4 ms·

I've certainly become more interested in the status quo in the last 5 years, so I guess I can offer myself up as a sort of example. (Though I do believe that ab

by gpm 5y ago

I've certainly become more interested in the status quo in the last 5 years, so I guess I can offer myself up as a sort of example. (Though I do believe that about myself, and I'm not sure it actually translates to being less interested in exploring new ideas either...) Maybe a bit of it is just me getting older, but I think most of it is observing that a lot of things are actively getting worse, and thus prioritizing "stopping the bleeding". A concrete example of this would be Biden as a politician, 5 years ago I would have hated him as useless (not improving things) and mildly corrupt, now I don't mind him as useless (not making things worse) and only mildly corrupt - with the unfortunate reality that that is the best option the US had. PS. Let's try and keep this thread from becoming a debate about Biden and politicians, he's a useful example but not the point, I don't expect everyone to agree with my assessment.

ethbr0 5y ago
Point. It's also just fundamentally harder to get excited about new ideas as you age. When you're young, you don't know anything, so you look at every new idea in its purest form. When you're old, you can't not make comparisons to known history, and so look at every new idea with a shadow gallery of similar ideas. Which probably ultimately skews favor towards conservative approaches (things that look like things that have previously worked) than novel one (things that look like nothing else, or like other things that have failed). Which is to say, to react to new ideas as though you were young, once you're old, takes effort and self-reflection. It's a valuable skill to cultivate, but it also doesn't happen naturally.
gpm 5y ago
Replying to myself: This got me thinking about what exactly I mean by status quo, I don't think it's quite as obvious as it seems at first glance. One important distinction is status-quo as a goal, vs status-quo as a solution. Status quo as a goal often makes sense - when the current state of affairs isn't that bad and it would be easy for things to get worse, keeping things the same is a good thing. Solutions however rarely make sense, because solutions operate in a changing environment, and keeping doing the same thing is basically pretending you're maintaining the status quo, when you're actually yielding different results. To use atmospheric CO2 as an example, status quo atmospheric CO2 would be a remarkable achievement. Status quo energy generation obviously fails to achieve that, because the baseline amount of atmospheric CO2 keeps going up. Another thing to ask is status quo of "what", status quo of atmospheric CO2 would be remarkable, status quo of change in atmospheric CO2 over time wouldn't solve the crisis, though it would be a great improvement over what we have right now. IIRC status quo of the second derivative of atmospheric CO2 over time (i.e. how fast the rate at which we output it changes over time) is about what we currently maintain. It follows that status quo of the third derivative would be a major step backwards. I think the conclusion I've been coming to over the last few years, is that "status quo of quantities that aren't rates is usually a good default for a goal". For atmospheric CO2 it would be a remarkable achievement. For geopolitical tensions is europe, it's not quite ideal, but we don't actually have a war and I'd be pretty happy if it stayed that way. For diseases, I mean, we aren't all dying, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean it's always the right goal. If we're in the middle of a major war, we should be seeking a new status quo where we aren't in a war. Given that the new mRNA HIV vaccine actually works the goal should change to "reduce HIV" rather than "maintain the status quo" since that's now possible. It's just that status quo is a starting point for a goal and deviations from it should probably be supported by a solid argument for "we can do better" or "we can't even do that well".

by gpm 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago

Point. It's also just fundamentally harder to get excited about new ideas as you age. When you're young, you don't know anything, so you look at every new idea in its purest form. When you're old, you can't not make comparisons to known history, and so look at every new idea with a shadow gallery of similar ideas. Which probably ultimately skews favor towards conservative approaches (things that look like things that have previously worked) than novel one (things that look like nothing else, or like other things that have failed). Which is to say, to react to new ideas as though you were young, once you're old, takes effort and self-reflection. It's a valuable skill to cultivate, but it also doesn't happen naturally.

gpm 5y ago

Replying to myself: This got me thinking about what exactly I mean by status quo, I don't think it's quite as obvious as it seems at first glance. One important distinction is status-quo as a goal, vs status-quo as a solution. Status quo as a goal often makes sense - when the current state of affairs isn't that bad and it would be easy for things to get worse, keeping things the same is a good thing. Solutions however rarely make sense, because solutions operate in a changing environment, and keeping doing the same thing is basically pretending you're maintaining the status quo, when you're actually yielding different results. To use atmospheric CO2 as an example, status quo atmospheric CO2 would be a remarkable achievement. Status quo energy generation obviously fails to achieve that, because the baseline amount of atmospheric CO2 keeps going up. Another thing to ask is status quo of "what", status quo of atmospheric CO2 would be remarkable, status quo of change in atmospheric CO2 over time wouldn't solve the crisis, though it would be a great improvement over what we have right now. IIRC status quo of the second derivative of atmospheric CO2 over time (i.e. how fast the rate at which we output it changes over time) is about what we currently maintain. It follows that status quo of the third derivative would be a major step backwards. I think the conclusion I've been coming to over the last few years, is that "status quo of quantities that aren't rates is usually a good default for a goal". For atmospheric CO2 it would be a remarkable achievement. For geopolitical tensions is europe, it's not quite ideal, but we don't actually have a war and I'd be pretty happy if it stayed that way. For diseases, I mean, we aren't all dying, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean it's always the right goal. If we're in the middle of a major war, we should be seeking a new status quo where we aren't in a war. Given that the new mRNA HIV vaccine actually works the goal should change to "reduce HIV" rather than "maintain the status quo" since that's now possible. It's just that status quo is a starting point for a goal and deviations from it should probably be supported by a solid argument for "we can do better" or "we can't even do that well".