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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

The unfortunate state of things is that we've run out of the problems that we can solve and are left with the problem we can't solve.

Our society/species is pretty terrible with problems that involve diffuse responsibility. Part of the problem is that we don't have social technologies equipped to handle diffuse responsibility, and another is that we have social agents who exploit this social bug to make money.

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I’ve been reading Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” recently. The book makes the point that the history of Homo Sapiens coincides with mass extinction - humankind has been disrupting and destroying habitats since it rapidly expanded out of Africa 300k years ago. Even before the agricultural revolution.

It happens time and again throughout various geographies and histories, Homo Sapiens arrive somewhere and then a ton of species go extinct. Abstract ideas evolve faster than genes, and the evolution of the ability to process such ideas allowed our species to jump to the top of the food chain too fast for the typical checks and balances in nature to take place.

I think the best we can probably do is to continue to invest in education, science and technology. If people (particularly women) are educated and empowered enough, then it seems to drive down birth rates. Science and technology because if we can drive the costs of fixing these issues low enough, then we might be one day be able to “undo” some of the tragedies that we’ll have caused along the way.

Culling luxury/non-essential consumption would already get us quite far. But we wanted dutiful consumers and boy do we have them now; plus we built a large part of our wealth on that behavior so it sticks.

And to add to that, virtually every externality of our consumption is invisible at the point of sale, and it requires abstract thinking to even get the idea that there might be something wrong with it. But even with an inquisitive mind finding out the concrete externalities is really difficult when the deed is done and hidden in complex supply chains.

Really our best bet I think is to define minimum untouchable habitat and have the effects of that ripple through the economy on its own (the effects of this will be really unpopular, I fear; wonder how 30 by 30 will turn out). Not sure (hard) technology or education could help us in a way or on a timespan that matters by now, but I guess one needs to do appropriate things on all fronts, fit-for-purpose for the various societies/target groups.

So much for the naive idea that humanity lived in harmony with nature until the rise of civilization a few thousand years ago. We and our extinct cousins were invasive species migrating out of Africa.

Agreed about driving down the cost of fixing these problems. They’re so complex and universal that there is no simple solution everyone can just vote on.

Thanks for the book recommendation.

Does anyone know a good reference that discusses technology in the context of evolution? I think it's less abstract ideas and more technology that evolution can't keep up with. It's likely many other animal species can think abstractly, such as whales. But it is our technology development that surpasess everything, even our own emotional ability and intelligence.

I don't like it, but it could be worth reading Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants". I find some flaws in Kelly's thinking, but his central idea (as presented in this book) is worth considering.

Thanks for recommending that. I've never heard of it. Do you mind elaborating on what you think the flaws are?

> If people (particularly women) are educated and empowered enough, then it seems to drive down birth rates

Good luck selling that line when people like Musk are on record saying that it's better for the planet and for humanity to have more kids

I don’t know if Musk said exactly this. But what I find interesting is that people would rather evoke the name of Elon for some political point winning than to actually discuss the merits of the idea itself.

it’s more confusing to me given the fact that Musk literally commercialized and made viable the idea of a car that has a true chance to reduce pollution.

No we can solve these problems. We know the solutions. It's government regulation, complete with punative fines and imprisonment on not just corporations, but the executives of the corporations. We choose not to solve them, because it will make a multibillionare a mere single billionares and we believe this is bad, because the billionares tell us it's bad.

In the United States has been an intentional, systemic, and documented propaganda campaign (their term even!) from the 1900s, with an even larger emphasis since the 1930s, to today by the National Association of Manufacturers -- the funders of hayek and Friedman -- to delegitimize any attempt to put any regulation as not only antibuisness, but antifreedom, and it's bullshit. It's to trick people into thinking they aren't just powerless, but being powerless is actually good.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. There is plenty of precedent for society level change leading to improvement. National parks, air quality, public health, etc.

At the risk of sounding reductive, the problem in your example is getting folks to choose differently. This applies at both the meta and mesa levels or in other words, within the present system and the choice of which system. That's what I mean when I talk about social technologies. We lack the social mechanisms, or in other words, they must be developed to overcome it.

Well put. I thought about bringing up the many, many solar panel scams. What an absolute shame.

are there many solar panel scams? I had no idea

All over social media, spam, everywhere. What happened was the U.S. and state governments started offering tax incentives, so a bunch of middlemen (scammers) popped up to take a portion of that benefit while marketing it to regular folk. It's a whole cottage industry (barf):

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/review...

https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/solar-panel-s...

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