For 99.9% of issues, we rely on trust to make up our minds. We assume people are mostly not lying. If a group of people are found to lie, then yes, maybe “look for the truth behind the actual claims” is worth it, but more likely shooting them out of the discourse and into the metaphorical sun is the right response. If you walk around lying, you don’t get to complain that people aren’t doing research on your claims.
Sure, but how does that relate to environmentalists? The people lying were the car industry, but somehow the OP questions environmentalism. Why are they not questioning the car industry?
This is something I see a lot in science skepticism.
Someone incorrectly conveys a simple science concept, and people blame the scientist, not the communicator.
Like, News says "New revolutionary battery" and people roll their eyes and say "Oh but this will never make it to prod" and decide that scientists are liars and conveniently ignore that lithium battery density has like doubled over the past 20 years or so.
The person who was wrong was the unaware journalist taking a PR person's claims at face value, and having no context to smell test such a claim, and having no time or interest to treat the claim with skepticism anyway because "Batteries slightly improve" never sold newspapers.
Why? There are massive incentives for people to lie in a great many cases, especially where profits exist. Car manufactures, as we know, gladly lie and fake evidence. Even when there are massive fines involved, the fines are generally less than what they make in profit from the lies.
What's even better is you can play both sides to confuse the issue. Create 3rd party groups on the other side of your claims and have them make up the stupidest claims "Just looking at a car will give you cancer". Flood the zone with false information, bullshit asymmetry. Lobby the shit out of politicians so they don't care about the issues, only the money it brings in.
The confused regulars in the middle are so propagandized to they no longer know up from down and billionaires laugh all the way to the bank.
Man, why did no one tell the people who invented bronze that they weren’t allowed to do it until they had a correct definition for metals and understood how they worked? I guess the person saying something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the people doing it.
>> I guess the person saying something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the people doing it.
I'll happily step out of the way once someone simply tells me what it is you're trying to accomplish. Until you can actually define it, you can't do "it".
The big tech companies are trying to make machines that replace all human labor. They call it artificial intelligence. Feel free to argue about definitions.
I'm not sure what 'inventing bronze' is supposed to be. 'Inventing' AGI is pretty much equivalent to creating new life, from scratch. And we don't have an idea on how to do that either, or how life came to be.
Definitely not GP, but I think it’s pretty clear that whatever grit there was to have, GP did not have it. “Die an early death due to being overweight or build the grit” is strictly worse than “lose the weight without building the grit, or build the grit”, and it’s even more so when you realize that “or build the grit” was never in the cards. Because then the choice becomes “die an early death or don’t“. Building the grit can be done on other, hopefully less lethal, projects.
Preface: I'm going to sound quite harsh by changing scales, so put your tough skin on before continuing.
This is certainly worse for the individual, but at society scale, the cost being the obvious devaluation of willpower is way too high. Way too high because everything good in that society was built almost exclusively by driven and strong-willed individuals.
I'll give a reply a go - of course we want strong people. That said, we've introduced incredible amounts of weird new things to the world. Advertising, shit food, tech, and a litany of responsibilities. Some of these are very bad and we all paying heavy prices for it.
I don't think we need to treat every bad thing society does as only needing a "toughen up" solution, instead we should fix the root cause.
An extreme example would be if the government poisons your water, maybe some medicine is ok. We should un-poison the water too, but I'm ok with medicine in the meantime.
Then we should start selecting strong willed individuals who do not fit into the “normie” path as those we uphold and show to be role models and examples.
Instead we collectively shit on them and force them into the most useless lifestyles ever devised - effectively pushing paper on rigid schedules or they don’t get to eat.
I’ve thought about this one quite a bit. The world has narrowed a whole lot to define acceptable behavior and who is allowed a seat at the table.
Almost all those “strong willed” individuals of the past who actually built things had lifestyles that would have gotten them entirely shunned from society today.
It’s not impossible but even compared to 30 years ago it’s an entirely different world for such folks. The way I “came up” in life would not be possible today due to the gatekeepers of “respectable society”.
Needing drugs to fit into that incredibly narrow and basic framework of a life should be of no surprise to anyone. Only a few of incredible luck and willpower and probably even naivety will survive that filter.
This whole topic is the epitome of “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome” - entirely predictable, and it’s what society seems to want.
Expanding on what a sibling comment said, we live in an adversarial environment. A successful food product is one you want to eat, whether you need it or not.
Willpower is important, I agree. Almost everyone needing willpower to not eat, though, is a fairly new phenomenon. If anything, the new drugs restore the balance that existed before —and if willpower is a limited resource, actively help society by returning to us what is taken by the relentless grind of profit maximization.
Willpower to not eat really isn't the same as willpower to eat reasonably (in quantity and quality), though. There's even exercise to offset the effects of suboptimal alimentation.
Either willpower is fungible, in which case it doesn’t matter what you use it on because you’re using it up no matter what, or it isn’t, in which case the original point about losing willpower due to leaning on GPL-1 inhibitors for weight loss is mostly invalid, since it wouldn’t affect the willpower to do other things.
The loss I wrote about is society-wide, not for individuals. Weak-willed people won't change, the problem is the damage to people who have willpower but are basically told it doesn't matter.
It's really a matter of incentives and proper valuation.
The importance of having a human be responsible is about alignment. We have a fundamental belief that human beings are comprehensible and have goals that are not completely opaque. That is not true of any piece of software. In the case of deterministic software, you can’t argue with a bug. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell it that no, that’s not what either the company or the user intended, the result will be the same.
With an AI, the problem is more subtle. The AI may absolutely be able to understand what you’re saying, and may not care at all, because its goals are not your goals, and you can’t tell what its goals are. Having a human be responsible bypasses that. The point is not to punish the AI, the point is to have a hope to stop it from doing things that are harmful.
We are constantly bombarded by links to information. It is reasonable to make snap judgments about the quality of the information based on who is providing it. If I’m looking for accurate, factual information on a topic that is clearly prone to magical thinking, a provider whose reputation is to listen to anyone, including people who very much engage in magical thinking, is actually a very bad source. Because they will not filter on anything beyond “is this neat to listen to.”
The problem is that the policy incentivizes pilots who develop problems to hide them. So pilots who should take time off to work through problems are instead flying planes, because the alternative is losing their career.
I don't have a stated preferred policy here. I'm questioning if the post I replied to really preferred this policy.
Policy is a constant battle of unintended consequences. I clearly understand that nothing isn't immune from those consequences, and so I'm constantly adjusting my preferred policy trying to find the least bad compromise.
I find the analogy quite apt. I have known drug addicts who I thought were recovered, but who could not fathom simply going to work and then going home to their families every night. They thought that was an incredibly boring life. Predictably, they relapsed. They could’ve caused significantly less stress to their families and loved ones by having more socially acceptable thrillseeking methods.
I think making a point broadcasting that one doesn’t care if other people who weren’t harming anyone die is callous, yes. Doubly so when one does it on a news story about people dying.
The thing is, they can and do harm others. Not just family and friends when they perish, but rescue workers who risk their own lives to save people who get into trouble. The article talks of 2 people who delivered her supplies, one died, the other has gone to Germany for frostbite treatment - as fellow climbers maybe they don't count in quite the same way, but rescue workers do die or get injured as well.
Rescue workers do their job willingly. No one really forces them to (usual exceptions for North Korea et al. apply here). I know an old emergency doctor who once survived a helicopter crash. He still walks with a limp and still flies missions with a helo, even though he is pushing sixty.
It is a specific sort of mentality on their part and frankly my experience with them is that they neither need nor appreciate any white-knighting for their safety. If they wanted a safe job, they could easily switch to pushing papers around, there is no shortage of such jobs in the modern world.
TBH daily, about 150 000 humans die, and I don't have the capacity to mourn them all.
That said, as you say, broadcasting that one does not care without even being asked is already an attitude and I wouldn't like to be in any sort of relationship with a person which spontaneously emits such messages.
Hmm. I don't know. I am glad they're not harming anyone else, but also -- like, I have kids. And if they were to get into this sort of thing, I'd at the least be like "Well, that's STUPID. Why put yourselves in harm's way deliberately like this. Stressing me and mom out. Do something that helps someone else instead."
