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It's not manipulation. The economic system is as simple as the game of life when it comes to the coarse understanding of why it has screwed us: * Prisoner's di

It's not manipulation. The economic system is as simple as the game of life when it comes to the coarse understanding of why it has screwed us: * Prisoner's dilemma: New inventions give people a differential advantage over others, so everyone has to use them * We think new inventions give us an advantage because of our maladaptive instinct to gain knowledge and avoid death Hence, we have one mechanism (the prisoner's dilemma) operating on our instinct to gain wealth and power and that drives us via capitalism towards the brink of death. What we need to do is have a society-wide mentality that endless growth is bad and that our throwaway society is bad but with the momentum humanity has today, we are screwed. Of course, we'll be okay (I'm talking about people over 30), but our children will be extremely miserable. That is the karma that has accumulated every time you buy something in single-use plastic, every time you use Google and support their tech monolith, every time you drive your car, and every time you live in extreme luxury with modern technology. We cannot avoid this karma now from all this destruction we have done.

avgcorrection 3y ago
this is why the world is ending...[1] because people like you have swallowed the propaganda line that it's about “mentality” and not the economic system itself. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-people-are-blamed-for-climate-change https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-pe... [1] No, not really. Powerful people are the ones to blame.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I do think one of the major components is the economic system, I never said it wasn't. I believe a reform of the economic system will still be better than nothing, never said it wouldn't. I would like nothing more for the mechanisms to be eliminated that have made the powerful people, because they are certainly drivers in this disaster. I still believe in doing everything possible to mitigate it and changing everything we can...but let's not kid ourselves, our general mentality that makes us think short-term has also given us those powerful people...it's not like "little people" aren't to blame either. The sooner everyone acknowledges their responsibility, the better. Of course, I still think we will suffer due to what we have done but I believe in doing everyhing we can to change it. Of course, you were snarky because I was snarky at your other comment first. Tit for tat.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Blaming “powerful people” is just a shorthand for the system itself. One can do what anyone who is serious about things like politics does: research power. Who has it, how is it wielded. Who influences the discourses? Or who dictates it? Who plans societies? Who decides that America shall be dominated by four-line highways? That it shall have terrible mass transportation? That the megalopolis from Philadelphia to Boston shall have a terrible and slow railway? That its urban/suburban planning shall be such that people will have to commute to work by way of cars? Why are consumer products produced and imported from across the Pacific Ocean (in the case of the US)? One could research who planned the consumer capitalist economy. Who invented modern marketing. Why the economy needs “consumers”. ... one could research whether the “little people” actually have power. The Princeton study that concluded that 90% of the population have no influence on policy (no correlation between policy preference and actual policy) would say no. Alternatively one could stuff all that. Say that it's about an all-encompassing "mentality". That we're all equally to blame. That it's about Game Theory. I think your mentality is exactly what the system needs to perpetuate itself. You should feel good about that. -- Really I should know better than to vent my frustration by simply saying that I think about the world ending every day... How selfish of me.
- kredd 3y ago
  Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system. Sure it might be sucky for us, but millions of people were lifted from extreme poverty over the last 10 years. Those people would probably support the system since the benefit they see is larger than what we see. Maybe it’s younger millennial talk, but most of my peers have given up on everyone else except their direct contacts.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system We just haven't applied one. And we've dismantled (or witness the dismantling) of dozens of better attributes the current one used to have (from unions to Glass–Steagall). There's nothing special that needs some novel invention.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Oh okay I see.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    >we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system If we did, the levers in every country that runs on capitalism would feel threatened and undermine it. See plenty of socialist/communist regimes as examples. This is not to say that those are better systems, but they are demonstration by precedent of what the reaction to their presence will be.
- Aunche 3y ago
  No. There is absolutely no evidence that switching economic systems will magically solve global warming. Out of all economic systems capable of industrialization, capitalist mix economies are the only ones that expressed any interest in caring about the environment at all. Communist China was willing to destroy forests to make charcoal to make little bits of low-quality steel and decimate its bird population because they were eating a little bit of grain. The Soviet Union nearly drained the entire Aral Sea to grow cotton. The fact that Communism didn't pollute more was only because they were very bad at industrializing. And before you motte and bailey your way into saying you're not promoting communism, any proposed economic system is going to have the same problem. Even if you distribute Jeff Bezos wealth in a way that he has to give up his megayacht, then you're going to give 10,000 people a means to buy F-150 Raptors.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists. I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist.
    - Aunche 3y ago
      > What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists. "Capitalist" has a definition that does not mean "something I don't like." Capitalism specifically refers to where trade is controlled by private owners for profit. This does not match either the Soviet Union or Communist China at all, where profits were distributed to the state, which was nominally for the benefit of the people. > I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist. But you aren't, are you? I don't expect people to completely detatch themselves from society, but you at least need to commit yourself to that lifestyle of a certain extent if you want me to consider you a real anarcho-primitivist as opposed to simply a contrarian. At the very least, you should be able to survive with minimal support for a year before you make the conclusion that this is the way you want all of humanity to live forever.
- Zpalmtree 3y ago
  the world is not ending.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Just a shorthand for the world becoming miserable. The world as we know it ending.
bestouff 3y ago
It is manipulation. Different countries have different values systems and people in there don't need huge cars and huge houses to feel like they are better persons.
- 7373737373 3y ago
  Where do you draw the line between manipulation and culture? Or do you think some cultures are self-manipulating?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    If it happens through an educational system tailored and expanded to produce obidient factory and then office workers, with trillions in advertising spending (around 600 billion just in the US) to get people buying, plus all kinds of experts in customer manipulation, dark patterns, number chunching, and so on, working to get people to buy more stuff, plus an orchestrated early 20th century campaign to create the modern consumer and be done with thriftiness, debt-aversion and self-sufficiency as common prior ideals, plus planned obselence, plus a political system designed to support two party monopoly, allow campaign contributions and lobbying from corporations with big pockets, and discourage active citizen participation aside from voting once every several years (hell, iirc in the US people don't even get a mandatory free day from work to vote)... then it's manipulation...
    - monktastic1 3y ago
      Right, but it's a self-perpetuating process. It's not happening just top-down, but cyclically. The people "at the top" are also caught in the same system. Jeff Bezos isn't just trying to sell you stuff; he really believes that having more stuff is better. That's what the parent meant by "self-manipulating."
      - coldtea 3y ago
        If he believes it and it benefits him, giving him money and power, then he's not "manipulated".
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> What we need to do is have a society-wide mentality that endless growth is bad With the realization that the first culprit is being 8 billions on earth. I'd love a society where, say, 50 million humans would all live in abundance and luxury. But apparently the goal seems to be to pack tens of billions of people living in high-rises "because efficiency". As if having ever more humans on earth was somehow something to aim for.
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  No doubt you get to be one of the lucky 50 million, right? Keeping in mind that, if you are indeed a "coder" of some sort as your name implies, you likely are one of the relatively few people currently causing global warming, while greatly benefiting from past emissions (i.e., you live in an industrialized, developed nation, or otherwise to "first world" standards)?
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    What would be worse, being one of the Chosen and knowing all your friends and family are going to die, or being unChosen and knowing you and all your friends and family are going to die?
- pocketarc 3y ago
  > I'd love a society where, say, 50 million humans would all live in abundance and luxury. That would be a society where you tell people "you're not allowed to have kids", and you enforce it through law. Do you think it's reasonable to forbid people from having kids if they want to? Think through your suggestion: You have 50 million very happy people living in abundance and luxury. They are not struggling to make ends meet, and can very easily afford to have kids. So they do. They have a bunch of kids because there's so much abundance and no reason not to. Give it several generations and you're back to billions of people. > But apparently the goal seems to be to pack tens of billions of people living in high-rises "because efficiency". The goal is to support the needs of the population. If people have kids and kids aren't dying because of modern medicine, the population explodes; there is no "because efficiency" conspiracy. We do have a lot of work to do in terms of resource management, but stopping humans from having kids is a sure-fire way to end up with mass revolt.

avgcorrection 3y ago

this is why the world is ending...[1] because people like you have swallowed the propaganda line that it's about “mentality” and not the economic system itself. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-people-are-blamed-for-climate-change https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-pe... [1] No, not really. Powerful people are the ones to blame.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
I do think one of the major components is the economic system, I never said it wasn't. I believe a reform of the economic system will still be better than nothing, never said it wouldn't. I would like nothing more for the mechanisms to be eliminated that have made the powerful people, because they are certainly drivers in this disaster. I still believe in doing everything possible to mitigate it and changing everything we can...but let's not kid ourselves, our general mentality that makes us think short-term has also given us those powerful people...it's not like "little people" aren't to blame either. The sooner everyone acknowledges their responsibility, the better. Of course, I still think we will suffer due to what we have done but I believe in doing everyhing we can to change it. Of course, you were snarky because I was snarky at your other comment first. Tit for tat.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Blaming “powerful people” is just a shorthand for the system itself. One can do what anyone who is serious about things like politics does: research power. Who has it, how is it wielded. Who influences the discourses? Or who dictates it? Who plans societies? Who decides that America shall be dominated by four-line highways? That it shall have terrible mass transportation? That the megalopolis from Philadelphia to Boston shall have a terrible and slow railway? That its urban/suburban planning shall be such that people will have to commute to work by way of cars? Why are consumer products produced and imported from across the Pacific Ocean (in the case of the US)? One could research who planned the consumer capitalist economy. Who invented modern marketing. Why the economy needs “consumers”. ... one could research whether the “little people” actually have power. The Princeton study that concluded that 90% of the population have no influence on policy (no correlation between policy preference and actual policy) would say no. Alternatively one could stuff all that. Say that it's about an all-encompassing "mentality". That we're all equally to blame. That it's about Game Theory. I think your mentality is exactly what the system needs to perpetuate itself. You should feel good about that. -- Really I should know better than to vent my frustration by simply saying that I think about the world ending every day... How selfish of me.
kredd 3y ago
Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system. Sure it might be sucky for us, but millions of people were lifted from extreme poverty over the last 10 years. Those people would probably support the system since the benefit they see is larger than what we see. Maybe it’s younger millennial talk, but most of my peers have given up on everyone else except their direct contacts.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Other side of the problem is, we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system We just haven't applied one. And we've dismantled (or witness the dismantling) of dozens of better attributes the current one used to have (from unions to Glass–Steagall). There's nothing special that needs some novel invention.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Oh okay I see.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  >we just haven’t been able to come up with a better economic system If we did, the levers in every country that runs on capitalism would feel threatened and undermine it. See plenty of socialist/communist regimes as examples. This is not to say that those are better systems, but they are demonstration by precedent of what the reaction to their presence will be.
Aunche 3y ago
No. There is absolutely no evidence that switching economic systems will magically solve global warming. Out of all economic systems capable of industrialization, capitalist mix economies are the only ones that expressed any interest in caring about the environment at all. Communist China was willing to destroy forests to make charcoal to make little bits of low-quality steel and decimate its bird population because they were eating a little bit of grain. The Soviet Union nearly drained the entire Aral Sea to grow cotton. The fact that Communism didn't pollute more was only because they were very bad at industrializing. And before you motte and bailey your way into saying you're not promoting communism, any proposed economic system is going to have the same problem. Even if you distribute Jeff Bezos wealth in a way that he has to give up his megayacht, then you're going to give 10,000 people a means to buy F-150 Raptors.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists. I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    > What are you on about? Both of the Communist superpowers are/were state capitalists. "Capitalist" has a definition that does not mean "something I don't like." Capitalism specifically refers to where trade is controlled by private owners for profit. This does not match either the Soviet Union or Communist China at all, where profits were distributed to the state, which was nominally for the benefit of the people. > I don't know what the fuck LessWrong lingo “motte and bailey” really means but it's not like I have stated my pro-ideology. For all you know I could be an anarcho-primitivist. But you aren't, are you? I don't expect people to completely detatch themselves from society, but you at least need to commit yourself to that lifestyle of a certain extent if you want me to consider you a real anarcho-primitivist as opposed to simply a contrarian. At the very least, you should be able to survive with minimal support for a year before you make the conclusion that this is the way you want all of humanity to live forever.
Zpalmtree 3y ago
the world is not ending.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Just a shorthand for the world becoming miserable. The world as we know it ending.

bestouff 3y ago

It is manipulation. Different countries have different values systems and people in there don't need huge cars and huge houses to feel like they are better persons.

7373737373 3y ago
Where do you draw the line between manipulation and culture? Or do you think some cultures are self-manipulating?
- coldtea 3y ago
  If it happens through an educational system tailored and expanded to produce obidient factory and then office workers, with trillions in advertising spending (around 600 billion just in the US) to get people buying, plus all kinds of experts in customer manipulation, dark patterns, number chunching, and so on, working to get people to buy more stuff, plus an orchestrated early 20th century campaign to create the modern consumer and be done with thriftiness, debt-aversion and self-sufficiency as common prior ideals, plus planned obselence, plus a political system designed to support two party monopoly, allow campaign contributions and lobbying from corporations with big pockets, and discourage active citizen participation aside from voting once every several years (hell, iirc in the US people don't even get a mandatory free day from work to vote)... then it's manipulation...
  - monktastic1 3y ago
    Right, but it's a self-perpetuating process. It's not happening just top-down, but cyclically. The people "at the top" are also caught in the same system. Jeff Bezos isn't just trying to sell you stuff; he really believes that having more stuff is better. That's what the parent meant by "self-manipulating."
    - coldtea 3y ago
      If he believes it and it benefits him, giving him money and power, then he's not "manipulated".

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> What we need to do is have a society-wide mentality that endless growth is bad With the realization that the first culprit is being 8 billions on earth. I'd love a society where, say, 50 million humans would all live in abundance and luxury. But apparently the goal seems to be to pack tens of billions of people living in high-rises "because efficiency". As if having ever more humans on earth was somehow something to aim for.

cool_dude85 3y ago
No doubt you get to be one of the lucky 50 million, right? Keeping in mind that, if you are indeed a "coder" of some sort as your name implies, you likely are one of the relatively few people currently causing global warming, while greatly benefiting from past emissions (i.e., you live in an industrialized, developed nation, or otherwise to "first world" standards)?
- ianburrell 3y ago
  What would be worse, being one of the Chosen and knowing all your friends and family are going to die, or being unChosen and knowing you and all your friends and family are going to die?
pocketarc 3y ago
> I'd love a society where, say, 50 million humans would all live in abundance and luxury. That would be a society where you tell people "you're not allowed to have kids", and you enforce it through law. Do you think it's reasonable to forbid people from having kids if they want to? Think through your suggestion: You have 50 million very happy people living in abundance and luxury. They are not struggling to make ends meet, and can very easily afford to have kids. So they do. They have a bunch of kids because there's so much abundance and no reason not to. Give it several generations and you're back to billions of people. > But apparently the goal seems to be to pack tens of billions of people living in high-rises "because efficiency". The goal is to support the needs of the population. If people have kids and kids aren't dying because of modern medicine, the population explodes; there is no "because efficiency" conspiracy. We do have a lot of work to do in terms of resource management, but stopping humans from having kids is a sure-fire way to end up with mass revolt.