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The many legions of people more thoughtful than us all throughout the millennia who have moralized against greed might've made a dent by now if moralizing were

The many legions of people more thoughtful than us all throughout the millennia who have moralized against greed might've made a dent by now if moralizing were the answer.

gress 13y ago
Yeah we haven't found any new solutions to old problems for millennia, in fact progress stopped centuries ago. I wish people would just stop trying to improve the world and just enjoy being cynical about it instead.
- kingkawn 13y ago
  its interesting that you assume I mean then that cynicism is the answer. I think we have an economic structure that uses fear as its primary motivator. Fear of depression, homelessness, suffering, and death. Working toward a solution of quantifiable inspiration would be a much more meaningful approach. I think you can intentionally inspire people, since we all have experienced people who do it to us over and over again. So all that must be done is treat that as an abstract principle rather than intangibility, define it, and apply it more broadly.
  - gress 13y ago
    Your original comment did sound cynical. This comment on the other hand sounds as though it is grounded in a morality.
    - kingkawn 13y ago
      I agree but I am not moralizing, which I believe are different things. If there is an immoral action or event recurrently happening it is because the structure of society is allowing it to happen. It will not be solved through shaming anyone. It makes no more sense to shame poor people who are desperate for welfare than it does to shame wall street bankers. Both are products of the same system, and both groups can be given the space to change themselves through modifying the way things work rather than who is working in them.
      - gress 13y ago
        Shaming and moralizing aren't the same thing either. I agree with you about the structure of the system producing immoral actions, however I think that in order to change the structure, we must recognize the immorality otherwise this is just an empty abstraction.
        kingkawn 13y ago
        It is finally powerful as an abstraction. Assigning the immorality to individuals is exactly what perpetuates the overall system.
        gress 13y ago
        Sure - don't assign immorality to individuals. However you have to assign it to something - so what do you assign it to?
        kingkawn 13y ago
        If someone is acting immorally, rather than condemning them think about how they came to be. Look at how the system corresponds to that. And then, ask how to change that system to encourage different behavior without using more abuse/punishment/rat traps to induce that new systemic output. I think you will find that few people desire to act immorally, but they also are bound within their system. They get defensive when you tell them they have to be different; they know it will not work given the framework they operate within. If instead you ask them how to change the system, allowing them to be better, they can be your ally. I do not think approaching them with a pre-formulated answer will as effectively draft them into the cause as genuinely asking them how they would do it.
        gress 13y ago
        I'm asking you, and it isn't working. That's not a good start. Also really, while I'm sympathetic to the idea that people's behavior is a largely a product of circumstance, if I ask a poor person who had resorted to crime to survive how to change the system, I expect familiar answers about making the system more fair. If I ask a Wall Street Banker, who is happily extracting maximum profits from the poor, regardless of cost, I expect familiar answers about how they shouldn't make poor economic decisions. I have actually spoken to people at all levels of society, and I haven't heard a lot of great solutions about how to change the system. Since you have either had different results from your conversations, or have ideas of your own, I invite you to share some here.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
What makes you think the world wouldn't be an ever darker place without it? What else do you suggest?
- kingkawn 13y ago
  we've spent a great deal of energy solving how to reverse engineer depression with moderate success. how about taking it the next step and figuring out how to quantifiably induce inspiration.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
or maybe they were wrong, and what they called "greed" was an ill defined and useless concept. In order to say what is "greed", one must usually define some means of obtaining wealth that are immoral. But given this one might as well say not to do immoral things, and forget the concept of greed. While the article was not unreasonable, I had the feeling he was trying to reinterpret these millennia of moralizing into something that made economic sense, and all he could come up with was "monopolies are bad". Which is true in most cases, but I don't think he made a convincing connection with personal ethical behavior.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  It's not like anyone ever just said "don't be greedy" and nothing more. But even then: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed Also see: selfishness, double standards, externalizing risks and costs while the reaping profits. Such things (can) stem from greed, and they can add up to catastrophic effects. These effects linger, while the "gains" from greed end when the greedy person dies. >a convincing connection with personal ethical behavior aggregate = 0; last_aggregate = 0; while (true) { for (i = peeps.length; i--;) { aggregate += peeps[i].behaviour(world.state, last_aggregate); } world.update(aggregate); last_aggregate = aggregate; }
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    If you want to define greed as imposing externalities on others (e.g. someone who finds that burning plastic in their backyard is legal because of some loophole, and so creates a garbage disposal facility there) then I agree that this is something we should try to avoid, but this is not what has been preached for millennia. In fact the discussion on gentrification shows that most people still cannot distinguish what is and is not an externality. I couldn't understand what your code was supposed to prove, probably because it was full of premature optimization and mutable state.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      > If you want to define greed as imposing externalities on others No, but I mentioned those things because they can result from greed, which is why greed is bad. If greed didn't result in destructive action, or if the negative effects were borne by those causing them, it wouldn't matter. And those things, multiplied by millions or even billions of people in an endless loop, can lead to vast destruction, too. > this is not what has been preached for millennia Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty -- Proverb 22:16
mpweiher 13y ago
"It's not about morality versus markets" (my emphasis) Markets are a great optimization mechanism. It is up to societies to decide what they should optimize.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Markets optimize whatever you define as being capital, distributing it to the owners of whatever you define as being property. They are not moral in and of themselves, neither do they achieve anything that another optimization process couldn't achieve if it likewise relied on massively parallel, breadth-first heuristic searches of the possibility space. But of course, that takes all the delicious magic out of them, so people are going to have to yell something about freedom now.
- kingkawn 13y ago
  This is a wonderful way to say it. My further extrapolation is to turn the full might of the market to advertise and sell poverty relief without treating it like charity but instead treating it like a product. None of the moralizing, just focus on what the purchaser will get out of the exchange, like any other product.

The many legions of people more thoughtful than us all throughout the millennia who have moralized against greed might've made a dent by now if moralizing were the answer.

gress 13y ago

Yeah we haven't found any new solutions to old problems for millennia, in fact progress stopped centuries ago. I wish people would just stop trying to improve the world and just enjoy being cynical about it instead.

kingkawn 13y ago
its interesting that you assume I mean then that cynicism is the answer. I think we have an economic structure that uses fear as its primary motivator. Fear of depression, homelessness, suffering, and death. Working toward a solution of quantifiable inspiration would be a much more meaningful approach. I think you can intentionally inspire people, since we all have experienced people who do it to us over and over again. So all that must be done is treat that as an abstract principle rather than intangibility, define it, and apply it more broadly.
- gress 13y ago
  Your original comment did sound cynical. This comment on the other hand sounds as though it is grounded in a morality.
  - kingkawn 13y ago
    I agree but I am not moralizing, which I believe are different things. If there is an immoral action or event recurrently happening it is because the structure of society is allowing it to happen. It will not be solved through shaming anyone. It makes no more sense to shame poor people who are desperate for welfare than it does to shame wall street bankers. Both are products of the same system, and both groups can be given the space to change themselves through modifying the way things work rather than who is working in them.
    - gress 13y ago
      Shaming and moralizing aren't the same thing either. I agree with you about the structure of the system producing immoral actions, however I think that in order to change the structure, we must recognize the immorality otherwise this is just an empty abstraction.
      - kingkawn 13y ago
        It is finally powerful as an abstraction. Assigning the immorality to individuals is exactly what perpetuates the overall system.
        gress 13y ago
        Sure - don't assign immorality to individuals. However you have to assign it to something - so what do you assign it to?
        kingkawn 13y ago
        If someone is acting immorally, rather than condemning them think about how they came to be. Look at how the system corresponds to that. And then, ask how to change that system to encourage different behavior without using more abuse/punishment/rat traps to induce that new systemic output. I think you will find that few people desire to act immorally, but they also are bound within their system. They get defensive when you tell them they have to be different; they know it will not work given the framework they operate within. If instead you ask them how to change the system, allowing them to be better, they can be your ally. I do not think approaching them with a pre-formulated answer will as effectively draft them into the cause as genuinely asking them how they would do it.
        gress 13y ago
        I'm asking you, and it isn't working. That's not a good start. Also really, while I'm sympathetic to the idea that people's behavior is a largely a product of circumstance, if I ask a poor person who had resorted to crime to survive how to change the system, I expect familiar answers about making the system more fair. If I ask a Wall Street Banker, who is happily extracting maximum profits from the poor, regardless of cost, I expect familiar answers about how they shouldn't make poor economic decisions. I have actually spoken to people at all levels of society, and I haven't heard a lot of great solutions about how to change the system. Since you have either had different results from your conversations, or have ideas of your own, I invite you to share some here.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

What makes you think the world wouldn't be an ever darker place without it? What else do you suggest?

kingkawn 13y ago
we've spent a great deal of energy solving how to reverse engineer depression with moderate success. how about taking it the next step and figuring out how to quantifiably induce inspiration.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

or maybe they were wrong, and what they called "greed" was an ill defined and useless concept. In order to say what is "greed", one must usually define some means of obtaining wealth that are immoral. But given this one might as well say not to do immoral things, and forget the concept of greed. While the article was not unreasonable, I had the feeling he was trying to reinterpret these millennia of moralizing into something that made economic sense, and all he could come up with was "monopolies are bad". Which is true in most cases, but I don't think he made a convincing connection with personal ethical behavior.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
It's not like anyone ever just said "don't be greedy" and nothing more. But even then: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed Also see: selfishness, double standards, externalizing risks and costs while the reaping profits. Such things (can) stem from greed, and they can add up to catastrophic effects. These effects linger, while the "gains" from greed end when the greedy person dies. >a convincing connection with personal ethical behavior aggregate = 0; last_aggregate = 0; while (true) { for (i = peeps.length; i--;) { aggregate += peeps[i].behaviour(world.state, last_aggregate); } world.update(aggregate); last_aggregate = aggregate; }
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  If you want to define greed as imposing externalities on others (e.g. someone who finds that burning plastic in their backyard is legal because of some loophole, and so creates a garbage disposal facility there) then I agree that this is something we should try to avoid, but this is not what has been preached for millennia. In fact the discussion on gentrification shows that most people still cannot distinguish what is and is not an externality. I couldn't understand what your code was supposed to prove, probably because it was full of premature optimization and mutable state.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    > If you want to define greed as imposing externalities on others No, but I mentioned those things because they can result from greed, which is why greed is bad. If greed didn't result in destructive action, or if the negative effects were borne by those causing them, it wouldn't matter. And those things, multiplied by millions or even billions of people in an endless loop, can lead to vast destruction, too. > this is not what has been preached for millennia Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty -- Proverb 22:16

mpweiher 13y ago

"It's not about morality versus markets" (my emphasis) Markets are a great optimization mechanism. It is up to societies to decide what they should optimize.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Markets optimize whatever you define as being capital, distributing it to the owners of whatever you define as being property. They are not moral in and of themselves, neither do they achieve anything that another optimization process couldn't achieve if it likewise relied on massively parallel, breadth-first heuristic searches of the possibility space. But of course, that takes all the delicious magic out of them, so people are going to have to yell something about freedom now.
kingkawn 13y ago
This is a wonderful way to say it. My further extrapolation is to turn the full might of the market to advertise and sell poverty relief without treating it like charity but instead treating it like a product. None of the moralizing, just focus on what the purchaser will get out of the exchange, like any other product.