4 ms·

And you are a collection of cells, but individual cells (mostly) don’t have the ability to dictate your actions

by CalRobert 1y ago

suddenlybananas 1y ago
Yeah, but Jeff Bezos does actually have control over Amazon and can make decisions.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Sort of, kind of. Most decisions you'd see him make would quickly cause his control over Amazon to disappear, without actually improving anything for Amazon workers. That's one part of the bad mental model of organizations and markets (and thus societies) people have. The people at the top may be richer and more powerful, but they're not actually free to do whatever. They have a role to play in the system they ostensibly "control", but when they deviate too far from what the system expects them to do, they get ejected. Never mistake the finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon itself. Also, never mistake the person barking orders for the source from which those orders originate.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    Yeah, these decisions just appear out of the aether, there absolutely not the result of capitalists acting in their self-interest. It's nice to claim, oh poor little me couldn't possibly have done anything else, I guess I just have to benefit from all this money my decisions give me.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      I think you’re agreeing in a way - they are making the decisions that maximise their profits in the existing system (capitalism) and the system is such that it will produce people like this. They can nudge it in their preferred direction but if they were in, say, a frontier economy they’d likely make different decisions.
      - TeMPOraL 1y ago
        That. And the aspect I'm trying to emphasize is, those profit-maximizing people are technically free to choose to not profit-maximize, but then the system will happily punish them for it. They can nudge the system, but the system can nudge them back, all the way to ejecting them from whatever role they played in that system so far. And yes, the system is just made of other people. That's the nature of self-reinforcing feedback loops.
  - psychoslave 1y ago
    There is nothing like "the" system though. When a government launch some genocide, sure it's an expression of the system in a sense, but it didn't need to respect a majority of actor opinions, and it doesn't mean that "the behavior of the system" is a mere and direct outcome of all the social values at stake which would presumably have great safeguard against any significant deviation. Virus can kill their hosts, and a bunch of individuals can have significant harmful impact on societies.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      A virus that kills their hosts itself dies out quickly. Viruses that thrive, and that we actually have most problems with, are ones that spread before manifesting symptoms. Much like viruses, systems are subject to selection pressures over time. Systems that are too damaging to society makes society develop memetic, cultural and legal immunity against them. Systems that let individual members easily kill them are fragile and don't survive either. Systems that thrive are ones that are mild enough to not cause too much external resistance, and are resilient enough to not allow individuals to accidentally or intentionally break them from within.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Jeff Bezos is a product of the system, not a driver of it. Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, etc, are outputs, not inputs. Their decisions are absolutely constrained by the system's values. They have zero agency in this, and are literally unable to imagine anything different.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    It is a fascinating take. One way to measure agency is whether Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel have the power to destroy their creations. With exception of Bezos ( and only because he no longer has full control of his company ), the rest could easily topple their creations suggesting that system values you refer to are wide enough to allow for actions greater than 'zero agency'.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      That's actually a quite good high-level measure. However, I'd question your measurement: I doubt that Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel would actually be able to destroy their creations. SpaceX, Tesla, X, Meta, Palantir - they're all large organizations with many stakeholders, and their founders/chairman do not have absolute control over them. The result of any of those individuals attempting to destroy their creations is not guaranteed - on the contrary, I'd expect other stakeholders to quickly intervene to block or pivot any such moves; the organization would survive, and such move would only make the market lose confidence in the one making it. There's no total ownership in structures as large as this - neither in companies nor in countries. There are other stakeholders, and then the organization has a mind of its own, and they all react to actions of whoever is nominally "running it".
      - suddenlybananas 1y ago
        Musk is clearly doing his best to destroy Tesla.
      - blackoil 1y ago
        Even if Tesla is destroyed by Musk, EVs and self-driving cars are here to stay. If not in USA than in rest of the world.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  The CEO might have more control of Amazon than Jeff.

And you are a collection of cells, but individual cells (mostly) don’t have the ability to dictate your actions

suddenlybananas 1y ago

Yeah, but Jeff Bezos does actually have control over Amazon and can make decisions.

TeMPOraL 1y ago
Sort of, kind of. Most decisions you'd see him make would quickly cause his control over Amazon to disappear, without actually improving anything for Amazon workers. That's one part of the bad mental model of organizations and markets (and thus societies) people have. The people at the top may be richer and more powerful, but they're not actually free to do whatever. They have a role to play in the system they ostensibly "control", but when they deviate too far from what the system expects them to do, they get ejected. Never mistake the finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon itself. Also, never mistake the person barking orders for the source from which those orders originate.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Yeah, these decisions just appear out of the aether, there absolutely not the result of capitalists acting in their self-interest. It's nice to claim, oh poor little me couldn't possibly have done anything else, I guess I just have to benefit from all this money my decisions give me.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    I think you’re agreeing in a way - they are making the decisions that maximise their profits in the existing system (capitalism) and the system is such that it will produce people like this. They can nudge it in their preferred direction but if they were in, say, a frontier economy they’d likely make different decisions.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      That. And the aspect I'm trying to emphasize is, those profit-maximizing people are technically free to choose to not profit-maximize, but then the system will happily punish them for it. They can nudge the system, but the system can nudge them back, all the way to ejecting them from whatever role they played in that system so far. And yes, the system is just made of other people. That's the nature of self-reinforcing feedback loops.
- psychoslave 1y ago
  There is nothing like "the" system though. When a government launch some genocide, sure it's an expression of the system in a sense, but it didn't need to respect a majority of actor opinions, and it doesn't mean that "the behavior of the system" is a mere and direct outcome of all the social values at stake which would presumably have great safeguard against any significant deviation. Virus can kill their hosts, and a bunch of individuals can have significant harmful impact on societies.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    A virus that kills their hosts itself dies out quickly. Viruses that thrive, and that we actually have most problems with, are ones that spread before manifesting symptoms. Much like viruses, systems are subject to selection pressures over time. Systems that are too damaging to society makes society develop memetic, cultural and legal immunity against them. Systems that let individual members easily kill them are fragile and don't survive either. Systems that thrive are ones that are mild enough to not cause too much external resistance, and are resilient enough to not allow individuals to accidentally or intentionally break them from within.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Jeff Bezos is a product of the system, not a driver of it. Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, etc, are outputs, not inputs. Their decisions are absolutely constrained by the system's values. They have zero agency in this, and are literally unable to imagine anything different.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  It is a fascinating take. One way to measure agency is whether Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel have the power to destroy their creations. With exception of Bezos ( and only because he no longer has full control of his company ), the rest could easily topple their creations suggesting that system values you refer to are wide enough to allow for actions greater than 'zero agency'.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    That's actually a quite good high-level measure. However, I'd question your measurement: I doubt that Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel would actually be able to destroy their creations. SpaceX, Tesla, X, Meta, Palantir - they're all large organizations with many stakeholders, and their founders/chairman do not have absolute control over them. The result of any of those individuals attempting to destroy their creations is not guaranteed - on the contrary, I'd expect other stakeholders to quickly intervene to block or pivot any such moves; the organization would survive, and such move would only make the market lose confidence in the one making it. There's no total ownership in structures as large as this - neither in companies nor in countries. There are other stakeholders, and then the organization has a mind of its own, and they all react to actions of whoever is nominally "running it".
    - suddenlybananas 1y ago
      Musk is clearly doing his best to destroy Tesla.
    - blackoil 1y ago
      Even if Tesla is destroyed by Musk, EVs and self-driving cars are here to stay. If not in USA than in rest of the world.
Zambyte 1y ago
The CEO might have more control of Amazon than Jeff.