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> Many advancements have come from people aiming for personal prestige, wealth, or a host of lesser goals Those are all personal utopias of the people involved

> Many advancements have come from people aiming for personal prestige, wealth, or a host of lesser goals Those are all personal utopias of the people involved. Beyond that, many advancements have come from people aiming for explicitly societal utopias. > Many people who worked to repeal prohibition still thought the world would be better without alcohol, you can read people who actually argued this, they just didn’t know how to make it work. By giving up on perfection they achieved a beneficial change. Perhaps, perhaps not. Many people believed the utopia of a repealed prohibition was unachievable. It was only by ignoring these "utopia shunners" that we achieved that aspect of the utopia we set out to achieve, with prohibition repealed. Again, society is truly complex. It's only by aiming for the better that we get better. Just take, for example, your inability to cite an example of how criticizing another country has led to you improving yours. That just proves my point: it likely hasn't, because it usually doesn't. Indeed, we've completely abandoned that claim, and are now reduced to a claim about utopian vs subutopian goals, entirely omitting anything about other countries. By doing so, we're now discussing how to improve ours. QED.

Retric 3y ago
> Those are all personal utopias of the people involved. That’s not what that word means. It’s not any improvement but actual perfection. Thus, eating rice may not qualify as an ideal meal but it’s much better than starvation.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > That’s not what that word means. Ah, but it is, regardless of your personal word gatekeeping! > It’s not any improvement but actual perfection. I'm not confident they preferred just "any improvement" over the ideal state, but rather they set out for the ideal, and what they achieved was just how far they got towards that ideal. They would have preferred the ideal, if it was possible, obviously. What's another word for ideal end state? Utopia. In any case, your inability to cite an example of how _you_ criticizing another country has led to _you_ improving _yours_, seems to prove my point: it likely hasn't, because it usually doesn't. You hit the nail on the head: We The People don't run things in another country, we run them in ours, which is why criticizing other countries isn't very useful for improving ours. Indeed, we've completely abandoned that claim, and are now reduced to a claim about utopian vs subutopian goals, entirely omitting anything about other countries. By doing so, we're now discussing how to improve ours. QED.
  - Retric 3y ago
    > gatekeeping “utopia, an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/utopia https://www.britannica.com/topic/utopia Suggesting any improvement is aiming for utopia is simply false. Sentencing someone to life imprisonment absolutely guarantees that you aren’t going to live in a utopia while they are alive. Therefore it isn’t aiming for utopia but an imperfect compromise. There’s no gatekeeping involved simply the actual meaning of the word. As to your suggestion I am backtracking, I am an individual not a country. I can point to cases where my critique of other people improved myself but suggesting I changed the US is kind of silly. Abstractly, I could say my voting habits have been impacted by analyzing failures of other countries. However, having never actually changed any election outcomes such a statement is in effect meaningless. On a tiny scale I there thousands of minor actions which I think are a net positive but I don’t know. Witnessing the repeated failures associated with exporting plastic recycling, I realized it’s better for the environment to throw plastic into the trash bin than attempting to recycle it. But, while it’s true that’s a net positive for the US and the world it isn’t a meaningful difference.

Retric 3y ago

> Those are all personal utopias of the people involved. That’s not what that word means. It’s not any improvement but actual perfection. Thus, eating rice may not qualify as an ideal meal but it’s much better than starvation.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> That’s not what that word means. Ah, but it is, regardless of your personal word gatekeeping! > It’s not any improvement but actual perfection. I'm not confident they preferred just "any improvement" over the ideal state, but rather they set out for the ideal, and what they achieved was just how far they got towards that ideal. They would have preferred the ideal, if it was possible, obviously. What's another word for ideal end state? Utopia. In any case, your inability to cite an example of how _you_ criticizing another country has led to _you_ improving _yours_, seems to prove my point: it likely hasn't, because it usually doesn't. You hit the nail on the head: We The People don't run things in another country, we run them in ours, which is why criticizing other countries isn't very useful for improving ours. Indeed, we've completely abandoned that claim, and are now reduced to a claim about utopian vs subutopian goals, entirely omitting anything about other countries. By doing so, we're now discussing how to improve ours. QED.
- Retric 3y ago
  > gatekeeping “utopia, an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/utopia https://www.britannica.com/topic/utopia Suggesting any improvement is aiming for utopia is simply false. Sentencing someone to life imprisonment absolutely guarantees that you aren’t going to live in a utopia while they are alive. Therefore it isn’t aiming for utopia but an imperfect compromise. There’s no gatekeeping involved simply the actual meaning of the word. As to your suggestion I am backtracking, I am an individual not a country. I can point to cases where my critique of other people improved myself but suggesting I changed the US is kind of silly. Abstractly, I could say my voting habits have been impacted by analyzing failures of other countries. However, having never actually changed any election outcomes such a statement is in effect meaningless. On a tiny scale I there thousands of minor actions which I think are a net positive but I don’t know. Witnessing the repeated failures associated with exporting plastic recycling, I realized it’s better for the environment to throw plastic into the trash bin than attempting to recycle it. But, while it’s true that’s a net positive for the US and the world it isn’t a meaningful difference.