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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Yet another piece that chooses the KPI by ignoring the existence of the individual. It’s essentially human resources management theory where units of human are fungible.

All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people in power.

I hoped that people would notice that in the Game of Thrones all that clever politics and noble fights were irrelevant to the people who don’t have aspirations of governing other people. If you are aspiring to uncover the secrets of the universe, if you have talent for music or maybe you just want a simple life - that is still irrelevant unless you can structure your output to feed into the power of a person who holds a title. Why? Because in the eyes of these sociopaths you are a unit of HR management and nothing more.

Unfortunately, an awful lot of people are fascinated with the throne games and are willing to give their lives for it.

For example, according to these people Putin is right because EU and NATO were expanding and Putin had to invade. Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is irrelevant for them, they will tell you that Ukrainians should have remained a buffer. Go you live your life as buffer.

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Yeah, it turbo sucks, but what matters is what we can actually do about it.

Power hungry people are always going to seek power, and they're always going to be better at it than people who aren't likewise driven. Democracy helps, but it still plainly falls under "Rules for Rulers" with extra keys. I wonder if the gamesmanship can't be addressed directly: elect a large body of "acceptable" candidates and randomly choose the ones that actually get power. This way, randomness dilutes the climbing incentive.

Of course, one needs power to implement any kind of change... :>

This is why intact culture, and a moral imperative, are far more important than ideology. It's why "spreading democracy" by destroying culture and people results in worse outcomes.

what does "intact culture" mean?

I'd consider an intact culture to be one that's capable of transmitting its knowledge and traditions to the next generation, and one that permits some kind of social learning [1]: It should be possible for a child or novice in the culture to be able to figure out how they are expected to behave, consistent parameters should exist for interactions, etc.

A broken culture in this case would be one which:

- Lacks a next generation/dies out (e.g. the Shakers because of their disdain for sex)

- There is a lack of agreement on foundational rules which make the culture impossible to enter, change, or expand (because the culture is crisis). Think managers giving you completely opposite instructions. One example would be say, attending the religious services of a friend/colleague. If the rules are clear and consistent and conveyed, it's possible to act in a respectful way. "This is how a Catholic wedding works." If you just have to guess what's offensive or what the taboos are, or you get contradicting answers, that's a broken culture. Even insular cultures need to teach children/new members, if they can't, they die.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory

I'm not that pessimistic. If you notice, when structured properly, the previously blood shedding monarchs cease to exist as the time goes.The USA and Europe were once battlegrounds just like most countries that once had smaller warlords that kept machiavelling all the times.

The the USA has many horrible sins but Pax Americana is a huge win in my opinion. I guess, local sociopaths are fighting their wars much more civilly when they don't dare to challenge higher powers, thus leaving people like artists, scientists, musicians, writers, kids, fathers, mothers etc. alone.

I'm usually very worried when someone challenges the position of the US instead of the methods and wrongdoings of the US. It usually means a local warlord will rally huge amount of human resources(which are actually individuals, but not this time) in a bid for power.

What about smaller effects? I'm not saying don't work on large scale solutions, but figuring out / iterating on smaller scale problems could give useful information around where problems crop up and how to go about tackling them.

Also trying to figure out what mechanisms are hard to individually subvert?

I do sometimes think that people who spend time building competitive multiplayer games would have some useful input to these questions.

We can do plenty about it, kill the evil people, quit being a fucking pawn.

Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Perhaps you don't owe evil people better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

In addition to what dang said: Can you kill a bunch of them without you becoming evil? Are you sure?

It’s very easy to not be evil, just define yourself to be good and thus any act that you perform is a necessary part of propagating good on the world.

That you are questioning my status is evil by definition!

> Power hungry people are always going to seek power, and they're always going to be better at it than people who aren't likewise driven.

From this Republicanism draws it's power. The powerful want to rule over other people, so devide the nation into many small states, give each a leader and let the people choose where they want to live. This forces leaders to compete with each other for head count. These socal climbers are naturally competitive with one another so they will go to great lengths to gain more population.

You have the benefits of a large country for things like national defence and natural disasters, but without the strong federal government that ends up homogenizing the states.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism

Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states competing as a free market, but the system has enough friction to prevent that being generally true in practice. For instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life and move to a different state.

* Many people want to live near their family, and moving means either leaving them or convincing multiple other people to leave as well.

* Most people won't be able to work remotely so they'll need a new job.

* Moving means you won't see your friends in person so you need a new social circle.

* Maybe you need to sell your house and buy a new one.

The state has to to something pretty egregious to convince someone to move. It's not like switching brands of toothpaste.

yeah it's not a free market, but it is an "(semi-)independent laboratory" system where one state can try an idea and others may copy it if it works well.

> Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states competing as a free market

I believe one of the core value propositions of the state is addressing perverse incentives that emerge from competition. Untaxed externalities, for example. Due to race-to-the-bottom dynamics, "let's compete on the matter" is equivalent to "let's ignore the perverse incentives." Not great.

That's the point of immigration? "My life sucks here, but I can get what I want there." Treating economic freedom as an "untaxed externality" to be rectified will eventually create economic immobility and stagnation. That has perverse incentives of its own.

As someone who did all of those things (except I didn't have a house to sell), I feel you've left out one of the biggest barriers: Immigration laws.

Imagine if, to switch from AT&T to Verizon, you had to shell out ten grand to Verizon and wait six years, with Verizon being able to add extra hoops and fees at any point in the process? If you fail at any point, Verizon will sign you back up for a contract under AT&T's worst terms. On top off all of this, you still have to pay Verizon's worst rates until the six year period is up.

AT&T could probably send someone to your house every month to punch you in the face and you still wouldn't switch. After all, for the first six years after you switch, Verizon will do the same.

We're talking about a theoretical federal republic where states aren't allowed to restrict immigration, but the federal government isn't strong enough to homogenise the laws here.

The EU is such an entity.

> For instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life and move to a different state.

Even harder to uproot your life and move away from a powerful national government.

This likewise ignores the individual. "Oh you don't like the politics where you live? You want human rights? Leave your family and friends and everything you've ever known and move a thousand miles away."

The alternative is: "Oh you don't like the politics where you live? You want human rights? 51% of your "peers" decided you don't get that. Here's my boot on your neck, stop resisting!"

I dunno, maybe there is another alternative?

I've read a lot of history and I haven't seen one. I can go as far back as Aristotle to see my same observation being made: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

The founding fathers designed the US as a republic to avoid the issues we see today.

> There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."[0]

[0]https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...

Faster transportation technology can lower the cost of moving. If you can travel 600mph reliably and cheaply, you can move 200 miles from your job and still enjoy a 20 minute commute. Families could relocate to a shared community without people changing jobs.

I suspect you might be aware of this, but Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota serries takes this idea as a very significant part of its world building, and I highly recommend it if you're willing to sit though 4 doorstops of books for things to pay off. Reading just the first book for the worldbuilding is probably worthwhile on its own even if you're not going to commit to the serries.

Yep ... especially fast, cheap public transport ... I had the "pleasure" to commute about 86 km for five years. In Germany that took me about 1,5 hours with most of the way a regional train that took about 40 minutes between two cities.

I would not do that again, but it was feasible.

Competition doesn't address the problem of "the people who are ultimately given power will be the ones who craved it and were willing to do anything to obtain it." It exacerbates the problem, if anything.

I think the point is that the power is also decentralized making it harder (not impossible) for those type of people to gain control over others.

Republicanism still selects for scoundrels.

Yes, it pits them against each other and thereby reduces their power -- in theory -- but it still selects for them. It doesn't even claim to be good at keeping them away. It only claims to reduce their power.

I don't think it's particularly good at reducing their power either, but these are two orthogonal issues.

<snip>

The poster you replied to was not talking about Republicans, "the party", but of Republicanism, "the political structure". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism

Haha, shit. Thanks <face palm>.

I once thought about what would be the best way to fill the seats in a legislative body.

My conclusion was that each person should get to choose up to two people from a randomly shuffled list of candidates. The list would be 2*N long where N=(num candidates/ num seats).

That way everyone can carefully vet their choice if they so desire without being overwhelmed. Pandering to your base also becomes much less effective, unless perhaps the base is very large.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition which appears to solve these problems and others.

Expunge them of their power, status, and station, and probably purge them of their existence in this realm entirely. Then recreate the system in such a way to defend against such a vulnerability. There is no other way, we just need the will to do it.

A number of people tried that in the 20th century with some pretty ugly results.

How about you just skip the expunge part and defend against the vulnerability with land value taxes and negative interest rates?

Well, it's irrelevant for 'normal' folks until the inevitable wars crush them under the tank treads of the ones doing the power manipulation (and/or they get laid off, or can't pay the bills with their ever inflating currency, or crushed under unrealistic workloads and burn out...).

In a society, it's never actually irrelevant for anyone. 'No man is an island' and all. Even someone who checked out so completely they moved into a cabin into the woods can get hit by errant bombs or shot by invading soldiers.

What I've learned over the years is that most people prefer to focus on the fun thing right in front of them rather than the larger mechanics of the environment they are in. That fundamentally makes them easier to manipulate for those trying to get control of the larger mechanics for their own benefit.

Sometimes, you get folks doing that where most everyone's benefits and their benefit aligns.

Often, especially if people aren't paying attention or there is a broken system that incentivizes it (which is typical) you get people whose idea of 'benefit' is pathological for others.

Figuring out how this all works, AND being able to influence the overall mechanics and systems so evil folks don't get into power is very difficult and often thankless. Most people can't handle it, so most people check out.

Bad actors like to encourage this, as it makes their life easier.

I don't think that I suggested not to focus on larger things.

My argument is actually about focusing on the larger and important things instead of being a device in the fight of the political class.

Oh and understanding how society works is definitely of great value, what I find great waste of human life and resources is to participate in the fight of sociopaths who try to interfere with the workings of the society to skew it in their favour.

How do you propose to keep an eye on and participate in steering the larger things without ‘participating in the fight of sociopaths’?

Even if somehow you have no sociopaths on ‘your side’ (whichever it is), fighting a sociopath by definition requires participation?

Steering large things doesn't need to be about fight of sociopaths. Having a governmental system with checks and balances also helps with keeping the sociopaths inefficient, by the time they assume any significant power they run out of energy, people catch up with the situation.

Nothing of these are original problems, some societies managed to build quite robust machines where sociopaths can't really cause huge damage.

I’ve never seen or heard of any society that has pulled it off for long. Where you see it even in the short term, that is more likely due to extreme effort put forward on a day to day basis by people both in the machine and outside it.

If you care to put forward some examples, I’m happy to try to provide more concrete information on what I mean.

It’s easy to write off leaders as sociopaths - but very few seem to check the boxes, if you pull yourself out of the politics.

More often often you see someone acting with a set of incentives and a problem that you don’t understand, making a decision you don’t agree with. Which sucks. Add on top that the extreme pressure, visibility, power, and wealth can cause some unique looking (but all too common) pathologies at those levels, and it gets even easier to us vs them them.

Someone can’t make hard decisions if their heart bleeds (for real) for every bad situation. No group will survive long with no one able to make hard decisions leading it.

No matter what anyone does, if the group size is large enough bad situations will happen no matter how good a system is, or how perfect anyone attempts to make it. For anyone to be able to be effective at that level, they have to be able to make decisions somewhat free of emotional affect, and to be good, they need to do that without completely losing it. Which is incredibly difficult.

It’s easier to just go ‘meh’, make the decision that’s better for them right now and move on.

And being an experienced leader - emotional contagion/forcing empathy as a manipulation tool is super common, and commonly used to try to ‘should’ someone into making a decision that is terrible for everyone.

We all do it (hopefully positively) - give a smile (regardless of how we’re actually feeling) to the boss, or try to relay how terrible it feels to them when a family emergency happens, etc. hoping they’ll empathize and treat us nicer.

And good bosses do, but also know how to draw the line if someone is abusing it.

A sociopath (by definition) acts anti-socially, and they won’t be at the head of any social group for long, if ever.

> All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people in power.

As an engineer by trade who turned to politics and government for a while, I find your perspective very simplistic. People are hardwired to seek recognition and social respect - also known as "power" - and build hierarchies around it. Politics exists in every profession and walk of life, as soon as you have people trying to achieve some common goal, you will have competition for decision making.

In professional politics, the grab for power is naked and participants understands the game, so the field tends to attract sociopaths effective at persuading others. That's all a good politician does at the end of the day, convinces people around them that acting in the interest of the politician is good for them too. Professionals cannot afford the luxury of ideology or vision, since any effort earnestly spent on those is time not spent furthering their own power, a weakness a better politician will surely exploit. Politicians will claim values and virtues, they will fish around in society for popular themes they can champion to increase their reach, but the only real project of any successful politician is themselves.

In other fields, reality tends to get in the way of pure politics, and you can't talk your way out of a brain surgery or spaghetti codebase. This tends to leave many naive people with the impression that politics is marginal and things are decided on technical merit, personal talent, work etc. This is not the case.

Every CEO, inventor, Nobel-prize winner, famous author and journalist is first and foremost a skilled politician. They were able to convince others to work in their lab or company, to publish them, to fund them, to support and promote them. Every step on the ladder to greatness required accumulating some form of political power - get a well funded lab supporting their research, an investment, a scholarship, a small team of friends to work on their idea.

At every step they competed with other politicians aiming for the same resources, because nobody can make it alone, and everyone would like an army supporting their own dreams. And throughout this process, successful climbers distributed booty to their supporters to keep them on their side.

Politics is not just for rulers, it's for anyone who wants to matter in any sense in society.

I don't know why you wrote this wall of text as an opposing argument, I don't recall claiming that politics don't exists somewhere. Sure politics exists, let's just say individuals exists too.

What I say is that the problems caused by politics emerge when politicians forget that other people are individuals. That doesn't mean that there are no politics in science, in music, in work or even in intimate relationships.

Are you suggesting that the only way to be a politician is to be sociopath? It is a cliche that I find too simplistic, honestly.

> That doesn't mean that there are no politics in science, in music, in work or even in intimate relationships.

I'm saying a bit more: that there's exactly the same kind of kind of politics that Mesquita and Smith talk about, and that, contrary to your dismissal, their insights are far from irrelevant to people who "uncover the secrets of the universe" or "have talent for music".

I don't think I dismissed the value of anything.

Last year I was downvoted like crazy when pointing out the fact that Lebanon is actually a buffer country between Israel and the rest of the Arab worlds created by western colonial powers.

I've also mentioned that the fact that any of the buffer countries work at all is a miracle, but it is not by design.

[1]Nearly 80% of households in Lebanon don't have food or money to buy food:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740362

>Last year I was downvoted like crazy when pointing out the fact that Lebanon is actually a buffer country between Israel and the rest of the Arab worlds created by western colonial powers.

You were probably down voted because we have access to maps

Your points exactly?

It's a politics 101, to be a buffer country you do not need to cover the entire borders, you can cover most of the borders or some of them similar to Ukraine.

Ukraine will be a buffer one way or another, for NATO or for Russia. It is very clear that the Ukrainian people would much rather be a buffer for NATO, but that doesn't change the fundamental nature of the situation. Recognizing that Putin's interests are the same as ours, just in reverse, is not saying that he is "right." And if you think these fights are irrelevant to ordinary people, you are obviously not thinking it through. What about all of the Russians whose money has just lost 30% of its value? What about all of the Germans who need Russian gas to heat their homes? And the Ukrainians who no longer have homes.

I think the last paragraph is a bit off. I have heard from multiple Ukrainian sources that there is corruption and oligarchy in the Ukraine. See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...

Then there was U.S. involvement in the coup in 2014 (Nuland and associated neoconservatives who think he world is a chessboard). Then there was talk about joining NATO and Zelensky hinting at getting nuclear weapons in the February Munich conference just before the invasion (nice escalation strategy).

People like Mearsheimer are realists: They know that both Putin and neoconservatives are playing Game of Thrones and advise the best strategy for the countries that are the pawns in that game.

>have heard from multiple Ukrainian sources that there is corruption and oligarchy in the Ukraine

I never claimed that Ukraine was not corrupt and Russia corrupted it. In fact, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries out there. Very long way down the road in joining the EU(maybe it can be accelerated due to the war).

What I'm talking about is the desire of people not to be part of the Russian way of governance and adopt the western practices.

Anyway, let's not turn the discussion into another Russia VS Ukraine thread.

If you think Putin and the neocons are the only ones playing chess, I have a bridge in NY to sell you.

> For example, according to these people Putin is right because EU and NATO were expanding and Putin had to invade. Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is irrelevant for them, they will tell you that Ukrainians should have remained a buffer. Go you live your life as buffer.

IMHO, what you describe is often just a special case of not thinking very holistically, zooming in on too few things while ignoring the whole, then reasoning about the whole based on those too few things. Oftentimes that leads to prioritizing something that's morally wrong, or otherwise getting priorities mixed up by elevating some less important thing over a more important thing. Those kinds of errors are also easily exploitable by controlling attention. E.g. if you attend narrowly enough to Putin's grievances, his actions will seem justified no matter how awful they are.

Another area where I often see this is economics.

Putin had to invade, as from his perception, Ukraine joining NATO means game over for Russia, economic (oil and gas reserves) and military-wise (strategic positioning of Ukraine), it's in the long-term interests of Russia.

Geopolitics has nothing to do with morality/freedom/feelings, it's all about power.

Don't get me wrong; morality, freedom, feelings, those have important place in your own family, friends, community

But if you're talking about places where you have little control eg. companies where competition is given prestige before you were hired in, or in the case of geopolitics, thousand years civilizations fighting for centuries, it's better for you to see what it is

As much as we strive for equality, justice, rationality, sensibility, beauty, and all of those admirable virtues, let be realistic here, we live in a dystopian planet where god is truly dead - men have played as gods in favour of power

Even Marcus Aurelius who was known as the philosopher king, couldn't do much to not slaughter Christians under his name, if we were to believe historians. This is equal to western media smearing Putin's name in the international community, when what he's doing is essentially identical to what the US did in countless countries it invaded

> Yet another piece that chooses the KPI by ignoring the existence of the individual. It’s essentially human resources management theory where units of human are fungible.

Check the about page.

> Farnam Street

> Founded and led by Shane Parrish, Farnam Street is run by a small but exceptional team.

I am on the same page with you.

Western elites associate themselves with Randist idea of natural right, or natural virtue, and very questionable take on the rationalistm.

When you let these people "rationalise," and "develop flexibility" long enough, they can be forced into rationalising just anything, including fascism. The new new creed of Harward degree totalitarianism apologists in the spotlight today is a great example of this.

The West got stuck in this very questionable mental framework, and is running in circles. The decision makers talk themselves unto death for very petty, hollow arguments, so strong is this "elite conditioning."

In reality, there is little for them to really choose. It's either right, common sense, and sound, or it is this "trying to rationalise." It's morally hollow people trying to find out smart ways to not being pointed on as such basically.

First of all, Game of Thrones isn't real.

> Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is irrelevant for them

I encourage you to look into who actually came into power following Ukraine's 2014 coup (hint: look up the founders and accomplices of the "Yalta European Strategy") and what its economy has looked before and after.

A Christmas Carol is also not a real story but it is a great masterpiece helping us think about life.

PS. I'm Bulgaria born, I know very well what it is like being under Russian influence or Western influence but thanks for the reading material.

> A Christmas Carol is also not a real story but it is a great masterpiece helping us think about life.

Sure, if your audience is literally children.

Using a series of (violent) smut novels as a guide for complex human dynamics is not something that serious people do.

>Using a series of (violent) smut novels as a guide for complex human dynamics

That's a straw man argument. I don't suggest for guidance of society by Lord of the Rings novels.

I don't know if I should reply to you, that's very low quality conversation here. What's next? Name calling? Maybe you should consider the possibility that you are not one of those serious people and try reading a book by Charles Dickens.

No, Game of Thrones is a series of violent smut novels and a television series based on said novels.

>No?

No to what? Can you be more specific? What are you objecting to?

You claimed what he said is a strawman. He didn't create a metaphorical straw man to defeat, and what he said is accurate.

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