Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

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> "tautological" comes generally from logical reasoning as a field (in which i have interest but no formal training). is that what you're asking? it's "circular reasoning": a (usually hidden) premise comes around to "prove" the causal chain, which means it's not really proven at all, but merely reasserted. it's a pretty common logical mistake to fall for, because it's hard to detect without that close reading (the platitude that "falsehoods can travel the world before truth has had breakfast" comes to mind here as well).

The degree to which humanity runs on tautological reasoning is the part that I find interesting. And I very much agree with the "pretty common logical mistake to fall for" part - I've encountered very few even intelligent people who are highly resistant to it, at least on certain topics (generally: culture war topics, or anything from a non-deterministic problem space).

> i think political scientists do research the multidimensionality of issues all the time. it's just that politicization (as in partisan politics) wants to collapse the problem space into memes that can lodge in people's brains without further thinking, and simpler (binary) memes are more easily remembered and propagated.

Agree...

> in any case, the standard remedies certainly include voting reform (to lessen the incentive towards this binary collapse), parliametary systems (accommodating multiparty coalition-building), federalism (smaller governments are more responsive to the local populace), direct democracy or finer representation, etc.

It would be interesting to see what the world would be like if we actually ever tried these "reforms" instead of only talking about them. It is bizarre to me how no one seems to notice that we only talk about certain things, year after year, decade after decade, while simultaneously becoming angry at how suboptimal the world is....it's like "Well duh, what do you expect!!??? lol".

> "The degree to which humanity runs on tautological reasoning is the part that I find interesting."

yah, this is the amazing part. societies are much more resilient than we might otherwise give them credit for. we can endure a lot of suboptimality and hardship, and even reasoning our way into tenacious consent, because the activation energy for change is so high and the final outcome so uncertain. perhaps this is the best we can do--find stable local optima for limited spans of time.

but regardless, being able to uncover poor rationale like tautologies is one effective tool in the toolbox for reshaping political narratives. it's a slog for sure, but you do sometimes see narratives change (covid response being a vivid example). being indenpendently-minded (skeptical) helps a lot too, as you're not personally invested identity-wise in any given narrative, and are willing to change your mind more easily as new information rolls in.

we have hugely invested interests working against such reforms, but some of these will come to pass one day for sure, just because enough people will be fed up and demand it, despite the personal cost[*].

[*]: most people are wholly unsuited for conflict (even the constructive kind) because it's so uncomfortable and risky, and in developed countries as we're constructed, the payoff seems so disporportionate (a lot of gain going to others, a little going to you, but you seemingly taking much of the personal risk).

> yah, this is the amazing part. societies are much more resilient than we might otherwise give them credit for. we can endure a lot of suboptimality and hardship, and even reasoning our way into tenacious consent, because the activation energy for change is so high and the final outcome so uncertain. perhaps this is the best we can do--find stable local optima for limited spans of time.

You know, on one hand this is harmful...but then on the other hand I think it is also a bit of a silver lining. As it is, it seems to me that we are on some sort of a collision course with Mother Nature, climate change being the biggest threat but certainly not the only one (nuclear weapons, AI, etc). But if the shit was to ever really hit the fan, a "Get Out of Jail Free (maybe)" is in existence: humanity could [1] upgrade its firmware/software.

[1] Or, the option exists - whether we are able to actually take advantage of it is another matter, but even if we're not doing so good, I think a "bootsrapping" type deployment could maybe be pulled off, so we could maybe "work our way up" slowly, despite our inability to go directly to higher versions.

my frustration is that we can never even come close to living up to our ideals as a society because our selfishness and greed constantly undermine the process of improvement. i used to subscribe to the term "progressivism" for this process, but even that's been undermined by tribalism and political propaganda.

i'm actually not too concerned about end of the world scenarios. we, like cockroaches, will find a way to survive as a species, even if it's very suboptimal. that may sounds cynical, but it's mostly an optimistic perspective about our resilience.

and i know climate change is all the rage these days, but i'm way more concerned about pollution (literally killing millions now and for the past century+), which is what the climate change narrative tries to divert our attention away from (because it wholly fulfills our need to do something about, and our attentive capacity for, "environmentalism"). it's the same playbook used by sugar against fat, but perverted back against itself. the fossil fuel and auto lobbies seems to think they can do something about CO₂ (probably token efforts), but not all the rest of the pollutants they spew, so they're reluctantly on the climate change bandwagon as a risk mitigation and diversion strategy.

> my frustration is that we can never even come close to living up to our ideals as a society because our selfishness and greed constantly undermine the process of improvement.

Agree...but there are two change opportunities here: change people, and change the process.

> i used to subscribe to the term "progressivism" for this process, but even that's been undermined by tribalism and political propaganda.

Anything involving humans is prone to these sorts of problems, as it currently is anyways...but people can improve, and have done so!

Also, considering propaganda: I agree it is a very, very big problem - but two can play at that game, and at levels far higher than is currently done.

> i'm actually not too concerned about end of the world scenarios. we, like cockroaches, will find a way to survive as a species, even if it's very suboptimal. that may sounds cynical, but it's mostly an optimistic perspective about our resilience.

I worry less about the direct affects than I do the Nth order effects (mass migration, political polarization, war, etc).

> which is what the climate change narrative tries to divert our attention away from (because it wholly fulfills our need to do something about, and our attentive capacity for, "environmentalism").

I often wonder about this as well....it's been done before with great success. Sadly, any suggestion of this would likely be met with outrage by people in the movement, regardless of whether that reaction is beneficial to their cause.

> it's the same playbook used by sugar against fat, but perverted back against itself. the fossil fuel and auto lobbies seems to think they can do something about CO₂ (probably token efforts), but not all the rest of the pollutants they spew, so they're reluctantly on the climate change bandwagon as a risk mitigation and diversion strategy.

What's interesting about this to me (and the thousands of other examples like it, particularly politics): *"everyone" knows that this is how it works, but when that bell rings, Pavlov's dogs start drooling on cue.

After considering the comprehensive scenario for several years to the best of my ability, I have formed the belief that there is some sort of a fundamental problem with people, and reality itself. Call me an optimist, but I actually believe something substantial can be done about it.

oh, yes, i'm not saying all is lost (even if that's how it may have seemed), but that it's frustratingly slow to get people to discover and coalesce around actual truths, when special interests[0] are highly motivated to undermine truths and the general welfare time and again for personal and outsized gain.

it's tempting to throw out simplistic solutions like "let's skepticism!" but almost impossible to actually change people en masse like that. which then points to your second course of action, changing processes (via the systems that implement them), and that's something i truly believe in, but still find frustratingly slow.

[0]: plus the expert fallacy, which i mentioned before. i was just having this conversation last night about doctors, who know next to nothing in comparison to how complex biology is, but we still as a society feel compelled to venerate (and remunerate) doctors irrationally because they hold people's lives in their hands (understandably). but that outsized veneration (and remuneration) often leads to egos that can't admit ignorance or doubt and that leads to millions of unnecessary deaths and countless people with worse health outcomes. and that's not a condemnation of doctors, but a realistic understanding of where our collective knowledge lies relative to the long arc of evolution, but the societal distortion persists nonetheless.

> it's frustratingly slow to get people to discover and coalesce around actual truths

But what has been tried?

> ...when special interests[0] are highly motivated to undermine truths and the general welfare time and again for personal and outsized gain

And everyone knows it (or, is in possession of knowledge about it), yet their primitive, transparent methods work every time - rather paradoxical!

> it's tempting to throw out simplistic solutions like "let's skepticism!"

Conspiracy theorists (of which I am one) being one form, although my colleagues (bless their hearts) are....* a little unrefined and sloppy, to put it nicely.

> but almost impossible to actually change people en masse* like that.

Like that: agreed.

> i was just having this conversation last night about doctors, who know next to nothing in comparison to how complex biology is, but we still as a society feel compelled to venerate (and remunerate) doctors irrationally because they hold people's lives in their hands (understandably).

That the highly educated doctors (and other The Experts) themselves typically have little awareness of their shortcomings and delusions themselves may be suggestive of something important? And don't get me started on The Scientists!!

> but that outsized veneration (and remuneration) often leads to egos that can't admit ignorance or doubt...

Implying this problem didn't exist prior to the inflation of the ego?

> ...and that leads to millions of unnecessary deaths and countless people with worse health outcomes

Sir: not to worry - see, the line on this chart is moving up and to the right. All is well, stay the course.

> and that's not a condemnation of doctors...

Maybe it should be.

> ...but a realistic understanding of where our collective knowledge lies relative to the long arc of evolution, but the societal distortion persists nonetheless

It's a tricky problem!

This is an enjoyable conversation.

i've settled tentatively on the notion that nothing simplistic works for societal truthseeking, but a series of principles like education, community, (institutional and economic) fairness, etc. do work in concert to combat mediopolitical narratives that are wholly unconcerned with truth but rather control. this need for multidimenionalism is why change is so grindingly slow, but it's totally worth continuing to support and advance these principles at a local and state level against motivated, moneyed interests.

i should note that i do believe in science and the scientific method but reject scientism and expertise. part of this faith is understanding that no one person can embody the truth of a field, but all of the practitioners together can tell you insightful things about it. it's still ultimately up to the discernment of the observer to reach reasonable conclusions based on that imparted knowledge though.

Agree almost across the board.

So: what to do? :)

dunno? do you think there could be an easy answer?

for me, it boils down to keeping the brain open and helping others do the same. but that's a personal heuristic. most people don't want to pay the socioeconomic cost of being an independent thinker.

> it boils down to keeping the brain open and helping others do the same

This seems like a no-brainer to me...but now you have two problems!

well, you always had those two problems, it's just more apparent this way.

There is more than one way to have a problem though: with awareness of it, or not. And then within that binary there is...what? A spectrum? So goes the saying. But what if that much better representation is just starting to climb the curve of competence/complexity?

Is it highly unlikely that humanity might some time in the next couple hundred years look back at us and shake their heads about how simplistic and naive we are, and I include the so-called "experts" in that. Is it impossible that there's something that no one sees? Or maybe even more complex than that?

Well, it's possible a species would not find such a thing, because it never thought to look for it. Perhaps too busy looking for other things, of questionable utility.

for sure there will be a subset of humanity looking back and shaking their heads, and some of them will even have legitimate reasons for doing so. for instance, our brazenness around (bio-)chemistry, given that we are at the very beginning of that vast learning curve. that includes drugs, synthetic materials, fuels, combustion byproducts, you name it.

but yes, it's highly unlikely that they could shake their heads at every instance of today's ignorance and hubris in totality.

> for sure there will be a subset of humanity looking back and shaking their heads

Maybe that subset could be us!

> but yes, it's highly unlikely that they could shake their heads at every instance of today's ignorance and hubris in totality.

Why not? Can you not do this?

i just meant that no future population will see each and every foible we exhibit perfectly, because that's like hitting a trillion heads in a row. effectively impossible. but they could perhaps hit a hundred.

in any case, the hard part is not finding candidates but culling them down, analogous to the halting problem (or the bullshit asymmetry problem). is it an infinite calculation? probably.

and this thread has dropped pretty far into the archives, so i think it might be time to retire it. perhaps we can continue in a future thread.

> i just meant that no future population will see each and every foible we exhibit perfectly, because that's like hitting a trillion heads in a row. effectively impossible. but they could perhaps hit a hundred.

My motto is: aim for adequacy, not perfection.

> in any case, the hard part is not finding candidates but culling them down, analogous to the halting problem (or the bullshit asymmetry problem). is it an infinite calculation? probably.

Maybe. But also: maybe not!

> and this thread has dropped pretty far into the archives, so i think it might be time to retire it. perhaps we can continue in a future thread.

Haha, not a bad idea...I enjoyed the conversation, a breath of fresh air for HN.

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