>Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy?
Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA.
>Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem.
>I'm all about actually changing things
Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well that worked...)
The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that take generations.
>So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs more of that, so you made a positive change right there :) The Butlerian debooting :D
It's not that they're pessimists, it's just that they aren't interested in new ideas.
I'm reading Guns, germs and steel, and it notes one advantage of European civilization was that it had access to large mammals that were easily domesticated, and one of the ways in which they were easy to domesticate was that they are hierarchically organized socially, and "follow the leader". This helps, because humans just needed to insert themselves at the top of the hierarchy to control the herd/pack.
I'd realized some time ago that we ourselves are also domesticated, but just this morning, in watching a dog cross the road following its owner, I realized that human beings themselves are socially hierarchical, and this makes us easier to domesticate, and easier to control.
We have been controlled by gods/priests, within militaries, within corporations, within sports, taste in movies, TV, reddit memes, pop music, pop psychology, political movements, the habit of obedience we have towards the law, scientific paradigms, by intellectual ideas, by principles - even free-thinking intellectual radicals have leaders they read and follow. Marketers try to identify influencers, thought-leaders, trend-setters. If you control the top of the hierarchy, the rest will follow.
So it's not that normal people are pessimists about new ideas, it's just that they follow what the leader of their hierarchy follows. It takes time for an idea to get to that point, and by then it's no longer "new". Even within startups, there is a great deal of this - people follow the popular companies, brands, products, personalities, from Apple to vim to lisp to Alan Kay. They have religious wars.
The human being who really does follow a new idea for its own sake is rare and in a straightforward biological sense, is not normal.
> I can't think of much to add to that; good luck!
Sorry, I was trying to point out the difference in what I’m after regarding the comment above re: “counter-culture.” That is, of course, I am interested in interacting with others and improving the world. I just mean that in the first instance, I believe that I need to optimize my own life before I can offer any insight on how to improve the world. If, and, regarding not generally raging against the machine, I mean, I don’t want to be countercultural for the sake of doing so with no other objective in mind.
And great advice on the comment regarding the question. One problem I have, living among Brits, is that I’m extremely literal and these word games tend to not jive well with me as a person that says what I mean.
> Who we ‘are’ is nothing close to what we have today.
I am wondering why you define being in terms of having. Is that a slip, or is that related to this:
> I want to just push that further and subjugate nature with automation that can feed us and manufacture worthless plastic and metal media consumption devices for us.
Because I can hear sadness in these words. I think we can feel thankful for having the opportunity to observe beauty and the universe and feel belonging to where we are and with who we are. Those free smartphones are not going to substitute that.
I do not mean we have to work because it is our fate or something like that.
> Your diatribe about not caring about humans is ironic.
A pity you feel that way. Maybe you interpreted "If you don't care about humans" as literally you, whereas I meant is as "If one doesn't care".
What I meant was is the assumption you seem to make that when a few have plenty of production means without needing the other 'human resources' anymore, those few will not spontaneously share their wealth with the world, so the others can have free smart phones and a life of consumption. Instead, those others will have to double down and start to compete with increasingly cheaper robots.
----
The pact in that old story I was talking about deals with the idea that we as humans know how to be evil. In the story, the consequence is that those first people had to leave paradise and from then on have to work for their survival.
I just mentioned it because the fact that we exploit not only nature, but other humans too if we are evil enough.
People that end up controlling the largest amounts of wealth are usually the most ruthless. That's why we need rules.
----
> I guess people with disabilities that aren’t able to work just aren’t human? Should we let them starve to death since they can’t work a 9-5 and work for their food?
On the contrary, I think I have been misunderstood.:)
> If I sat down and tried to design a set of social norms for discouraging people from being their best selves, I honestly don't think I could have done a better job than this.
> Why don't we want people to be good at things?
Historically most people were peasants or serfs. The only thing they were expected to be good at was that, and were actively discouraged from doing anything else.
We have gone from "Civilization and Its Discontents" to the Human Potential Movement in the blink of an eye.
> I think differences in politics are largely formed through a lack of knowledge
Knowledge doesn't make everyone want or value the same things. There's significant evidence that gene's play a role in a persons interests, desires, and even morality [1]. You're speaking of a Utopia that would require forced mental uniformity, requiring a perspective that there are no grey areas in life. I don't think this is compatible with the reality of humanity.
> Is culture necessarily partially ineffable?
My friend once said something like "Anything that's useful, we call technology. Anything that's not useful, but cute, we call culture".
> There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information.
Strongly disagree. Who are we to decide which aspects of someone else’s culture are worth saving, and which can be thrown under the bus in the name of efficiency?
Why not architecture, or dress, or food, or religion? Are you only taking issue because this one has a particular impact on computers?
> We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.
What is our purpose, without culture? We’re not robots.
Do you have a source for this? I feel like peoples beliefs change all the time.
> Today LGBT rights and acceptance have won (and will keep winning)!
This is true. But in contrast racism and sexism is increasing, in the western world at least.
> In a world of immortals, only violent uprisings could challenge the status quo. The world would have no incentive to change.
I don't buy this at all. The world has even more incentive to change. You are not making the world better for anyone else in the future. You are doing it for YOURSELF. Because you will most likely still be around in 200 years.
> Would the world of today have still invented punk rock?
Maybe, Maybe not. Hard to say. But the world would have invented something new.
> Not really an agenda per se, more that I trust the HN community to think about solutions to problems at scale - such as culture at scale.
Your initial comment doesn't even hint at that. It's just a random anecdote of someone who has a good time at Uber. So to me it seems like you're kind of making it up as you go along, and
> I'd love input on
I kind of read as "I want to change the subject away from my initial post, what it means and just how tone deaf that is", but I'll humour you anyway.
> How do you allow a fast, push-the-envelope culture without it getting out of hand?
Here's a radical thought: You can't, and healthy societies made up of healthy individuals wouldn't have a need for them either, since time is infinite, there is no need to hustle and rush. This is only required for grabbing bigger pieces of a limited pie for yourself, for man waging war on man - not for expanding the size of the pie for all, for competition with more sportsmanship and integrity.
Empathy plays a big role here, people trapped in their own bodies and lifetimes consider this view childish and irrational - but that is mutual, I see many people as junkies who keep claiming they would be content if they just had some more, but really, it's just the monkey on their back talking, which seeks approval and materials from the outside, as a substitute for what they can't grow from the inside.
You might have noticed by now, I don't even accept any of your premises. From where I'm sitting, you're asking how to rationalize bugs into features, and how to make more of them.
> How can orgs that grow extremely rapidly handle these situations
By caring less about money and more about personality and craftsmanship. That is, more about life than survival, and more about what to use resources for than how to grab them the fastest in the shortest amount of time. Then these "orgs" wouldn't need to blame the environment for not accommodating their defects.
> What about understanding how the world works makes me automatically part of the problem?
Pretend, for just a moment, that my proposition was true (as I obviously believe it to be). In that case, you've identified yourself as part of the problem. Especially so because you suggest that your prioritization is inevitable and therefore must be assumed.
> I do disagree that there are other cultures with a 'better' notion.
We can look at the development patterns of some other nations. Not all are so spread out, and not all believe that environmentalism is pointless.
> Culture matters, but nkt that much in the long run when theres status at stake
> The world is much less poetic and open minded than many techno utopians would like to think.
The problem isn't the world, it's that you're assuming the rest of the world (including the western one) shares your values and aspirations of what should and should not be down to minute details.
> But these days I don't see how being a decent human is compatible with either, "I don't want to learn whether you're getting the short end of the stick" or "I know you're getting the short end of the stick but I'll never do anything about it": neither seem decent to me.
The novel part isn't the interpersonal part like "don't try to touch black people's hair" - that's just basic common sense, and it's extremely cringey that there are people who do that and think it's OK. The novel part is the systemic aspects of progressive thinking; my primary academic (hobby) interest is in systems theory and cybernetics, so through experience I can say for a fact that most people find systems thinking to be unnatural or alien. It's a different way of looking at the world to thinking in terms of intent and individual actions, which is the norm in the West.
> There are similar sized holes in the way we do things today, when you apply the same standards to it. Consider all of the grievous injustices that have occurred until our various systems of government: war, genocide, chattel slavery, enforced divisions based on religion, race, caste, etc.
My response is that we have been progressing, and we continue to do so. There is no 'philosophy' that I think will work -- the only thing that I can see happening is that we iteratively improve until we either destroy ourselves, run out of the ability or desire to harvest energy, get conquered by AI/Aliens/Genetically-engineered-beings, or failing all of those, somehow reach perfection.
Removing the one thing that people can use to enforce collective will on each other is a terrible idea, IMHO, because people are not (usually) able to individually work towards communal good. Sure, in small groups such as tribes or villages we can look after each other's families when needed and pitch in together to get works built or enforce understood norms and punish crime, but in aggregate as a species in large enough groups this is just not possible. Expecting for-profit motivations to accomplish this is either self-serving or naive.
Of course you have built in an escape-hatch for yourself with the 'if I am wrong' bit, so kudos for that. I guess you can use that to have a clear conscience since you appear to have intelligence and empathy enough to know what the consequences are if such a philopsophy fails.
For what it is worth, the preceding was written in a non-combative stance, so please don't interpret it that way (it is judgmental, though; I can't help that).
:shrug: Even if this was true, reducing harm and doing more good even in the short-term is a pretty worthwhile goal. Eventually people will slip up, and then they'll have to start again. I mean, I also have to shower every day to stay clean, but I'm not nihilistic about that just because I know I'm going to occasionally miss a few days.
But I also think this is also kind of observably false? I've seen racist/bigoted people become genuinely less bigoted over time. I'm not worried that they're going to suddenly relapse, and even in instances where they still have areas to work on or where they might slip backwards, it's still not really comparable to where they used to be.
> Let's just say that narcissism is the norm nowadays, especially in first world countries.
How does this make sense if people are immutable? Are they being born narcissists because of a new genetic problem? Is it that people's morals can improve or degrade, but only while they're children?
I don't see how you're squaring the idea that people can't change with the idea that society is becoming more narcissistic.
> Everywhere I go in the world, old shit is different, but modern shit is depressingly the same, or really similar anyway.
That seems like a very reductive take. Of course trends and culture is more global since we now communicate globally, but there are definitely regional cultures and values and those are expressed many different ways.
If I travel from my small european city to a city in the american midwest or a city in nigeria that are going to be massive differences regardless if the teens are doing the same tiktok dance or whatever metric of homogenization you pick. But in all of those places I almost everyone I will meet can speak english.
> Civilization has made us docile, but we’re still the same people underneath, and a change in circumstance could send us back into that primitive state. To quote The Art of Looking Sideways: “Civilization is chaos taking a rest.”
I do grow tired of this idea of "primitive" people being a bunch of savages. One would think with the explosion of knowledge in anthropology we've acquired in the last century that the average person (and especially, the non-average person) would better understand just how wrong Hobbes was with his "nasty, brutish and short" comment.
Civilization as we know it is an attempt to adapt humans to societies at scale, ie. beyond ~200 or so people - and so far, it has worked badly. We're heavily optimized for tribal societies, which isn't surprising given that we developed and improved them over tens of thousands of years, compared to a mere four thousand for civilization.
Let me note that this isn't an indictment against civilization. As with any new thing (say, cars vs. horses, or guns vs. bows) the new development will initially be notably worse than the older one. Guns were around for hundreds of years before they replaced bows, and even then it took hundreds of years more before they made the leap to automatics that has made them so effective today.
Civilization is little different - we've tried all sorts of things, some of which have worked in some ways, many of which have collapsed under their own weight of corruption, inequality or other problems. And things are getting better. But this idea that "non-civilized" people are chaotic or savages really needs to go.
> I think if we could get better at being open-minded as a species, we'd make faster progress and better ideas would win out more often.
Given the current scenario we are certainly not sure if we are ever going to achieve it! Though that achievement can work wonders.
Any thoughts how you see that change can be made possible?
> I think it is debatable whether or not it is easier than changing the world.
What if the inverse was true and changing the world was easy, and changing yourself was hard?
If somehow you managed to change the world and not change yourself, then the world will be entirely fine, but you yourself will still suffer from the same perceptions as before (this is entirely possible, I've seen many a white male strongly believe that the world is prejudiced against them, and I recall some stats showing an increasing number who believe similarly in polling). In that case, the world is relatively good to them, but the mind creates its own interpretation of reality.
Unless you believe people are un-changable, and changing the world means raising the next generation right and forgetting ours.
Anyways, I'm not advocating to forget about activism, just saying I recommend looking inwards first before helping others. Like on airplane safety directions. And that's not a comment directed at you specifically, just a general observation to those looking outwards before looking in (it sound like you've done your share of introspection).
> What has "culture" to do with this? Behaviour is not the same as culture.
Correct, but the comment I made about culture applies doubly so to behavior. Yes, you can change behavior. Yes, you can make people ashamed of doing X. That is, until certain Mr. Y comes along and shows them how to feel better about themselves, how to improve their self-esteem and show the world a middle finger---by doing precisely X. You will be completely powerless to stop Mr. Y. Powerless. You will be laughed at, and the fingers you thought would point at them will turn upon you.
> That is what I am talking about. It is easy to accomplish, but it is not going to happen. Because that means less consumption
Oh sweet naive innocent child. You think consumerist capitalism is to blame. You're almost right... Almost.
Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA.
>Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem.
>I'm all about actually changing things
Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well that worked...)
The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that take generations.
>So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs more of that, so you made a positive change right there :) The Butlerian debooting :D
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