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> It’s hilariously misguided to look for singular causes and singular fixes for any issue that persists beyond the first few attempts to solve it. Sorry but th

> It’s hilariously misguided to look for singular causes and singular fixes for any issue that persists beyond the first few attempts to solve it. Sorry but that's wrong. If you try to fix an issue by doing useless things, such as attacking TikTok, and then conclude that the problem is not solved because it is "overdetermined and multicausal", you just confused yourself into impotence.

ethanbond 3y ago
You should of course start with your highest-conviction fixes and I don’t think TikTok lands there. But no, most persistent behaviors, not even problems specifically, are multicausal and overdetermined. Behaviors that are not this way are fragile and rarely persist long enough to even be labeled as “a behavior”.
- gordian-mind 3y ago
  > You should of course start with your highest-conviction fixes and I don’t think TikTok lands there. I would rather start with things that provably work... > But no, most persistent behaviors, not even problems specifically, are multicausal and overdetermined. Behaviors that are not this way are fragile and rarely persist long enough to even be labeled as “a behavior”. Salvador seemingly proved that its very high murder rate had a single major cause: gang activity [1]. Some "social" problems have simple solutions. Some don't. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-murders-plummet-by-over-half-2022-amid-gang-crackdown-2023-01-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-murders-p...
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Now that's an excellent proposal: look into the future to pre-determine what will work and then pick the things that'll work. El Salvador proved what was already known. You can rapidly eliminate crime by just imprisoning anyone suspected of crime. Now tell me... why doesn't every country on the planet do this? Why does the United States have such strong restrictions against this, by design (e.g. "Blackstone's Ratio" to let 10 guilty men go free rather than imprisoning a single innocent one)? Could it be that this behavior tends to scoop up innocent people, delegitimize the state, and yield more violence and more chaos? This is exactly the type of simplistic thinking I'm cautioning against. Maybe it'll work out for El Salvador, but in general throughout history this has not yielded good outcomes, which is why most of the prosperous countries on the planet do not behave this way despite its obvious near-term advantages.
    - gordian-mind 3y ago
      If you can't make reliable predictions then try looking into the past. > You can rapidly eliminate crime by just imprisoning anyone suspected of crime. Overgeneralization from the get-go is how you end up confusing a situation and do nothing. > why doesn't every country on the planet do this? A first reason would be that they don't have gangs, so it would be useless to target them. Then, if they have large gangs and they can identify members of such gangs, then yes -- why don't they do this? > Could it be that this behavior tends to scoop up innocent people, delegitimize the state, and yield more violence and more chaos? This is changing the conversation. Those are not causes, but potential consequences. You said that problems are always multicausal and can't be solved by simple solutions, but isn't it more like you have strong moral standards that prevent you from considering such solutions? So this is not about a correct analysis of causes and such, this is about how to solve problems within your own framing. To answer: if you outlaw being in a gang, then anyone identified as part of one is not innocent. Arguably a state is more delegitimized when it fails to prevent its peaceful members from being murdered or ran over by carjackers. Third is simply: no, I don't think so at all. Third, is a "theory of inverse": having more order, creates more disorder. It's never applied anytime in my life -- when I clean my place, it doesn't get dirtier, and it doesn't seem to me that this theory has worked on a societal level either. > but in general throughout history this has not yielded good outcomes, which is why most of the prosperous countries on the planet do not behave this way despite its obvious near-term advantages. Speaking of framing, the "most prosperous countries on the planet", by which I assume you mean the U.S. and various Euro countries, executed a large percentage of their population for centuries until the (late) second part of the 20th. If you look at the UK for example [1], the Bloody code (in the 19th) included 220 reasons for capital punishment (including many dismeanors). It would be simplistic to conclude that extremely harsh legal systems lead to prosperity, but it seems that not only are there obvious short-term advantages, there might even be long-term advantages. Finally, I will say that, amusingly, El Salvador doesn't have the death penalty, so instead of executing a few gang-members every year, and having the police control them on the road every day, they're just locking up a large number of them with huge short-term success. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...

ethanbond 3y ago

You should of course start with your highest-conviction fixes and I don’t think TikTok lands there. But no, most persistent behaviors, not even problems specifically, are multicausal and overdetermined. Behaviors that are not this way are fragile and rarely persist long enough to even be labeled as “a behavior”.

gordian-mind 3y ago
> You should of course start with your highest-conviction fixes and I don’t think TikTok lands there. I would rather start with things that provably work... > But no, most persistent behaviors, not even problems specifically, are multicausal and overdetermined. Behaviors that are not this way are fragile and rarely persist long enough to even be labeled as “a behavior”. Salvador seemingly proved that its very high murder rate had a single major cause: gang activity [1]. Some "social" problems have simple solutions. Some don't. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-murders-plummet-by-over-half-2022-amid-gang-crackdown-2023-01-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-murders-p...
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Now that's an excellent proposal: look into the future to pre-determine what will work and then pick the things that'll work. El Salvador proved what was already known. You can rapidly eliminate crime by just imprisoning anyone suspected of crime. Now tell me... why doesn't every country on the planet do this? Why does the United States have such strong restrictions against this, by design (e.g. "Blackstone's Ratio" to let 10 guilty men go free rather than imprisoning a single innocent one)? Could it be that this behavior tends to scoop up innocent people, delegitimize the state, and yield more violence and more chaos? This is exactly the type of simplistic thinking I'm cautioning against. Maybe it'll work out for El Salvador, but in general throughout history this has not yielded good outcomes, which is why most of the prosperous countries on the planet do not behave this way despite its obvious near-term advantages.
  - gordian-mind 3y ago
    If you can't make reliable predictions then try looking into the past. > You can rapidly eliminate crime by just imprisoning anyone suspected of crime. Overgeneralization from the get-go is how you end up confusing a situation and do nothing. > why doesn't every country on the planet do this? A first reason would be that they don't have gangs, so it would be useless to target them. Then, if they have large gangs and they can identify members of such gangs, then yes -- why don't they do this? > Could it be that this behavior tends to scoop up innocent people, delegitimize the state, and yield more violence and more chaos? This is changing the conversation. Those are not causes, but potential consequences. You said that problems are always multicausal and can't be solved by simple solutions, but isn't it more like you have strong moral standards that prevent you from considering such solutions? So this is not about a correct analysis of causes and such, this is about how to solve problems within your own framing. To answer: if you outlaw being in a gang, then anyone identified as part of one is not innocent. Arguably a state is more delegitimized when it fails to prevent its peaceful members from being murdered or ran over by carjackers. Third is simply: no, I don't think so at all. Third, is a "theory of inverse": having more order, creates more disorder. It's never applied anytime in my life -- when I clean my place, it doesn't get dirtier, and it doesn't seem to me that this theory has worked on a societal level either. > but in general throughout history this has not yielded good outcomes, which is why most of the prosperous countries on the planet do not behave this way despite its obvious near-term advantages. Speaking of framing, the "most prosperous countries on the planet", by which I assume you mean the U.S. and various Euro countries, executed a large percentage of their population for centuries until the (late) second part of the 20th. If you look at the UK for example [1], the Bloody code (in the 19th) included 220 reasons for capital punishment (including many dismeanors). It would be simplistic to conclude that extremely harsh legal systems lead to prosperity, but it seems that not only are there obvious short-term advantages, there might even be long-term advantages. Finally, I will say that, amusingly, El Salvador doesn't have the death penalty, so instead of executing a few gang-members every year, and having the police control them on the road every day, they're just locking up a large number of them with huge short-term success. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...