This is true, but we have a lot of work to do before we have the first part sorted.
Right now we're looking at a scenario where attention's becoming a marketable commodity, but the penalty for failing to maximize it is starvation and ruin, because food and shelter are far from being a given.
Saying "society needs to care more" is the last stop before the final destination of "this can't be done". Getting great many people to coordinate on something that's beneficial to them long-term, but carries an (even insignificant) short-term cost is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to do, out of all the things humans ever tried.
The issue isn't what the end result could look like, but whether we'll actually get there if basic societal needs aren't met first. Prioritize things which are needed now and in the near future.
I agree. But we could use a good summary of what are the most important problems, subdivided into areas that need work / improvement and some estimate of their impact potential, so that people who want to focus on a single thing can choose high-impact things.
Maybe if we were overwhelmed by all the bad things that we should be doing something about it would eventually lead us to a point where we would be doing something instead of just living our lives doing nothing (for the most part)?
If we are already talking about changing the human cognition, might as well add an ability to function while being aware of the issues
If we (the US) did not waste so much time, energy and other forms of wealth on what is essentially busywork, we would be forced to deal with the full ramifications of how we have transformed our world.
you missed the point completely.your focus is too narrow. there are vast quantities of people on this planet who are working to solve the "real" problems that you mention. your argument does not hold because you are only talking about the base of the maslow hierarchy of needs. OF COURSE there are people whose most basic needs are not solved yet on this planet. You are only argumenting for the lowest levels of the pyramid! Once someone has covered his basic needs and moves up the pyramid "other" types of problems emerge like "how do i watch my favorite tv show on my mobile phone" etc.
you have to segment your argument and make it very clear that you are addressing the lower levels of the pyramid.
Many of the problems that we have are not so simple as finite resources. It's like those glib articles about how we could completely solve world hunger with a mere $50 billion or whatever.
There is plenty of food and money to go around, but the complexities of getting it there, navigating the politics, culture and myriad of other issues are the real barriers.
Which is why it is so short sighted to think we should only spend money on the most pressing issue first, until it is solved.
We can't have all people working just on most important problems. Many will just waste time doing this (me for example, I don't know how to end poverty), so we have to have people attached to many different problems. Now this problem may not be the most important, but still maybe if someone has time, she should look at it at least briefly?
I don’t think that’s a very useful way to think about resource allocation. It’s not practical to only focus on what is deemed the single most important problem facing the world. Even if it could be done, it’s likely not even the most efficient way to solve problems, due to competitive advantage.
There is - sadly - a hierarchy of insight which privileges self, then family (sometimes), then friends, then associates and coworkers (more or less), then local community, then country, then other countries, then species, then planet and ecosystem.
The basic problem is that economics rewards smart choices for the earlier items on the list and punishes smart choices for the later ones.
So it's 'not efficient' to think about them.
One hypothetical solution is to make distant pain points personal. If you're directly, immediately impacted by someone else's misfortunes you're going to want to do something about them.
It's possible technology could help with this. But it may have to do it in some unexpected and new ways.
No, what I mean is looking at the world from your standard, you won't have patience for things to play out. We definitely should improve things, but also we need to have patience for people to catch up. You can definitely help, but help also needs understanding. For example, the problem you are looking at may not be something of high priority to people need help. To understand what people really need will require more than compassion.
Except that solution cannot scale here. If most people with the ability to solve these issues chase after dollars, then there's fewer people actually working on it.
Remember, there's no plan B for earth. We have to overcommit our resources to ensure success, since we won't get many "iterations" to find "product/market" fit.
That's an excellent observation, frustration really is key to sensing where the world can be improved.
The problem is that one mans frustration is another mans income, so it would probably be easier to limit this frustration guide to those areas where you are not going to be facing opposition right away.
On the other hand that might cut off fruitful avenues and maybe we shouldn't be that timid about this.
Thanks for the idea, looking forward to that other thread and I'll do my best to think about your challenge while going through the day.
The unfortunate state of things is that we've run out of the problems that we can solve and are left with the problem we can't solve.
Our society/species is pretty terrible with problems that involve diffuse responsibility. Part of the problem is that we don't have social technologies equipped to handle diffuse responsibility, and another is that we have social agents who exploit this social bug to make money.
Shouldn't we first prioritize other things like, you know, reducing hunger caused by lack of food, reducing ignorance due to lack of access to a good education, increasing human rights in areas that lack them, promoting stable political institutions in places that lack them, engineering solutions to prevent or delay catastrophic climate change, and so on?
There are so many unsolved problems that are urgent right now.
That issue can’t be solved by reusing laptops or sorting cans from cardboard. The argument that every little helps is totally flawed. Fantasy, make believe. The other 8 billion people simply don’t care and why would they? 50 years from now they’ll all be dead. Since when did people care about future generations and the good of humanity? It’s a very recent western fashion. The only thing that truly motivated the vast majority of people is sex and money or objectives closely descended from that tree. To modify mass human behavior you have to incentivize based on that leverage. But - even modification of the behavior of the crowd won’t be sufficient. The only way to fix this is w new technology
Right now we're looking at a scenario where attention's becoming a marketable commodity, but the penalty for failing to maximize it is starvation and ruin, because food and shelter are far from being a given.
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