4 ms·

> Physical robustness. Strength, perhaps brutality. Competence in physical tasks. Honesty. Parentage. Birth order (see primogeniture.) Those matter in per-techn

by pjc50 7mo ago

> Physical robustness. Strength, perhaps brutality. Competence in physical tasks. Honesty. Parentage. Birth order (see primogeniture.) Those matter in per-technological societies, and they matter in failed societies now. Those are perhaps humanity's core values. This is really bleak to me. We can do better than primogeniture, and of course the gender discrimination that goes along with it. You might as well write that subjugation of women is a "core value", simply because it has been for so many time periods. > Physical robustness. Strength, perhaps brutality. John Henry is not going to beat the steam shovel any time soon. > For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. It's not an anomaly; rather, it's the other way round. These used to be highly specialized skills that carried significant status, and got democratized by mass education in the 20th century. We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope.

yesbut 7mo ago
> We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope. Unfortunately, that is the current stage of humanity. We all currently live in a global subscription model for food, housing, safety, etc. No doubt that we will move beyond it eventually, but the current organization of society is kept in place by the owner class which benefits from the current arrangement. One of the steps for moving beyond it is educating the modern day serfs (our peers) about reality as it is and alternative visions of a future where we are no longer selling our labor to the owner class. It will take generations.
- lyu07282 7mo ago
  Worth mentioning that Chinese people have a vastly different perspective on new technology, in the west people are incredibly pessimistic. It's not the technology itself, it's the surrounding system that makes that difference. The alternative vision for the future already exists.
sillysaurusx 7mo ago
Although primogeniture has been discriminatory for basically the entire time it's existed, the discrimination isn't inherent. It's an implementation detail. Modern British Royal succession now uses absolute, gender-neutral primogeniture since 2013. In fact, there are few things less discriminatory than a random birth order. You may as well be assigned a random number at birth, and the lower your number, the more you're paid. In such a system, there's nothing to discriminate against; the ordering is absolute and immutable, and everyone is treated equally. I agree that it's a bleak idea, but Animats wasn't talking about subjugating women.
- marxisttemp 7mo ago
  Primogeniture in any form is discriminatory precisely since birth order is an immutable, permanent, unchosen characteristic assigned randomly at birth, just like race or sex.
  - hackable_sand 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - nhod 7mo ago
      Gender is mutable. Sex is determined by genetics, though in a handful of creatures, sex could be considered mutable.
      - margalabargala 7mo ago
        You're right, but there was an article on here in the last week about genetic therapy correcting Down Syndrome. I wonder how long before sex does actually become mutable.
      - hackable_sand 7mo ago
        You can change sex And people can be born intersex Your data is wrong
trinsic2 7mo ago
> We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope. The algorithms and bots that curate/generate content directed by accelerationists definitely want people to think that. There is a whole system in place now that can shape future outcomes just by convincing everyone that have no power when the opposite is true. The parent is probably a bot, or has been influenced by one to many there is nothing new under the sun solipsism bs.
Ekaros 7mo ago
Primogeniture is not actually unreasonable if you consider that children can range in ages say 15 to 20 years. On average the oldest is most mature and experienced. Both reasonable qualities up to certain point. If your existence depends on decision of single leader. I generally would pick the 30 year old one over 20 year old or 25 year old over 15 year old. Post 30 year old, it gets different, but to around there I would reasonably expect maturity and experience to matter.
intended 7mo ago
> I hope. For solving all things complex, there must be a plan.
- NoGravitas 7mo ago
  You might ask, What Is To Be Done?
- Eisenstein 7mo ago
  Have humans ever had a grand plan for society and succeeded in carrying it out such that the desired goal was reached? I'm not talking about something like the Marshall plan, which was a reaction to previous failed attempts and was created during an urgent need for such action, but a plan where a group of people figured out the best course of action, despite humanity existing in a different paradigm, and then enacted that plan and saw it come to fruit as they predicted?
  - econ 7mo ago
    I never got to a full plan but over the decades I had many creative ideas that try to be good but might not be. The interesting pattern is that few people are curious enough to thing (or help think) about it. Best most can do is find flaws or state it will never happen. Never is a long time and grand plans need to be executed for their real flaws to appear. The kind of flaws that are never what we thought in advance, usually much worse. We do need to think about it until the end of humanity. We've build countless societies/civilizations and non of them survived the test of time. It's our ultimate puzzle. There is probably [say] someone at MS who knows how an OS should work but replacing parts in a running machine isn't easy. Burning everything to the ground isn't ideal either but it does make building more attractive.
    - Eisenstein 7mo ago
      The point I was making was more that trying to proactively shape society for some goal will always miss something critical and fail in a spectacular way. Look at Communism or the neocons of Bush Jr era with the Iraq invasion. It sounds smart on paper but when you execute it then it falls apart with tremendous human cost, and the people who are doing it refuse to acknowledge it until they are physically removed from the levers of power. Now that I think about it though, it is more to do with inflexibility of the plan, rather than having a plan itself. If you are working off of a ideological commitment, rather than setting an end goal with a fuzzy time frame and a loose path to get there, then that's when you land in trouble.
suburban_strike 7mo ago
[flagged]
- lazyasciiart 7mo ago
  Have you lived through governmental collapse?
- alterom 7mo ago
  >You must never have lived through governmental collapse. I have (1990s Ukraine emerging from the ruins of the USSR). >The children and the women will be selling ass for basic necessities, raped by both neighbors and invaders, and killed for no reason at all. Not Or. And. Yeah, on that... Nope. Dunno where you fantasized that from. Prostitution for basic necessities existed, as it does in the US today (and everywhere else: poverty is the #1 reason for it). Gangs did form. They didn't quite "seize everything they can". Protection racket was common, and preferred for the same reason that taxing a market economy is usually more profitable than a planned one. "Invaders" weren't a thing. Mass rapes weren't a thing. People who "bulked up" and joined gangs, in their masses, weren't the winners. Berezovsky, one of the most infamous Russian oligarchs, came from an academic background, with multiple publications in applied mathematics. (Berezovsky number is a fun alternative to the Erdos number; mine is four [1]) Khodorkovsky was a chemical engineer by education who bootstrapped his business career by importing and selling computing equipment for a science education center he opened during perestroika. He used the funds to open a bank. Gusinsky, Russia's media magnate, dropped out of engineering studies to major in theater. His diploma work was on Moliere's "Tartuffe". Another theater major, Vladislav Surkov, went on to become Putin's chief propagandist and is primarily responsible for shaping the post-truth world we live in today. Turning to Ukraine: Kolomoyskiy, one of the most infamous Ukrainian oligarchs, was a metallurgical engineer. Pinchuk, another oligarch, got a doctorate from the same university. Poroshenko, an oligarch and a former president, got a degree in international relations and started a legal advisory firm for international trade before the USSR collapsed. His school buddy Saakashvili became the president of Georgia. I can go on and on. A few thugs did make it big (e.g. Akhmetov); they were exception rather than the norm. As the USSR collapsed, the people with enough smarts to be able to "seize everything" were either politicians or nerds. Your strongman fantasy has no basis in reality. "Nature" valued people with PhDs, it turns out. [1] https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/freetools/collab-dist?source=890547&target=220635 https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/freetools/collab-dist?...
vee-kay 7mo ago
[dead]

by pjc50 7mo ago

yesbut 7mo ago

> We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope. Unfortunately, that is the current stage of humanity. We all currently live in a global subscription model for food, housing, safety, etc. No doubt that we will move beyond it eventually, but the current organization of society is kept in place by the owner class which benefits from the current arrangement. One of the steps for moving beyond it is educating the modern day serfs (our peers) about reality as it is and alternative visions of a future where we are no longer selling our labor to the owner class. It will take generations.

lyu07282 7mo ago
Worth mentioning that Chinese people have a vastly different perspective on new technology, in the west people are incredibly pessimistic. It's not the technology itself, it's the surrounding system that makes that difference. The alternative vision for the future already exists.

sillysaurusx 7mo ago

Although primogeniture has been discriminatory for basically the entire time it's existed, the discrimination isn't inherent. It's an implementation detail. Modern British Royal succession now uses absolute, gender-neutral primogeniture since 2013. In fact, there are few things less discriminatory than a random birth order. You may as well be assigned a random number at birth, and the lower your number, the more you're paid. In such a system, there's nothing to discriminate against; the ordering is absolute and immutable, and everyone is treated equally. I agree that it's a bleak idea, but Animats wasn't talking about subjugating women.

marxisttemp 7mo ago
Primogeniture in any form is discriminatory precisely since birth order is an immutable, permanent, unchosen characteristic assigned randomly at birth, just like race or sex.
- hackable_sand 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nhod 7mo ago
    Gender is mutable. Sex is determined by genetics, though in a handful of creatures, sex could be considered mutable.
    - margalabargala 7mo ago
      You're right, but there was an article on here in the last week about genetic therapy correcting Down Syndrome. I wonder how long before sex does actually become mutable.
    - hackable_sand 7mo ago
      You can change sex And people can be born intersex Your data is wrong

trinsic2 7mo ago

> We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope. The algorithms and bots that curate/generate content directed by accelerationists definitely want people to think that. There is a whole system in place now that can shape future outcomes just by convincing everyone that have no power when the opposite is true. The parent is probably a bot, or has been influenced by one to many there is nothing new under the sun solipsism bs.

Ekaros 7mo ago

Primogeniture is not actually unreasonable if you consider that children can range in ages say 15 to 20 years. On average the oldest is most mature and experienced. Both reasonable qualities up to certain point. If your existence depends on decision of single leader. I generally would pick the 30 year old one over 20 year old or 25 year old over 15 year old. Post 30 year old, it gets different, but to around there I would reasonably expect maturity and experience to matter.

intended 7mo ago

> I hope. For solving all things complex, there must be a plan.

NoGravitas 7mo ago
You might ask, What Is To Be Done?
Eisenstein 7mo ago
Have humans ever had a grand plan for society and succeeded in carrying it out such that the desired goal was reached? I'm not talking about something like the Marshall plan, which was a reaction to previous failed attempts and was created during an urgent need for such action, but a plan where a group of people figured out the best course of action, despite humanity existing in a different paradigm, and then enacted that plan and saw it come to fruit as they predicted?
- econ 7mo ago
  I never got to a full plan but over the decades I had many creative ideas that try to be good but might not be. The interesting pattern is that few people are curious enough to thing (or help think) about it. Best most can do is find flaws or state it will never happen. Never is a long time and grand plans need to be executed for their real flaws to appear. The kind of flaws that are never what we thought in advance, usually much worse. We do need to think about it until the end of humanity. We've build countless societies/civilizations and non of them survived the test of time. It's our ultimate puzzle. There is probably [say] someone at MS who knows how an OS should work but replacing parts in a running machine isn't easy. Burning everything to the ground isn't ideal either but it does make building more attractive.
  - Eisenstein 7mo ago
    The point I was making was more that trying to proactively shape society for some goal will always miss something critical and fail in a spectacular way. Look at Communism or the neocons of Bush Jr era with the Iraq invasion. It sounds smart on paper but when you execute it then it falls apart with tremendous human cost, and the people who are doing it refuse to acknowledge it until they are physically removed from the levers of power. Now that I think about it though, it is more to do with inflexibility of the plan, rather than having a plan itself. If you are working off of a ideological commitment, rather than setting an end goal with a fuzzy time frame and a loose path to get there, then that's when you land in trouble.

suburban_strike 7mo ago

[flagged]

lazyasciiart 7mo ago
Have you lived through governmental collapse?
alterom 7mo ago
>You must never have lived through governmental collapse. I have (1990s Ukraine emerging from the ruins of the USSR). >The children and the women will be selling ass for basic necessities, raped by both neighbors and invaders, and killed for no reason at all. Not Or. And. Yeah, on that... Nope. Dunno where you fantasized that from. Prostitution for basic necessities existed, as it does in the US today (and everywhere else: poverty is the #1 reason for it). Gangs did form. They didn't quite "seize everything they can". Protection racket was common, and preferred for the same reason that taxing a market economy is usually more profitable than a planned one. "Invaders" weren't a thing. Mass rapes weren't a thing. People who "bulked up" and joined gangs, in their masses, weren't the winners. Berezovsky, one of the most infamous Russian oligarchs, came from an academic background, with multiple publications in applied mathematics. (Berezovsky number is a fun alternative to the Erdos number; mine is four [1]) Khodorkovsky was a chemical engineer by education who bootstrapped his business career by importing and selling computing equipment for a science education center he opened during perestroika. He used the funds to open a bank. Gusinsky, Russia's media magnate, dropped out of engineering studies to major in theater. His diploma work was on Moliere's "Tartuffe". Another theater major, Vladislav Surkov, went on to become Putin's chief propagandist and is primarily responsible for shaping the post-truth world we live in today. Turning to Ukraine: Kolomoyskiy, one of the most infamous Ukrainian oligarchs, was a metallurgical engineer. Pinchuk, another oligarch, got a doctorate from the same university. Poroshenko, an oligarch and a former president, got a degree in international relations and started a legal advisory firm for international trade before the USSR collapsed. His school buddy Saakashvili became the president of Georgia. I can go on and on. A few thugs did make it big (e.g. Akhmetov); they were exception rather than the norm. As the USSR collapsed, the people with enough smarts to be able to "seize everything" were either politicians or nerds. Your strongman fantasy has no basis in reality. "Nature" valued people with PhDs, it turns out. [1] https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/freetools/collab-dist?source=890547&target=220635 https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/freetools/collab-dist?...

vee-kay 7mo ago

[dead]