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This is an apolitical comment! If you reply please avoid the political aspects! I’ve been thinking of the MAGA movement using this framework (though I hadn’t s

by gumby 3y ago

This is an apolitical comment! If you reply please avoid the political aspects! I’ve been thinking of the MAGA movement using this framework (though I hadn’t seen this great little essay before). A lot of its adherents are older people who have retired and have a lot of free time. Many of them grew up in an age of going to concerts and other mass events, (though I don’t think Woodstock actually changed the world). Many of the events can be “joined” in a slightly less passive way than merely watching TV, but are similar in that a set of professionals produce it and then you basically attend or watch. Also it is participatory, and is not just older people, so people can jump in and use the same sense of spectacle to be seen as well. Q is a good example, but there are many. Another is the anti vaxer movement which arose at a time when people were not financially desperate but had a lot of free time. Regardless of what you think of these phenomena, one cannot deny that they have “changed the world in the interim”. I used to be an unalloyed fan (and was trying to work towards) of a future of universal unemployment: a utopian future where robots do all the work, the marginal cost of manufacturing is nil, and humans just do what they like: write bad poetry, hang out, etc. I never anticipated that such a Star Trek world free of wants would still have political movements.

thechao 3y ago
I've been slowly weening myself off of ... internet (damn you, HN!); but I saw a phrase on my wife's FB feed: don't compare your 99% to everyone else's 1%. I think this summarizes my feeling towards social media, entirely. I think it helps to explain why a lot of people can be simultaneously very well off (compared to, say, the USA in 1990), yet completely dissatisfied with their lives.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > don't compare your 99% to everyone else's 1% Also, don't think that the 1% of your "friends" are the 99%. I remember seeing a post a while ago that pointed out that, mathematically, the average person on Facebook has far fewer friends than their friends have. While that seems paradoxical (maybe even impossible), the reason for this is that, if you think of "number of friends" as a bell curve, people with tons of friends on the right side of the curve, by definition, show up as friends of many more people than folks further to the left of the curve. If you're one of these "other people", you might think "Gosh, my have friends on average have many more friends than I have, I must be a loser", when in reality you could be just in the middle of the bell curve (or even substantially to the right of the bell curve) in terms of number of friends. That is, the average person (or, again, even significantly above average) is basically comparing themselves to all of these "superconnectors". Of course, that happens in lots of other places in social media (the only videos on TikTok etc. that get up voted are the guy that speaks 32 languages or the mogul skier that can do a triple back flip...), I really like the "on average you have fewer friends than your friends" example because it is a simple yet very unintuitive consequence of graph math.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> A lot of its adherents are older people who have retired and have a lot of free time. Pre-MAGA you saw these effects everywhere, and they were often satirized. Just look at the dynamics of the "Boca Vista" retirement village from Seinfeld where Jerry's parents live. Many episodes were built around the completely inane battles they would have (e.g. the condo association election) with the subtext being that they all had enough time to spend on these pointless minutiae. Heck, I'll shine the spotlight on myself - I think I'd be pretty embarrassed if I calculated how much time I spent writing HN comments... This is one reason I'm extremely skeptical of the "Basic Income people" who think that if we all had the security of basic income then we'd be happy sitting around writing poetry and taking pottery classes. To be clear, there are plenty of other reasons basic income may or may not be a good idea, but if you look through the course of history, giving lots of people loads of free time without any guiding principles or direction has tended not to end well.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  I kinda just want basic income so that I won't feel guilty about never donating to charity. Everything else is centralized and specialized, charity could be too.
  - waveBidder 3y ago
    much like there's always room for startups, there will always be room for exploring new giving opportunities. Ubi is no substitute for Givewell.
  - robocat 3y ago
    With basic income, presumably more people will want to run charities. Next you end up with everybody competing for how much charity they give - this happens already. Go to a charity store and look at who works there and why. You'd be guilt/tripped and pressured by your well meaning peers. And the only upper limit on how much charity we can give is the number of hours we have free. This spirals out of control in some groups (e.g. some religious charitable organisations or orders)
082349872349872 3y ago
It didn't take long (less than a century post-Constantine?) for the christians to decide social surplus led to sin: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_workshop#:~:text=Proverbs%2016:27%20may,its%20popularity https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_... > Proverbs 16:27 may have inspired St. Jerome to write in the late 4th century: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum, or “engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.” This was later repeated by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, which was probably the source of its popularity. that said, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 I'd like to think we could make the economy wither* away, but maybe a prereq is that we have to figure out how to educate (in the savoir-vivre sense) everyone first? * compare the last line of https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-pow-camp https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-... : > On 12th April, with the arrival of elements of the 30th U.S. Infantry Division, the ushering in of an age of plenty demonstrated the hypothesis that with infinite means economic organisation and activity would be redundant, as every want could be satisfied without effort. (I'm trying to keep this non-political, but one troubling aspect of "every want" seems to be that some primates are not happy unless they are certain other primates are unhappy; cf the roots of 1984 on the playing fields of St Cyprian's, as revealed in Such, Such Were the Joys) Edit: occupying people harmlessly is also a major theme of Brave New World, although to be frank this supposed dystopia fails to be dystopic to me, as tortured creative souls always have the option to go to the islands...
nine_k 3y ago
Look at house cats: they are mostly rid of any wants of wild cats. When they are not asleep, they either cuddle or engage in mildly destructive playful activities. Humans are more inventive than cats, and way more hierarchical; I expect their games in a society devoid of wants to be much more elaborate, intense, and dangerous. A world without wants has been tried in mice several times, with disturbing results [1]. Human brain is a device for overcoming limitations. It gives a distinct advantage in an environment where there are many limitations worth overcoming. In a world order without wants, some of this energy will be spent on undermining that same order, as a way to entertain oneself, and as a part of the never-ending quest to try new things. In Star Trek, we don't see much of the utopian society back on Earth; we see people who face a ton of problems, including a real risk of death. Humanity needs wants, needs problems to solve, and will seek them, ideally by expanding its habitat and having a frontier, but it also is good at finding and fighting imaginary problems, like a house cat playing with toy or imaginary mice, be it computer games or conspiracy theories. [1]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopi...
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  But it wasn't a world without wants. It was a world without the simplest and most basic physical needs; that's not the same thing at all. "As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. "
dfxm12 3y ago
Shirky argues that since the 1940s, people are learning how to use free time more constructively for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration. MAGA is not a collaborative or creative endeavor. It is very much run from the top, with one singular figurehead & is subject to his whims. It is all designed around the idea of consumption, be it tweets, cable news, hats made in China, etc.
- gumby 3y ago
  Well, yes and no per Shirky's own essay. I did make your point in my comment: `Many of the events can be “joined” in a slightly less passive way than merely watching TV, but are similar in that a set of professionals produce it and then you basically attend or watch.' This is in line with Shirky's description of watching TV, and the baby boomers (of which he is apparently one) grew up steeped in that culture. However I do think there's more to it, and mentioned that other groups have sprung up to ride on its coattails, which can form a positive feedback loop if they get any traction. I don't know if I'd strain his metaphor or example and call them competing shows or what. They are of course further examples of these professionally and centrally managed entertainment events. What I think is more important is the "fanfic" culture, which has long been heralded by the "new forms of collaboration" advocates of the 90s and 00s as the predecessor culture of participation and collaboration and which itself has become huge with cosplay, Twilight fanfic morphing into 50 Shades of grey, etc. In the MAGA universe, Q is a perfect example of that, as are the people who plaster their homes with signs, make memes and artwork, and other, often deeper, engagement. And looping all this back to the comment to which I was replying: harry potter or Marvel fandom may have some significant revenue impact, but hardly really changes the world, while the MAGA case fits the requested "changing the world in the interim".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
pstuart 3y ago
People want meaning in their lives. They want to have something to believe in. Even better, someone to look up to. Someone that will lead them. In honor of your request (which I agree with), I'll leave it at that.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  It makes sense that people who want priests also want kings. If I were living in the first century, I'd probably try directing them to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King As someone living in the twenty-first century, it'd be tempting to suggest they grow a pair and respond to their insignificance in a vast and uncaring universe by imposing their own meaning on their own lives, but it doesn't take much reflection to realise that, as natural followers are unlikely to read even Kierkegaard, the message would likely be much better received by sticking to tradition and its frogs.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    Considering the venue and the rules around same I'll try to be as indirect but on point as possible. Free speech is a cherished right, but like other great power, comes with great responsibility. It has been abused over several decades to brainwash a significant portion of the population that their desire for a king is normal and right. I don't have a solution to this problem but it vexes me that any conversation about the topic today is impossible because "absolutists" refuse to acknowledge that any problem exists with their ideology.
bee_rider 3y ago
I wonder how that will change over time. I’m pretty sure my generation would default to burning cognitive excess on video games. It isn’t the most damaging hobby!
- gumby 3y ago
  People used to fret over the crisis of youth reading novels.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Just to be clear I’m not fretting in the least; I think it’ll be great. Retirees have time to grind for raid gear, haha.
munificent 3y ago
If you wanted to build a bomb to blow up a society, the explosive and containment vessel you need are: 1. People with a lot of free time on their hands. 2. Those same people not feeling they have accessible ways to spend their energy on something meaningful, rewarding, and socially esteemed. If people are prevented from feeling actualized and valued, and they have the time to dwell on it, they will burn down the walls for even a tiny shred of chance that the resulting cinders will leave room for a future society that gives them a better chance. I think Gamergate, 4chan, MAGA, Christian millennialist, doomsday preppers, all of that, has this as the fundamental throughline. We have a whole lot of younger and older men in the US who feel like society has taken away their means of generating esteem, and all they've been given in return is distracting videogames. Now, whether or not they are correct in their belief is a separate question. But many do believe that, and that belief fuels a lot of the unrest we see in the US. I can't tell you how many Trump supporters I've talked to over the years that voted for him specifically because is a bull in a China shop. They knew he was chaos walking, and they wanted him to tear down institutions. They didn't think he'd be a good President. They wanted a bad President to break the system. Again, whether they would actually be happier in a world where our cultural institutions have been shattered is a separate question. But they believe it, which reflects something about how little they think our current institutions value them.
- gumby 3y ago
  Please avoid being political like that in this thread as it could derail the discussion. It might be worthwhile to look at ways that some people fit your two criteria might head to contributing (e.g. writing Wikipedia pages or answering questions on the web site of the local national park) rather than tearing down. 4chan is a good example of user creation though! Didn't think of that.
  - munificent 3y ago
    > Please avoid being political like that I don't think you can talk about group behavior without being political. Whether discuss politics is partisan is sort of a different point, which I accept. > It might be worthwhile to look at ways that some people fit your two criteria might head to contributing (e.g. writing Wikipedia pages or answering questions on the web site of the local national park) rather than tearing down. I think by definition, that doesn't fit my two criteria. If someone feels they have meaningful ways to contribute to collective enterprises like Wikipedia or their local national park, then they aren't falling prey to my second point. It's when people have energy but no perceived outlet that trouble brews. I think the positive way to spin my observation is to say, "OK, there are people that are falling into this trap. How can we help them avoid that?" How can we give people productive avenues to reach meaning and social esteem? But it's very hard to do that because it is often perceived as reducing their agency when you try to help them.

by gumby 3y ago

thechao 3y ago

I've been slowly weening myself off of ... internet (damn you, HN!); but I saw a phrase on my wife's FB feed: don't compare your 99% to everyone else's 1%. I think this summarizes my feeling towards social media, entirely. I think it helps to explain why a lot of people can be simultaneously very well off (compared to, say, the USA in 1990), yet completely dissatisfied with their lives.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> don't compare your 99% to everyone else's 1% Also, don't think that the 1% of your "friends" are the 99%. I remember seeing a post a while ago that pointed out that, mathematically, the average person on Facebook has far fewer friends than their friends have. While that seems paradoxical (maybe even impossible), the reason for this is that, if you think of "number of friends" as a bell curve, people with tons of friends on the right side of the curve, by definition, show up as friends of many more people than folks further to the left of the curve. If you're one of these "other people", you might think "Gosh, my have friends on average have many more friends than I have, I must be a loser", when in reality you could be just in the middle of the bell curve (or even substantially to the right of the bell curve) in terms of number of friends. That is, the average person (or, again, even significantly above average) is basically comparing themselves to all of these "superconnectors". Of course, that happens in lots of other places in social media (the only videos on TikTok etc. that get up voted are the guy that speaks 32 languages or the mogul skier that can do a triple back flip...), I really like the "on average you have fewer friends than your friends" example because it is a simple yet very unintuitive consequence of graph math.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> A lot of its adherents are older people who have retired and have a lot of free time. Pre-MAGA you saw these effects everywhere, and they were often satirized. Just look at the dynamics of the "Boca Vista" retirement village from Seinfeld where Jerry's parents live. Many episodes were built around the completely inane battles they would have (e.g. the condo association election) with the subtext being that they all had enough time to spend on these pointless minutiae. Heck, I'll shine the spotlight on myself - I think I'd be pretty embarrassed if I calculated how much time I spent writing HN comments... This is one reason I'm extremely skeptical of the "Basic Income people" who think that if we all had the security of basic income then we'd be happy sitting around writing poetry and taking pottery classes. To be clear, there are plenty of other reasons basic income may or may not be a good idea, but if you look through the course of history, giving lots of people loads of free time without any guiding principles or direction has tended not to end well.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
I kinda just want basic income so that I won't feel guilty about never donating to charity. Everything else is centralized and specialized, charity could be too.
- waveBidder 3y ago
  much like there's always room for startups, there will always be room for exploring new giving opportunities. Ubi is no substitute for Givewell.
- robocat 3y ago
  With basic income, presumably more people will want to run charities. Next you end up with everybody competing for how much charity they give - this happens already. Go to a charity store and look at who works there and why. You'd be guilt/tripped and pressured by your well meaning peers. And the only upper limit on how much charity we can give is the number of hours we have free. This spirals out of control in some groups (e.g. some religious charitable organisations or orders)

082349872349872 3y ago

It didn't take long (less than a century post-Constantine?) for the christians to decide social surplus led to sin: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_workshop#:~:text=Proverbs%2016:27%20may,its%20popularity https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_... > Proverbs 16:27 may have inspired St. Jerome to write in the late 4th century: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum, or “engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.” This was later repeated by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, which was probably the source of its popularity. that said, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160811 I'd like to think we could make the economy wither* away, but maybe a prereq is that we have to figure out how to educate (in the savoir-vivre sense) everyone first? * compare the last line of https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-pow-camp https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-economic-organization-of-a-... : > On 12th April, with the arrival of elements of the 30th U.S. Infantry Division, the ushering in of an age of plenty demonstrated the hypothesis that with infinite means economic organisation and activity would be redundant, as every want could be satisfied without effort. (I'm trying to keep this non-political, but one troubling aspect of "every want" seems to be that some primates are not happy unless they are certain other primates are unhappy; cf the roots of 1984 on the playing fields of St Cyprian's, as revealed in Such, Such Were the Joys) Edit: occupying people harmlessly is also a major theme of Brave New World, although to be frank this supposed dystopia fails to be dystopic to me, as tortured creative souls always have the option to go to the islands...

nine_k 3y ago

Look at house cats: they are mostly rid of any wants of wild cats. When they are not asleep, they either cuddle or engage in mildly destructive playful activities. Humans are more inventive than cats, and way more hierarchical; I expect their games in a society devoid of wants to be much more elaborate, intense, and dangerous. A world without wants has been tried in mice several times, with disturbing results [1]. Human brain is a device for overcoming limitations. It gives a distinct advantage in an environment where there are many limitations worth overcoming. In a world order without wants, some of this energy will be spent on undermining that same order, as a way to entertain oneself, and as a part of the never-ending quest to try new things. In Star Trek, we don't see much of the utopian society back on Earth; we see people who face a ton of problems, including a real risk of death. Humanity needs wants, needs problems to solve, and will seek them, ideally by expanding its habitat and having a frontier, but it also is good at finding and fighting imaginary problems, like a house cat playing with toy or imaginary mice, be it computer games or conspiracy theories. [1]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopi...

kwhitefoot 3y ago
But it wasn't a world without wants. It was a world without the simplest and most basic physical needs; that's not the same thing at all. "As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. "

dfxm12 3y ago

Shirky argues that since the 1940s, people are learning how to use free time more constructively for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration. MAGA is not a collaborative or creative endeavor. It is very much run from the top, with one singular figurehead & is subject to his whims. It is all designed around the idea of consumption, be it tweets, cable news, hats made in China, etc.

gumby 3y ago
Well, yes and no per Shirky's own essay. I did make your point in my comment: `Many of the events can be “joined” in a slightly less passive way than merely watching TV, but are similar in that a set of professionals produce it and then you basically attend or watch.' This is in line with Shirky's description of watching TV, and the baby boomers (of which he is apparently one) grew up steeped in that culture. However I do think there's more to it, and mentioned that other groups have sprung up to ride on its coattails, which can form a positive feedback loop if they get any traction. I don't know if I'd strain his metaphor or example and call them competing shows or what. They are of course further examples of these professionally and centrally managed entertainment events. What I think is more important is the "fanfic" culture, which has long been heralded by the "new forms of collaboration" advocates of the 90s and 00s as the predecessor culture of participation and collaboration and which itself has become huge with cosplay, Twilight fanfic morphing into 50 Shades of grey, etc. In the MAGA universe, Q is a perfect example of that, as are the people who plaster their homes with signs, make memes and artwork, and other, often deeper, engagement. And looping all this back to the comment to which I was replying: harry potter or Marvel fandom may have some significant revenue impact, but hardly really changes the world, while the MAGA case fits the requested "changing the world in the interim".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

pstuart 3y ago

People want meaning in their lives. They want to have something to believe in. Even better, someone to look up to. Someone that will lead them. In honor of your request (which I agree with), I'll leave it at that.

082349872349872 3y ago
It makes sense that people who want priests also want kings. If I were living in the first century, I'd probably try directing them to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King As someone living in the twenty-first century, it'd be tempting to suggest they grow a pair and respond to their insignificance in a vast and uncaring universe by imposing their own meaning on their own lives, but it doesn't take much reflection to realise that, as natural followers are unlikely to read even Kierkegaard, the message would likely be much better received by sticking to tradition and its frogs.
- pstuart 3y ago
  Considering the venue and the rules around same I'll try to be as indirect but on point as possible. Free speech is a cherished right, but like other great power, comes with great responsibility. It has been abused over several decades to brainwash a significant portion of the population that their desire for a king is normal and right. I don't have a solution to this problem but it vexes me that any conversation about the topic today is impossible because "absolutists" refuse to acknowledge that any problem exists with their ideology.

bee_rider 3y ago

I wonder how that will change over time. I’m pretty sure my generation would default to burning cognitive excess on video games. It isn’t the most damaging hobby!

gumby 3y ago
People used to fret over the crisis of youth reading novels.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Just to be clear I’m not fretting in the least; I think it’ll be great. Retirees have time to grind for raid gear, haha.

munificent 3y ago

If you wanted to build a bomb to blow up a society, the explosive and containment vessel you need are: 1. People with a lot of free time on their hands. 2. Those same people not feeling they have accessible ways to spend their energy on something meaningful, rewarding, and socially esteemed. If people are prevented from feeling actualized and valued, and they have the time to dwell on it, they will burn down the walls for even a tiny shred of chance that the resulting cinders will leave room for a future society that gives them a better chance. I think Gamergate, 4chan, MAGA, Christian millennialist, doomsday preppers, all of that, has this as the fundamental throughline. We have a whole lot of younger and older men in the US who feel like society has taken away their means of generating esteem, and all they've been given in return is distracting videogames. Now, whether or not they are correct in their belief is a separate question. But many do believe that, and that belief fuels a lot of the unrest we see in the US. I can't tell you how many Trump supporters I've talked to over the years that voted for him specifically because is a bull in a China shop. They knew he was chaos walking, and they wanted him to tear down institutions. They didn't think he'd be a good President. They wanted a bad President to break the system. Again, whether they would actually be happier in a world where our cultural institutions have been shattered is a separate question. But they believe it, which reflects something about how little they think our current institutions value them.

gumby 3y ago
Please avoid being political like that in this thread as it could derail the discussion. It might be worthwhile to look at ways that some people fit your two criteria might head to contributing (e.g. writing Wikipedia pages or answering questions on the web site of the local national park) rather than tearing down. 4chan is a good example of user creation though! Didn't think of that.
- munificent 3y ago
  > Please avoid being political like that I don't think you can talk about group behavior without being political. Whether discuss politics is partisan is sort of a different point, which I accept. > It might be worthwhile to look at ways that some people fit your two criteria might head to contributing (e.g. writing Wikipedia pages or answering questions on the web site of the local national park) rather than tearing down. I think by definition, that doesn't fit my two criteria. If someone feels they have meaningful ways to contribute to collective enterprises like Wikipedia or their local national park, then they aren't falling prey to my second point. It's when people have energy but no perceived outlet that trouble brews. I think the positive way to spin my observation is to say, "OK, there are people that are falling into this trap. How can we help them avoid that?" How can we give people productive avenues to reach meaning and social esteem? But it's very hard to do that because it is often perceived as reducing their agency when you try to help them.