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Because, yeah, it's individuals making dumb choices that is the problem -- it could never be the social systems around us that is the problem. Maybe I don't ca

Because, yeah, it's individuals making dumb choices that is the problem -- it could never be the social systems around us that is the problem. Maybe I don't care if my degree (philosophy) has questionable utility in the work force. Maybe I don't want to be "employable". Maybe I chose to study philosophy and didn't fall into into because I was undecided. For you realism is adapting to the world. For me realism is making sense of the world, figuring out if perhaps there could be a better world, and constructing the world that I would like to live in and that I would like my kids to live in. You don't get to decide for me what I should study in the same way I don't get to decide for you what you should study. If you'd studied philosophy you'd be able to see stuff like that easily.

avz 12y ago
> Maybe I don't care if my degree (philosophy) has questionable utility in the work force. Maybe I don't want to be "employable". This is a perfectly valid position and stands in no contradiction to the parent post. I think the parent post was tacitly referring to people who want to have the cake and eat it too: study subjects of questionable market utility and be employable at the same time.
JackMorgan 12y ago
I would argue a bunch of people who don't care about being "employable" create a social system of people who want to live a life of leisure and have someone else pay for it. Just as you don't get to decide what I study, you don't get to decide what society owes you for being born. Which is another way of saying: you don't get to decide what I do with my money.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  > a social system of people who want to live a life of leisure and have someone else pay for it. Good! That's the utopia we should all be aspiring to. In the foreseeable future (perhaps 100-200 years), increases in automation and efficiency should allow us to support most of humanity in at least passable comfort with minimal labor. http://www.basicincome.org/ http://www.basicincome.org/
  - JackMorgan 12y ago
    I don't think our society could handle BI. And everything I see makes me think it's getting worse. I used to be a big fan of BI, but lately I've come to think that human desires will always make BI irrelevant. No matter how much you pay every citizen, it won't be enough to sate human greed and envy. Combine that with a society that can't stand being bored, I think most people would entertain/eat/act risky themselves to death. Very few Mozart's will arise, and very many dangerously over/underweight selfie-taking alcoholics will. Look at modern college, which when compared to any other point in life objectively requires the least work: and it's the time filled with the most hedonism and immaturity of most human's lives. I'd rather people learn to treat work as a noble thing now, and learn to better themselves in the remaining time before we try to pull off the training wheels. I don't disagree that most work now is absolutely terrible, but I'm not sure just paying everyone to live would fix that. As things currently are, we would just pay so much that people would be willing to tolerate the terrible work. Why not try to make jobs better now?
    - igravious 12y ago
      I've ceased to be a fan of opinions in this area. We need a _theory_ of society that is as good model of society the way quantum mechanics is of nanoscopic physical phenomena. We need to be able to twiddle the variables in our model and be able to see what would happen if we did X or Y. If it is not possible to come up with this theory, construct this model, and build these simulations I want to know _why_. Where I can debate people is if, all other things being equal, they tell me how I ought to live my life with no data other than their own opinion which I'm going to take as being a shorthand for their own ego and ideology.
      - JackMorgan 12y ago
        Fair enough. I'm definitely just drawing from personal anecdotes and logic for what I think society would do. Just like everyone. Even though studies are done on societies, I personally think it's hard to factor in every important variable. And since most studies these days just skew their data to try and prove a point, it's hard to trust in those either. I'd be fascinated to see such a model of society, it'd be incredibly helpful in economics, finance, social policy, education, fitness, law, etc, etc. I suspect if you could make a machine that could predict human behavior that accurately, you'd want to keep it to yourself, while you became unfathomably rich and powerful. That is why I pointed out colleges as a case study. The thing is, colleges weren't always that way. Sure students have always played pranks or messed around (I think of John Quincy Adams at Harvard getting caught streaking on the lawn drunk), but it's clear that sort of thing was uncommon. Compare that to today, when the only thing that changed is the way society treats college. I'm not sure how we can predict and change things in people's lives enough to make society as a whole take college seriously. Compare how simple that is to the problem BI is trying to solve: some people can't find work. It boggles the mind contemplating how big an issue that is, and how much we'd have to change people for it to work.
leorocky 12y ago
Maybe you have a responsibility to your society to the same degree that society has a responsibility to take care of you. How's that fit in with your philosophy? Maybe the best way to live your life isn't what you might want for yourself. It's interesting to see my views kind of in parallel in this instance with polar ideological opposites. One the one hand you have libertarians who don't want to pick up the tab for your life, and on the other you got social justice warriors like me who think that with social security comes social responsibility.
- igravious 12y ago
  I disagree that with social security comes social responsibility. If a person wants to get as much from the state as they can and put nothing back in then big deal I say. Why? 1) Because there are very few people like that anyway. This group of people, so-called welfare scroungers, are always trotted out in these arguments. I've never met one of them in all my days, I'd like to see actual proper percentages regarding this. I'm betting these people are < 1% of the population. 2) Besides there are all sorts of consumption taxes and what have you that funnel the money back into the state anyway. 3) Most people want meaningful work. What you find meaningful may not be what I find meaningful of course. And failing being able to find meaningful work most people choose to work at _anything_ at all rather than be idle. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many people work at jobs they don't like because that's the only work they could get. 4) Society didn't wake up one morning and decide to take care of me. Social security has been and continues to be a continual struggle to redistribute the wealth from the have-a-lots to the have-very-littles and it's a struggle I identify with. Vigilance is needed as we have seen because all the gains are slowly rolled back when we're not paying attention. --- This is all beside the original bone of contention I had with you. It was with your questionable statement "If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story might be different." Did you ever stop to think why someone would want to study philosophy before you came out with that? You're full of what people ought to do, may I suggest you ought not think like that. edit: grammar n stuff
  - 12y ago

avz 12y ago

> Maybe I don't care if my degree (philosophy) has questionable utility in the work force. Maybe I don't want to be "employable". This is a perfectly valid position and stands in no contradiction to the parent post. I think the parent post was tacitly referring to people who want to have the cake and eat it too: study subjects of questionable market utility and be employable at the same time.

JackMorgan 12y ago

I would argue a bunch of people who don't care about being "employable" create a social system of people who want to live a life of leisure and have someone else pay for it. Just as you don't get to decide what I study, you don't get to decide what society owes you for being born. Which is another way of saying: you don't get to decide what I do with my money.

ForHackernews 12y ago
> a social system of people who want to live a life of leisure and have someone else pay for it. Good! That's the utopia we should all be aspiring to. In the foreseeable future (perhaps 100-200 years), increases in automation and efficiency should allow us to support most of humanity in at least passable comfort with minimal labor. http://www.basicincome.org/ http://www.basicincome.org/
- JackMorgan 12y ago
  I don't think our society could handle BI. And everything I see makes me think it's getting worse. I used to be a big fan of BI, but lately I've come to think that human desires will always make BI irrelevant. No matter how much you pay every citizen, it won't be enough to sate human greed and envy. Combine that with a society that can't stand being bored, I think most people would entertain/eat/act risky themselves to death. Very few Mozart's will arise, and very many dangerously over/underweight selfie-taking alcoholics will. Look at modern college, which when compared to any other point in life objectively requires the least work: and it's the time filled with the most hedonism and immaturity of most human's lives. I'd rather people learn to treat work as a noble thing now, and learn to better themselves in the remaining time before we try to pull off the training wheels. I don't disagree that most work now is absolutely terrible, but I'm not sure just paying everyone to live would fix that. As things currently are, we would just pay so much that people would be willing to tolerate the terrible work. Why not try to make jobs better now?
  - igravious 12y ago
    I've ceased to be a fan of opinions in this area. We need a _theory_ of society that is as good model of society the way quantum mechanics is of nanoscopic physical phenomena. We need to be able to twiddle the variables in our model and be able to see what would happen if we did X or Y. If it is not possible to come up with this theory, construct this model, and build these simulations I want to know _why_. Where I can debate people is if, all other things being equal, they tell me how I ought to live my life with no data other than their own opinion which I'm going to take as being a shorthand for their own ego and ideology.
    - JackMorgan 12y ago
      Fair enough. I'm definitely just drawing from personal anecdotes and logic for what I think society would do. Just like everyone. Even though studies are done on societies, I personally think it's hard to factor in every important variable. And since most studies these days just skew their data to try and prove a point, it's hard to trust in those either. I'd be fascinated to see such a model of society, it'd be incredibly helpful in economics, finance, social policy, education, fitness, law, etc, etc. I suspect if you could make a machine that could predict human behavior that accurately, you'd want to keep it to yourself, while you became unfathomably rich and powerful. That is why I pointed out colleges as a case study. The thing is, colleges weren't always that way. Sure students have always played pranks or messed around (I think of John Quincy Adams at Harvard getting caught streaking on the lawn drunk), but it's clear that sort of thing was uncommon. Compare that to today, when the only thing that changed is the way society treats college. I'm not sure how we can predict and change things in people's lives enough to make society as a whole take college seriously. Compare how simple that is to the problem BI is trying to solve: some people can't find work. It boggles the mind contemplating how big an issue that is, and how much we'd have to change people for it to work.

leorocky 12y ago

Maybe you have a responsibility to your society to the same degree that society has a responsibility to take care of you. How's that fit in with your philosophy? Maybe the best way to live your life isn't what you might want for yourself. It's interesting to see my views kind of in parallel in this instance with polar ideological opposites. One the one hand you have libertarians who don't want to pick up the tab for your life, and on the other you got social justice warriors like me who think that with social security comes social responsibility.

igravious 12y ago
I disagree that with social security comes social responsibility. If a person wants to get as much from the state as they can and put nothing back in then big deal I say. Why? 1) Because there are very few people like that anyway. This group of people, so-called welfare scroungers, are always trotted out in these arguments. I've never met one of them in all my days, I'd like to see actual proper percentages regarding this. I'm betting these people are < 1% of the population. 2) Besides there are all sorts of consumption taxes and what have you that funnel the money back into the state anyway. 3) Most people want meaningful work. What you find meaningful may not be what I find meaningful of course. And failing being able to find meaningful work most people choose to work at _anything_ at all rather than be idle. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many people work at jobs they don't like because that's the only work they could get. 4) Society didn't wake up one morning and decide to take care of me. Social security has been and continues to be a continual struggle to redistribute the wealth from the have-a-lots to the have-very-littles and it's a struggle I identify with. Vigilance is needed as we have seen because all the gains are slowly rolled back when we're not paying attention. --- This is all beside the original bone of contention I had with you. It was with your questionable statement "If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story might be different." Did you ever stop to think why someone would want to study philosophy before you came out with that? You're full of what people ought to do, may I suggest you ought not think like that. edit: grammar n stuff
- 12y ago