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Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as go

Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as good. A few objectives I can think of are "least number of people hungry", "most number of people reporting themselves as satisfied" etc. I don't understand why we aren't doing this now. Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task.

mseebach 15y ago
Large scale hunger is typically a symptom of systemic failure, not a lack of food production ability. There's no consensus on how to fix that. Niall Ferguson suggests that the "killer apps" are competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. This is controversial - see, for and example the comments on his TED talk[1] or the reviews of his book[2]. As for reporting yourself as satisfied, this is hugely subjective. I could be unsatisfied because I think my bosses at my well paid and comfortable programming job are doing things wrongly, this, I suspect, would be a luxury problem to an unemployed graduate on benefits, who again has a luxury problem compared to a homeless crack addict. > Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. Will all due respect, but there's really no way to say this without being a dick: Go read a book. The big philosophers of the enlightenment are towering intellectual capacities. > There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task. Quite the contrary. People are people and they all have individual goals and desires. Societies can't be designed and directed on any significant scale without devolving into totalitarianism. Our enlightenment friends realized this, and anyone who's tried to do this has failed miserably and bloodily. 1: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of... 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/1846142733 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/...

mseebach 15y ago

Large scale hunger is typically a symptom of systemic failure, not a lack of food production ability. There's no consensus on how to fix that. Niall Ferguson suggests that the "killer apps" are competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. This is controversial - see, for and example the comments on his TED talk[1] or the reviews of his book[2]. As for reporting yourself as satisfied, this is hugely subjective. I could be unsatisfied because I think my bosses at my well paid and comfortable programming job are doing things wrongly, this, I suspect, would be a luxury problem to an unemployed graduate on benefits, who again has a luxury problem compared to a homeless crack addict. > Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. Will all due respect, but there's really no way to say this without being a dick: Go read a book. The big philosophers of the enlightenment are towering intellectual capacities. > There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task. Quite the contrary. People are people and they all have individual goals and desires. Societies can't be designed and directed on any significant scale without devolving into totalitarianism. Our enlightenment friends realized this, and anyone who's tried to do this has failed miserably and bloodily. 1: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of... 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/1846142733 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/...