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Comment by nkoren | Hacker News Reader

Serious advice: you're using your brain wrong. Find something better to do with it. Questions which start with "what if everyone <insert verb here>" are bad questions. People will always behave in diverse, contradictory, and conflicting ways. We've been doing that pretty much since the Cambrian explosion, and we're not going to stop any time soon. Asking what would happen if we did is useless -- like asking what would happen if gravity reversed, or if black was white and white was black.

If you're vexxed by income inequality and consumerism and environmental degradation and such -- as I am -- then it's best to pursue avenues of enquiry and develop theses which aren't fundamentally impossible from the fifth syllable onwards.

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> Serious advice: you're using your brain wrong. Find something better to do with it. Questions which start with "what if everyone <insert verb here>" are bad questions. People will always behave in diverse, contradictory, and conflicting ways.

Serious advice #1: thought experiments can have value even if the thought experiment does not directly model plausible human behavior. The same is true of statistical, scientific, mathematical, and philosophical inquiry. Many foundation proofs begin with "assume this unlikely thing is true." Heck, laissez-faire capitalism as a concept started as a thought experiment based around the fiction of a prior redistribution of wealth (too bad everyone seems to forget that first part).

This is a discussion forum, and the question "what if the majority of folks start doing ______" isn't so absurd a question to ask in all but the most degenerate cases.

> like asking what would happen if gravity reversed

Ironically written given the front page has a detailed writeup on an experiment looking for signs of anti-gravity in the cosmos.

Serious Advice 2: "If you're vexxed by income inequality and consumerism and environmental degradation and such -- as I am" is defining activism of any sort with you as its focal point. Any such activism is doomed, because one need only render you unlikable to derail even unrelated work (as we have seen in the UK's politics these last few years). It's even worse to admonish other people to operate this way. Reconsider it, please.

I see I wasn't clear because I used absolute terms. Please insert your own desired population percentages for the questions where I've implied 100%.

In the meantime, I'll still consider the ideas because I find it useful. There are no bad questions, just people who find it useful to judge others and their questions. I've found it transformationally useful to minimize my judgment, so I don't count myself among that crowd anymore and I don't judge others who do.

If it's the absolute terms I used, like "everyone," that's put you off, cool. Let's instead imagine what would happen if a majority chose to. Or 25%. Or 3.5%.

Just as you chose to answer a question I didn't ask, you could've easily modified my questions to fit your standards.

Serious advice: Responding with judgment isn't typically conducive to learning unless the recipient has learned to let go of other people's judgments. Here's a paper on the subject I find useful.

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3068754

This is a good reply, and I apologise for the judgemental reaction.

We probably actually share much of the same ethos. Personally I think it would be absolutely if everybody dropped mushrooms and spent a week in the wilderness coming to terms with the unity of consciousness of all beings and the absurdity of building a society based on false economies of wage labour and conspicuous consumption, etc. Worked wonders for me, and no doubt it would be groovy if everybody else did that too.

The severity my reaction is due to the fact that I've seen too many people hit this wavelength and then get lost in the daydream of what would happen if literally everybody else got on this wavelength too. And then spend -- and please believe that I mean this very very literally -- the entire rest of their lives lost in that daydream. I find this to be tragic, because I think that such people have something to contribute to the world, and pursuing this question explicitly degrades their ability to do so.

And thus I actually do think it's a bad question. If you're interested in changing the world, then becoming attached to any kind of theory whose initial predicate is fundamentally impossible means that you are not going to change the world.

A far better starting point is: "how can I change the world without anybody noticing at all"? Followed closely by: "how can I change the world if I get one in a million people to see things my way?" Work your way up from there. Starting from the other direction is a mind-killer.

You're assuming parent wasn't going for the top comment. In addition to the open-ended hypothetical, popular tactics include prefacing with "This is an unpopular opinion" and "My theory is". Depending on the goal, they might be using their brain correctly. Stacking open-ended hypotheticals is a savvy move.

I wasn't, but now I'm going to experiment with it as a means of building a following for my design-your-own-religion religion!

I think you're onto something. Perhaps it's best to focus on the design of the design though. A further derivative of subjectivity ought to fit the bill! :)

I started by working on a theory of design. The religion is an artistic packaging of a programming framework for the human self. It's all centered around hacking my perceptions.

Does that seem to address what you're talking about? Cause now I'm intrigued by whatever other thoughts you might have.

Good advice, although the original post could be the basis for a sweet fictional novel.

Reality is a sweet fictional novel we're writing together. It's why I ask fanciful questions.

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