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> There are similar sized holes in the way we do things today, when you apply the same standards to it. Consider all of the grievous injustices that have occurr
by Eisenstein 4y ago
> There are similar sized holes in the way we do things today, when you apply the same standards to it. Consider all of the grievous injustices that have occurred until our various systems of government: war, genocide, chattel slavery, enforced divisions based on religion, race, caste, etc.
My response is that we have been progressing, and we continue to do so. There is no 'philosophy' that I think will work -- the only thing that I can see happening is that we iteratively improve until we either destroy ourselves, run out of the ability or desire to harvest energy, get conquered by AI/Aliens/Genetically-engineered-beings, or failing all of those, somehow reach perfection.
Removing the one thing that people can use to enforce collective will on each other is a terrible idea, IMHO, because people are not (usually) able to individually work towards communal good. Sure, in small groups such as tribes or villages we can look after each other's families when needed and pitch in together to get works built or enforce understood norms and punish crime, but in aggregate as a species in large enough groups this is just not possible. Expecting for-profit motivations to accomplish this is either self-serving or naive.
Of course you have built in an escape-hatch for yourself with the 'if I am wrong' bit, so kudos for that. I guess you can use that to have a clear conscience since you appear to have intelligence and empathy enough to know what the consequences are if such a philopsophy fails.
For what it is worth, the preceding was written in a non-combative stance, so please don't interpret it that way (it is judgmental, though; I can't help that).
- Ancapistani 4y agoI’ve been busy the past few days, and haven’t been on HN. If you’d like to chat sometime, I just created a Twitter throwaway account: @ancapistani_ (note the trailing underscore) Shoot me a follow and a mention, and we can chat over DMs if you’d like, or move to another platform. It’d be a lot easier than a long-running comment thread here. A couple quick thoughts: > Of course you have built in an escape-hatch for yourself with the 'if I am wrong' bit, so kudos for that. I guess you can use that to have a clear conscience since you appear to have intelligence and empathy enough to know what the consequences are if such a philopsophy fails. Well, I’ve been wrong on things before. It seems to happen less as I get older and gain experience, but one that same experience leads me to consider the consequences of my being wrong and mitigate them to the extent possible when recommending a course of action. It only takes one time of recommending a company move everything over to microservices to learn that lesson! > For what it is worth, the preceding was written in a non-combative stance, so please don't interpret it that way (it is judgmental, though; I can't help that). Only talking to people you agree with doesn’t make for very interesting conversation. If you didn’t think I was wrong, we wouldn’t be having this conversation! So no, I’m not going to interpret defending your beliefs as being combative.