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One more thing. I'm on Spring Break now, so over the next week I'm going to put together something that is actually coherent and readable in a single sitting. This thread is so disorganized and has so many derails that it is unreasonable to expect anyone to actually read it anymore, but I think there is a lot of valuable content here that should get a wider audience, if for no other reason than to make sure others read Cefte and T-1000's stories. I was going to post a new thread on the topic when I finished with the organization project. It should be done soon.
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Mar 9, 2012 22:00
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Eripsa, you seem to think that if you solve the distribution problem, you will also solve the sustainability problem. This is not true at all. You are correct that solving distribution will not itself solve sustainability. You also need to solve the issues of production, motivating labor, and the knowledge problem (so you know how to distribute). However, I've said a lot about those other problems too, so I don't think I'm just talking about distribution. In any case, I'm not arguing that solving distribution will solve sustainability. Instead, I'm arguing that solving sustainability requires solving distribution; you won't get sustainability without a solution to the distribution problem. So solving distribution is at least a significant step towards sustainability. I think of it as follows. I am assuming that we have already solved the production problem (we produce enough to sustain ourselves, if only it were distributed properly). The Marble Network is designed to solve the knowledge problem (it gives a mechanism for collecting all the data), but it solves the knowledge problem in such a way that also makes at least some headway into the motivation and distribution problem. That's not itself enough for sustainability, but all the necessary parts are there, and they just need to be tweaked in the right way. So while my system doesn't guarantee sustainability, it makes sure that all the pieces are available in order to get sustainability, if we are clever enough about doing it properly. This is an improvement over the existing system which doesn't even allow access to the basic pieces needed to put a sustainable system together, and renders most of us powerless to do anything about it even if we did.
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Mar 9, 2012 22:10
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Lyesh posted:That's great that you have nothing to hide. Plenty of people do have legitimate things to hide, and the attention economy allows their neighbors, rather than faceless corporations, to find out what they're doing. The fact that you have something to hide does not itself justify hiding it from the collective. As I said, the basic justification for my view is that the interests of the collective outweigh and take precedence over the interests of the individual. You haven't addressed this basic power structure of my system, which makes your objections so difficult to deal with. You don't seem to acknowledge any legitimate reason to impinge on the privacy of the individual; instead, you seem to think that the individual's interest in their own privacy is itself reason enough to exclude any outside scrutiny. I have repeatedly denied that the individual's interest alone is sufficient reason for deciding these cases. I don't think the individuals interests are irrelevant, and they should be respected as far as possible, but insofar as the collective's interest run counter to the individual's, then the collective takes precedence. This is the basic ontological orientation of my view, and you are complaining about the consequences of the view without addressing the basic theoretical justification, so I don't know what else to say until you address my actual argument. quote:Now if this would eliminate hunger and poverty worldwide it still might be worth it, but going from here to something like Eripsa's model won't necessarily do that. There's a sort of hyperfocus in this thread on capitalism as the only problem causing poverty that's really disquieting. I think this is an unfair reading of my view. I haven't argued that poverty is the fault of capitalism and not, say politics; in fact, much of the defense I've given of my system is political and not economic. My view has consistently been that there isn't a strong distinction between governments and economies, and we fundamentally cripple our collective ability to deal with genuine human problems by artificially distinguishing the two. The problem right now is that our political infrastructure has been completely bought out by the capitalists so that they have basically free reign over the planet. I don't think that's strictly a problem with capitalism itself; it is mostly a problem with so-called "corruption". But "corruption" in this case is just our recognition that the influence of power will not respect our institutional divisions and obsolete forms of social organization. And it is simply foolish to expect this problem will be solved through entirely "economic" or entirely "political" methods. I think the system is hosed to the core and needs to be stripped down and rebuilt again from basic principles. I think if we are going to fix this mess we need to start from scratch and reconceptualize what we are doing at the level of basic theory: of the values, relations, objects, and organizations that will structure society and inform our actions therein. If I were just trying to give an economic critique I wouldn't be working at that level of analysis.
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Mar 13, 2012 20:03
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Lyesh posted:No, I think that some people will literally die if they don't have a certain amount of privacy and that your system deals with this poorly. That can be outweighed by the interest of the collective, as I acknowledged, but it's an important point. People here are treating privacy as a luxury when it really isn't for, say, women who need to have abortions. These examples still do not address the fundamental issue, which is about the balance of collective and individual interests. I have never denied that people have an interest in being private, but giving more examples of such cases doesn't help whatsoever in finding the right balance, which is what I'm trying to do here. I am saying that there is a collective interest in knowing how many abortions are performed, and where, and in what circumstances, because knowing this information is vital to being able to sustain and improve the services themselves. You are saying that you would die if people know you had an abortion, and that's fine, but that has nothing to do with the issue of getting the data. In fact, I've proposed a specific compromise for how to deal with the issue, which you dismissed because "AOL lol". So I'd like you to consider my actual proposal, and explain why you find it unsatisfying. Let's take a morally neutral example. Let's say I bake cookies every day for our office. I'm giving the cookies freely and not asking anything in return, with one exception. I put a little chalk board near the cookie jar, and I ask that when you take a cookie, you put a tally mark on the board. I'd like you to do that because it helps me keep track of how many cookies get eaten every day, and that way I don't have to root around in the jar and touch all the food. You instantly complain that your right to eat privately has been compromised. You say that you don't want everyone to know if you've eaten a cookie; you say that the friendly weight loss competitions around the office have put unnecessary social pressure on you and amount to a hostile work environment, and you can't bear to risk the agony of having others know that you are engaged in the unhealthy behavior of cookie consumption. So my response is to say you are right, no one needs to know that you ate a cookie. I don't care how many cookies you eat, I just care how many cookies are eaten. utting a chalk mark on the board isn't really about violating your right to privacy, it is about making sure we have enough cookies. If you want us to keep having cookies, you really should document your use on the board. You respond that the chalk board isn't really anonymous. If someone knew your handwriting they might be able to make out that you had taken one; or they can inspect your fingers to find the traces of chalk left behind. That's true enough; I don't think there is any genuine anonymity anyway. If someone is hell bent on finding out if you ate a cookie they will figure it out one way or another, no matter how well I design my cookie jar. I can only tell you that I don't care how many cookies you eat, and it won't make me stop making cookies, unless you are gorging yourself on 10,000 cookies every day or something equally ridiculous where we'd all recognize the need for some reasonable limits. And I think that's a reasonable thing to ask from you, in exchange for as many cookies as you can reasonably eat for free. You are arguing that the privacy violation is still too extreme, but I don't see it, and you haven't presented an argument that helps me see it any better.
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Mar 13, 2012 20:58
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The Duke of Ben posted:"Hm, we've noticed a significant rise in the number of abortions in [tinytown, Vermont]. Which of these three women do you think it was?" People will have these conversations whether or not we are tracking the data. My system doesn't give these conversations any more power than they have now, and I would argue that they would have significantly less power in my system because there are no institutional centers of power to leverage against individuals. In America today there are actual political debates among leading politicians about basic issues like access to contraception. These debates are worrying because the politicians actually wield the political power to restrict access to contraception, and the majority of people realize full well that this is a terrible thing that we have very little power to stop. In my system, I'm sure there would still be socially regressive idiots with moronic and hatefilled opinions who will yell their ignorant beliefs loudly. But the only political power that exists with regard to contraception is the actual will of actual people to do the labor to produce and distribute those contraceptive aids, and I am quite confident that such people aren't going anywhere no matter how loudly the ignorant yell, because in my system they have no institutional obligation to listen to those idiots. So if you reject my system, it is either because you prefer the current system where a minority of idiots can gently caress things over for everyone, or because you are afraid that humanity is itself an idiot and will gently caress itself over, or because you still don't understand how my system actually works. By the principle of charity, I assume it is still the latter.
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Mar 13, 2012 21:07
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Copley Depot posted:Maybe I'm missing something, but re abortions: isn't a better solution just to have each abortion provider report how many abortions they perform in a year? Similarly for cookies - you just count how many cookies are left of those you bring in every day. Perhaps. Perhaps knowing more specific details might be useful. Suppose the data shows that a lot of abortions are performed just after spring break (say). This might highlight the need to do more aggressive sex ed and contraceptive outreach in the run up to spring break. Or whatever. The idea is that more information might always help in making more informed decisions, and so you have to find the right place where the tradeoffs work well for everyone. I'm trying to engage in a conversation about where we might draw the lines in sensible places, and I'm trying to say a lot about my reasons and justifications and values that inform my views on where I think the lines should be drawn. Lyesh isn't arguing about line drawing, she is arguing about the principle. Death, for Lyesh, is sometimes preferable to a lack of privacy, and thus, anywhere I might draw a line is intolerable. I think this is a completely unreasonable position, but when I try to point out the unreasonableness, she just asserts the principle, coupled with emotional and morally charged cases designed to undermine reasonable discussion entirely. Yes, it is sometimes in the public's interest to know details about your abortion, because getting feedback on the products of our social order is how we are able to improve our social order. If we never investigate to find correlations between, say, teen pregnancy and poverty, or between religious belief and suicide, or whatever, then we can never take the steps to correct these issues and build a better society. And I know you think your abortion or your suicide attempt is a purely private matter between you and your doctor, but it isn't. It is also a matter of public health and safety, and it has its origins in a wide distribution of public and social institutions and flows of power and attention, and if we ever have a hope of correcting any of it, or even just dealing with it like responsible adults, then to some extent we need to treat these issues collectively.
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Mar 13, 2012 21:29
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Install Gentoo posted:How will they have those conversations now? Is there some place I could go right now to see how much ky jelly was bought, how many abortions happened, and what surgeries are scheduled in my town? Especially considering that any or all of those activities, while done by people in my town, might take place in entirely different towns. Up until 2003 there were laws against sodomy in this country. So yes, there were people in power who used that power to determine what kinds of sexual activity was and wasn't legal. There is nothing even close to something that could count as an "anti-sodomy law" in my system.
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Mar 13, 2012 21:35
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Install Gentoo posted:Those laws never let people know how much KY Jelly was being purchased. Stop dodging the question. Where would I find that out now (or then)? I'm not dodging any question, I'm trying to being your inane questions back on track. The only people who probably know how much KY jelly is the company that made the KY jelly. They are analyzing this data in order to figure out how to maximize profit and other related goods in a capitalist system (market share, etc). They are not doing it to maximize the public good. That company is regulated by a state government that is concerned primarily with maximizing the profits of capitalists, and if interested otherwise is interested in things like enforcing sodomy laws. I am saying that if we put this information out in public to scrutinize publicly we might do a better job of directing these resources to suit the public good. Nothing about this claim whatever depends on whether we now know of information about production, and your questions are entirely a derail from this point. I have neither made a claim that will be proven wrong by this line of questioning, nor will it help illuminate the overall theory by pursuing this line of questioning.
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Mar 13, 2012 23:14
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Also, just found this. Haven't finished watching, but it is pretty much exactly along the lines I've been discussing in this thread. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VOY3PiDDgP8#! edit: HA! At 19:00 min the slide clearly uses "traffic from cars" as an example of emergent behavior. Suck on that, thread.
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Mar 13, 2012 23:15
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Sir John Falstaff posted:(And let's be clear, this isn't just about privacy--there is as much of a collective interest in "people having privacy," as well as individual invasions of privacy, as there is a collective interest in "people being fed," as well as individual instances of starvation, for example.) That's absolutely right. I'm talking about how to balance collective interest with individual interest. Against the attempt to even discuss such a balancing act, I am met in this thread with simple refusal to engage in even a discussion of where the balance lies. The very idea that individual privacy isn't a completely sacred and impenetrable bubble is met with obstinate derision, as if it constituted a refutation in itself.
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Mar 13, 2012 23:41
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The youtube video above just led me to this: http://ifisc.uib-csic.es/research_topics/socio/culture.html Hey look, an academic who modeled the transmission of culture by treating it as a self-organized network. With a simple Java applet. That works more or less how I described in this thread.
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Mar 14, 2012 00:05
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T-1000 posted:Society doesn't really gain a lot by this Why do you think this? Why, a priori, should we assume that this information isn't necessary? We are talking about the dynamics of complex networks. All the data matters. It is the same reason that the Feds want to spy on all the network traffic, because it is only by watching the whole network will you find the relevant patterns. You need to watch the whole pattern of use in order to make the right predictions. quote:Open question to the thread: are there any worthwhile works of fiction involving a world without privacy? All I can think of is 1984 and bits of Minority Report. Again, you aren't taking my position seriously. Each of these dystopic visions of the future are centrally controlled and operated by an authority- the state, big brother, whatever. I'm advocating an anarchistic story, where there is no one who can leverage any institutional power against you. quote:I have no idea what the hell this is supposed to model, it's a little grid that blinks. Watch the lecture, or read the article, both of which require just a click of a link. Jesus, do I have to ask people to actually consider the links and information I'm posting in this thread again? I think we should close this thread. I was going to just ignore it, but Lyesh had posted responses to issues I had raised previously, which I didn't think she had answered properly then, and I don't think is getting a fair shake now. But I think at the very least we need to start this thread over. I am working on the reorganization now, and it is coming along well. I'll post a new thread when I am done.
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Mar 14, 2012 00:31
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T-1000 posted:It's a 25 page essay or a 40 minute video. This thread is interesting but not that interesting. An executive summary would be helpful. The lecture models the dynamics of complex networks of agents, using Axelrod's model of the transmission of culture, which is described in that paper. It is basically a mathematical model of a self-organized social system. It models a few different forms of self-organization, and then discusses the difference between a self-organized model and a "propaganda" model with top-down structure. The particular finding being reported here concerns the apparent fact that in complex networks of a certain sort, it is easier to achieve unanimity (which the lecture mistakes with consensus) by quietly offering a suggestion. A strongly worded message will tend to have a polarizing effect on the culture. The lecture is not incredibly interesting and parts of it are highly technical, but it is talking about the same basic idea of social self-organization as I've been discussing in this thread, and it links to a variety of mainstream mathematics, economics, and sociology to support the thesis. The video has 35 views on YouTube, and I don't know anything about the institution that supported the lecture, but the guy giving the lecture appears to be well published in some pretty standard journals. The point of linking this video, like the robot video before, is that the basic idea of consensus as social self-organization, and of thinking about human society in self-organized terms, is not a "crazy idea" that can be laughed at outright. These ideas are on the cutting edge of the scientific narrative, and haven't yet coalesced into a story that is easy to digest enough to put as a cover article for Time Magazine. A lot of this material, especially the mathematics, is only a few decades only and hasn't deeply penetrated academia yet, much less seeped out into the public. But I think all the pieces are already laying around, and I'm trying to describe how I think they fit together. So I'm sorry I can't give it a sound byte yet. Give use 20 years, I'm sure we'll have something by then.
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Mar 14, 2012 01:26
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You are both asking completely valid, reasonable questions that I have responded to several times over in this thread. I fully accept the fact that this thread is not organized in a way to be understandable. I am in the process of reorganizing the system in a way that can be more easily understood at a first pass, and so I can present it in a way that makes it virtues more obvious to someone unfamiliar with the basic idea of a self-organized system. I think the question "are marbles like currency?" has especially been dealt with quite sufficiently, and so asking that question raises serious doubts that the thread has been adequately understood, and I want to hold off responding and beating dead horses until I have the system organized in a way that will be more compelling to the average reader. I also don't think the characterization that I reject all criticism is fair. I've responded to almost every strand of criticism in the thread. The vast majority of criticism has come from a basic misunderstanding of the view (and of the surrounding conceptual territory), and I've done my best in this thread to explain that territory as best I can. But I don't think I need to change my view because people misunderstand it; all that means is I need a better method of presentation. A significant amount of criticism I have accepted as an accurate consequence of the view, and I have defended the position while accepting those unpopular consequences. For instance, Lyesh's concern about privacy. I have explained at length the conceptual basis for my position, and she hasn't offered any compelling or systematic objection beyond the dogmatic "well I don't like it", and I don't find that a compelling reason to change my position. On other issues, I have admitted my position is relatively open, such as the degree of anonymity in the system. In general, my view is that it is the people that should decide how to best self organize, and I don't have solutions to all the specific problems they face. All I have is a conception of a self-organized society, and the basic values, economic systems, and technological infrastructure that would be required for maintaining the system. I think the possibility of a genuinely self-organized, sustainable, directly democratic, bottom-up, leaderless cashless society is compelling enough to try and find some possible way to make it work. The people in this thread have dismissed the very idea as either lunacy or inhumanity, to the point of suggesting that self-organization is itself something to be feared, that a collection of humans without an appointed leader or Sovereign State is unruly, mob-like, incapable of taking care of itself. This attitude is the absolute worst core of the regressive side of everyday American politics, and it is this shared attitude that continues to perpetuate and support the corrupt oligarchy that has been systematically destroying the planet for a few decades now and shows no signs of slowing down. It is not surprising that people have such trouble imagining a different order, but the order I am proposing is quite radically different from the one we live in today, and you shouldn't expect it will be easy to actually imagine alternative social orders. It is particularly difficult because I'm not saying "It MUST BE LIKE THIS!" I am only giving a basic framework, a set of algorithms and procedures and models for thinking about collective human activity, and it would be up to the actual participants to fill in the details. I don't know what the collective will consent to when the issues come before it. But I have a good idea as to how they should deal with those issues when they arise, and of the values that should inform their decisions. WAMPA_STOMPA, the fact that you completely miss the point of the ant mill is particularly saddening, because I think it is one of the clearest examples I offer in this thread. An ant mill is the result of a collection of cooperators who nevertheless fail to cooperate properly because the environment they are actually in is not the environment their cooperative behavior is designed to suit. You need both cooperators and structured environments, and when the ants lack the latter the whole system crashes. The point is not that this is a possibility on my system. It is a possibility in every system of collective agency. The system we live in right now is precisely an example of a collection of cooperators in an environment that is ill-suited for their cooperation. No one wants the planet to burn and civilization to expire, but we are trapped inside infrastructure that is inevitably heading in that direction, and no one of us is in a position to turn the train around and make it function properly. The infrastructure we find ourselves in is designed precisely to maximize profit for capitalists, at all expense, and our whole collective behavior is performing that function incredibly well, and it is literally killing or enslaving or starving billions of people in order to do it. And we know for a fact that this system is unsustainable, we know that the system is crashing. The attention economy is meant to supply the basic infrastructure that ensures cooperative behaviors are actually collected and productively used by the social economy, so that the focus of the system will always be directed to the sustainability of the system itself, more than any particular goal of its participants (like maximizing personal wealth). Although it is possible to be incredibly wealthy in my system, that wealth comes through the consensus of the people, as a reflection of their values, and not through arbitrary claims to "ownership" and "property" and consolidate the fruits of collective efforts into the hands of the few. I can tell from your posts, and others in this thread, that you don't understand how this can possibly be. Well, I'm working on it, I promise.
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Mar 14, 2012 06:42
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The Duke of Ben posted:This is amazingly insightful while maintaining perfectly the criticisms posted about marbles. Except the "farmers" are just the people who happen to work at the farm, and the farms are open for anyone to come help work on them, so if some group of people find their needs aren't being met with current production methods, they are entirely empowered to assist in the production process and, thereby, gain influence in determining how the food and such is distributed. You are all treating this system on the old model, where it is owned by someone who can exclude you from resources if they don't like you for whatever reason. Because you assume an ownership model, the options seem to be that either the owners produce for you materials that exactly suit your specifications-- in which case my system is absurdly idealistic and will never be realized-- or that the owners exclude your from access entirely, and you are SOL-- in which case my system is a horrible dystopia that no one would ever consent to. But this is again to misunderstand how the system works. The whole system is set up not to guarantee some specific outcome, but instead to encourage the participation and cooperation of its members. I'm outlining a series of infrastructural changes that will enable people to address the problems they encounter. So if you find that your neighborhood seems to be systematically overlooking when the Twinkie people are distributing their caked goods, then you are empowered in my system to get involved in the production of Twinkies, and thereby gain some influence in how they are distributed, so you can ensure that they end up in your neighborhood fairly. This is what it means to be self-organized: if the system needs to be changed, its members are empowered to change it directly. No one is going to ensure you get the Twinkies unless you care enough to make sure you get them too, and my system allows straightforward and accessible ways of channeling the power of the collective to whatever ends you have, and all participants in my system equally have that opportunity. Oh, you just want the twinkies without doing any work? Too bad. Your consumption is tied to your production, and making those links salient and tractable is the only way we become sustainable. One of the big problems, psychologically, with capitalist consumption is that it breeds the idea that consumption can come for free, because the real costs of consumption are pushed behind the veil of the dollar. Besides, you have no other occupation in this system except standing up for the things that matter to you; if Twinkies don't rank highly enough on that list to do anything about it, then you have to ask yourself how much you really want that Twinkie. In other words, my system is designed to eliminate mindless consumption. Who said sustainability would be easy? That said, Twinkies aren't that hard to produce, and we already know that a few million people would like one, so we can make a bunch in advance to anticipate that use. Maybe the only twinkie activism you need in this case is to "like" the Twinkie facebook page (or whatever) to ensure the trucks keep running. I don't think that's too much to ask. So I know you are itching to object again, but let's take stock. I'm proposing a system where everyone is guaranteed the basic materials needed to survive, where no one lives in abject poverty. Additionally, everyone's access to luxury goods beyond the bare essentials is going to be directly tied to the value of their labor, as judged directly by the people themselves: the more useful the more people find the products of your labor, the better off your are within the system. The objections in this thread are far more muddled and poorly thought out than anything I've written, and often are confused about whether this is a purely bad idea, or it is a good idea that would never work in practice. I think its pretty clear that at least this is a good idea, but heaven forbid any of you admit it.
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Mar 14, 2012 20:28
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Does anyone know of (or can quickly code) a BBCode -> Wiki markup converter? I'm trying to upload all these posts to a wiki, and converting all the links and formatting is taking a lot of time. I know the process can be automated, probably with a single regex if I were clever enough, but I haven't coded in years. I basically want exactly this but that actually formats for MediaWiki properly, because this one has the conversions all wrong. If someone is able to help, I can provide a list of the specific conversions I need. PM me please.
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Mar 14, 2012 20:36
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Can I get a mod's permission to close the thread? I'll post a new thread when I have it ready.
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Mar 15, 2012 01:16
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