exist.
  - orestarod 5y ago
    And they're few.

nostrademons 5y ago

It's beyond that. Arguably Huxley's vision of the future is closer to reality. The thing is Huxley's vision is ego syntonic - it's compatible with our self-conception. The characters in Brave New World aren't struggling against anything, their self-conception has adapted so much that they accept the brave new world as right and natural. Orwell's vision is ego dystonic - there is still a "me" in Winston that recognizes the world he lives in as corrupt and struggles against it. In that way the characters of Brave New World are farther gone than Winston and Julia. There is no need for a Thought Police in Brave New World, because everybody has so internalized the value system of the World State that it's not necessary.