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It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in ord

It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust. I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.

ants_everywhere 3y ago
I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.
- apantel 3y ago
  Yes, curiosity and the desire to create and explore. Those are probably my main drivers though I certainly can feel and acknowledge that greed and lust are key drivers. I wasn’t saying greed is the only driver. Edit: I’d also add, I think it’s a false romanticism to think that people like Einstein and other great thinkers and creators were not without the lower drives like greed and lust. If you think about all of the stages of their lives, and all of the actions and endeavors that led to them advancing their fields, greed and lust would have been interleaved as drivers of many of those actions. Maybe one year Einstein just had a bigger fire lit under his feet because he was trying to impress a girl. Or he worked harder one year because he needed the money. Then you have people like Edison who were certainly motivated by greed and the lust for power. You have the industrialists like Carnegie who built the railroads. Then you have all of the workers across generations who did all of the work… how much of that work was driven by the “selfish and intense” desire for money?
  - ants_everywhere 3y ago
    Right, I agree. I'm not saying people like Einstein don't have greed or lust. What I did say is that empirically the people motivated by curiosity often have lower than average greed levels, which I think makes them uncharacteristic of the population in general. With respect to lust, I didn't mention it because it was orthogonal, but my understanding is that they're about evenly divided into groups with higher than average lust and lower than average. Paul Erdos is a famous name rumored to be in the latter category.
- marshray 3y ago
  > Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. I think the part you're missing is all the brilliant ideas from brilliant people we missed out on over that 2,000+ year from people we never heard of due to science and art being funded only haphazardly by random wealthy patrons. For almost all of history it was simply not an option to make a living simply by writing or researching. That's still the case in much of the world. But once we started to systematize it properly, and governments recognized that technology was a strategic necessity, bam, within a century or two we went from playing with primitive batteries, to nuclear fission, the internet, and now AI. Somebody was paying for Stallman to sit in an MIT lab and write a free compiler. Maybe we don't talk enough about who or why, or how to replicate that kind of success.
  - laserlight 3y ago
    The point of GP comment is that these people weren't driven by greed. Whether or how they were sponsored by the wealthy wasn't relevant to the discussion.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
      you make a good point. But let's explore that drive. if you looked at great inventors say like Nobel, who amassed a fortune based on research and innovation - would you characterize him driven by greed ? Why ? Is he any different from say Philo Farnsworth, or Louis Pasteur who never became wealthy ? Were they not driven by the same drive as Nobel ? Is the drive to succeed different for these sets of people? Truth is in the eye of the beholder
      - laserlight 3y ago
        Very good questions. Even though I haven't studied the topic rigorously, I would like to offer my impression. People are very bad at reasoning about motives of others. Faulty syllogism goes: Nobel invented dynamite. He became wealthy. Therefore, he must have been driven by desire for wealth. Same goes for Pasteur, of course. Maybe he was driven by desire for wealth, but couldn't succeed. My Bayesian senses tell me that Pasteur not being driven by greed is more likely, but I digress. Leaving individuals aside, I believe that a system that doesn't reward greed is a better system. When a system rewards greed, anti-social behavior becomes prevalent, because it's easier to eat others' pie rather than making a bigger cake. In a system that doesn't reward greed, I believe that curious people will make the cake bigger for the sake of it.
vitiral 3y ago
The unfulfillable desires for greed and power are what destroys people and civilizations. Lust likely a close second. The ancient Stoics taught on this very point and it is just as true today. We've created some clever tricks of seemingly infinite growth, but all things that grow also die. Restraint and being satisfied with what you already have are the keys to stability. Life is not overwhelming hardship my friend. It is bliss. At the end is the tiger eating your insides saying what bliss is your life, please become part of me. With words we deceive ourselves, convinced that we are separate from the living world we came out of.

ants_everywhere 3y ago

I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.

apantel 3y ago
Yes, curiosity and the desire to create and explore. Those are probably my main drivers though I certainly can feel and acknowledge that greed and lust are key drivers. I wasn’t saying greed is the only driver. Edit: I’d also add, I think it’s a false romanticism to think that people like Einstein and other great thinkers and creators were not without the lower drives like greed and lust. If you think about all of the stages of their lives, and all of the actions and endeavors that led to them advancing their fields, greed and lust would have been interleaved as drivers of many of those actions. Maybe one year Einstein just had a bigger fire lit under his feet because he was trying to impress a girl. Or he worked harder one year because he needed the money. Then you have people like Edison who were certainly motivated by greed and the lust for power. You have the industrialists like Carnegie who built the railroads. Then you have all of the workers across generations who did all of the work… how much of that work was driven by the “selfish and intense” desire for money?
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  Right, I agree. I'm not saying people like Einstein don't have greed or lust. What I did say is that empirically the people motivated by curiosity often have lower than average greed levels, which I think makes them uncharacteristic of the population in general. With respect to lust, I didn't mention it because it was orthogonal, but my understanding is that they're about evenly divided into groups with higher than average lust and lower than average. Paul Erdos is a famous name rumored to be in the latter category.
marshray 3y ago
> Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. I think the part you're missing is all the brilliant ideas from brilliant people we missed out on over that 2,000+ year from people we never heard of due to science and art being funded only haphazardly by random wealthy patrons. For almost all of history it was simply not an option to make a living simply by writing or researching. That's still the case in much of the world. But once we started to systematize it properly, and governments recognized that technology was a strategic necessity, bam, within a century or two we went from playing with primitive batteries, to nuclear fission, the internet, and now AI. Somebody was paying for Stallman to sit in an MIT lab and write a free compiler. Maybe we don't talk enough about who or why, or how to replicate that kind of success.
- laserlight 3y ago
  The point of GP comment is that these people weren't driven by greed. Whether or how they were sponsored by the wealthy wasn't relevant to the discussion.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    you make a good point. But let's explore that drive. if you looked at great inventors say like Nobel, who amassed a fortune based on research and innovation - would you characterize him driven by greed ? Why ? Is he any different from say Philo Farnsworth, or Louis Pasteur who never became wealthy ? Were they not driven by the same drive as Nobel ? Is the drive to succeed different for these sets of people? Truth is in the eye of the beholder
    - laserlight 3y ago
      Very good questions. Even though I haven't studied the topic rigorously, I would like to offer my impression. People are very bad at reasoning about motives of others. Faulty syllogism goes: Nobel invented dynamite. He became wealthy. Therefore, he must have been driven by desire for wealth. Same goes for Pasteur, of course. Maybe he was driven by desire for wealth, but couldn't succeed. My Bayesian senses tell me that Pasteur not being driven by greed is more likely, but I digress. Leaving individuals aside, I believe that a system that doesn't reward greed is a better system. When a system rewards greed, anti-social behavior becomes prevalent, because it's easier to eat others' pie rather than making a bigger cake. In a system that doesn't reward greed, I believe that curious people will make the cake bigger for the sake of it.

vitiral 3y ago

The unfulfillable desires for greed and power are what destroys people and civilizations. Lust likely a close second. The ancient Stoics taught on this very point and it is just as true today. We've created some clever tricks of seemingly infinite growth, but all things that grow also die. Restraint and being satisfied with what you already have are the keys to stability. Life is not overwhelming hardship my friend. It is bliss. At the end is the tiger eating your insides saying what bliss is your life, please become part of me. With words we deceive ourselves, convinced that we are separate from the living world we came out of.