An article I'm not going to link to: "The way humans evolved may be stopping us from solving climate change"
No doubt it's got some observations from psychology about humans' tendency towards short-term thinking and planning. That may be true, but what's really stopping us from solving climate change is rich and powerful people who simply refuse to do so and instead devote ridiculous amounts of energy and money towards stopping anyone who tries.
@SallyStrange I honestly don't know, but isn't that still kind of a human problem? We don't need to accept their authority over us, it's not based on anything real. It just seems like humans are too easily lead around by their noses by a few snake oil salesmen.
@arrrg if you want to frame "solving climate change" as something that's impossible due to human psychology, I guess I can't stop you. Doesn't seem like it's a helpful thing to do unless you don't want to solve climate change though
@arrrg yeah the point isn't that they're wrong--of course there are lots of things about human psychology that make it hard for us to grasp global systems and plan 100s of years into the future. The point is that it's propaganda and a distraction. Despite whatever psychological difficulties we have, most people see the problem and want to do something about it. We're just being stymied.
@SallyStrange that's the question i struggle with, why are we being stymied? it's probably the same old story, they've got bigger guns than we do, i honestly don't know.
It's because not enough of us have realised that those guns are useless without ammunition, and we're the ones working in the ammunition factories and logistics networks. A better world is only ever six hours away.
What stops us? It's not that we don't want it. It's that we're taught to believe ourselves to be powerless, too weak to affect change, able only to beg the powerful to intercede on our behalf. Once we collectively realise that we're powerful, then that six hour clock will begin ticking.
This is why the most useful thing we can do, IMHO, is to help people realise that they are not weak. Get them accustomed to taking direct action rather than begging powerful people's intercession. Even if it's not direct action in a cause you might consider primary, it builds a muscle.
@passenger@arrrg@SallyStrange The problem, IMO, boils down to one of game theory -- like the Prisoner's Dilemma. The key word is "collectively". Without some external incentive, people don't act collectively unless they are part of an organization or movement of some sort. If you're the only one who says, screw this, I'm out, you're isolated and vulnerable and the people in powerful positions will use the system to punish you for breaking rank. It's why we don't have strikes without unions. If we are going to take power back, collectively, we need an organization that people can join for synchrony, because precious few will be on board otherwise, considering the drawbacks of breaking rank.
@hosford42@passenger@SallyStrange that explains why I'm still pissed at democrats for stabbing labor in the back and going for the wall street bucks instead. but there are signs of movement in the direction of organized labor, but i feel like until it breaks into the tech sector, the numbers will not be sufficient.
A lot of tech workers are becoming militant nowadays, I think because we're no longer being treated like aristocrats. Even Google is now starting to treat its techies like factory workers: disposable, replaceable, and not worth keeping highly motivated.
Some theorists, for instance Cory Doctorow, say that this is a consequence of the end of the zero-interest era. I agree with this, but don't fully agree with where Doctorow takes it.
If you want me to pontificate on theory I'd be very happy to, but for now, I'll just say power to your union.
@passenger@arrrg@SallyStrange I think I got a head start, being disabled, working in lay jobs, and facing homelessness at one point, before I was able to kickstart my career as a software engineer. I've had similar views since the early aughts.
I'm all for pontification. I like to get the details. But it would probably be polite to take the others out of the mentions for that, since they may not feel the same.
On 6 April 2012, then-US president Barack Obama signed into law a huge and complex act called JOBS. It did a number of things, but one provision was to loosen the rules about investing in tech companies. This had a number of ramifications. One was to significantly increase the percentage of overall investor money that went into tech companies. Another was to incentivise people to make every company a tech company, to take advantage of looser rules.
Uber and Airbnb already existed before then, but in my opinion this was one of the things that really lit the fuse on the modern phenomenon of tech taking over the world. Uber is a taxi company, but it is legally a tech company and it wants investors to invest in it like a tech company. Airbnb is a hotel company, WeWork is an office rental company and Theranos was a blood testing company, but they all wanted to be treated like tech startups instead of members of old and established industries.
This, combined with the free money of the zero-interest-rate era and the increased firepower of sovereign-wealth funds, led to a huge number of tech companies being started to go into every other field and try to take them over. Can Tesla take over the car industry? Can Skype take over the phone industry? Can Juicero take over the orange juice industry?
A lot of people focus on the way that investors put money into tech startups: rather than trying to run a business in a way that made sense, they would get the business to run at a loss in the hope of driving everyone else out of business and become a monopolist, and then win back their money charging monopolist rates. This is the normal story.
While this is true, I think the more important story is that a lot of these companies were inherently not tech companies. They just acted like tech companies to take advantage of American financial regulations that benefitted tech company investors, as well as acting like tech companies to take advantage of credulous investors who liked the idea of investing in tech.
Put simply, I think there is too much of the business world which is currently considered "tech." Some companies are non-tech companies in denial (Uber is really a taxi company, for example), some genuine tech companies control things that aren't tech (why does Facebook have a stranglehold on newspapers? Why does Google rule advertising? Why is Apple the largest music industry body? Why is Twitter trying to become a payments processor?), and lots of non-tech companies do things in a very tech way because that's where the glamour and investor money is.
For example, I am a computer toucher by trade. I work for a very traditional logistics company which existed before electronic computers did. Why do I get treated like a tech worker? Why does our office have a free beer fridge?
I think people are noticing this. Because everyone is a tech company, it means that in a way nobody is, and so the glamour is wearing off. In a rational world this would lead to a shrinking of what's considered "tech" back to a more reasonable size. Unfortunately we live under capitalism, which means that investors stampede greedily into bad positions and then stampede fearfully out of them, making a mess both times.
I think "tech" may be in trouble. It may no longer be the hotness for investors, which means that lots of companies which were never really tech companies might now admit to not being tech companies, the actual tech companies might face difficulties in raising cash for the first time in their history, and the non-tech companies might consider whether to go back to treating us like logistics companies and airlines and banks treat their employees.
I'm not sure whether the industry, which has only ever known excess and enthusiasm, is built to survive that sort of winter.
@SallyStrange@arrrg Humans have all kinds of cognitivie distortions, but there's a near infinite range of institutional forms that can either compensate for those distortions or make them worse. And the incentive structure of capitalism interacts with them like fire with gasoline.
@SallyStrange Years ago, some popular newsweekly ran a contrarian "human nature" article questioning whether maternal instinct was a thing because "women" -- that's generic women, not qualified by class or any other social distinction -- in 18th century France gave their children to be raised by nursemaids so they didn't have to be bothered with them. It didn't mention where the women doing the nursemaid thing came from.
Alas, all of human history seems tells us that the drive to amass & control supplies of food, water, fuel, tools, minerals & territory is innate in our species. There will ALWAYS be those who are really, really good at it. We invented names like merchant prince, tycoon, billionaire, oligarch, tycoon, etc., to describe a small minority of us whose desire for wealth makes them dangerous to the rest of us.
What was a menace with 3B of us (1960) is apocalyptic with 8B (2023).
@magitweeter@eldubuu@SallyStrange
Yeah, when folk talk about "human nature", they are usually talking about how humans behave under capitalism or other exploitative societies.
@SallyStrange@davva23@magitweeter@eldubuu The powerful claim that their behavior is "human nature" when in reality is a social aberration. We don't friend people who are aggressively selfish.
Casting the behavior of a minority of people as "human nature" is such a great way to avoid responsibility.
I said only a minority of humans are really, really good at accumulating wealth.
You may infer that the rest of us, you and me included, have this drive to greater or lesser degrees, though we aren't skilled (or lucky) enough) to be successful at it.
Don't delude yourself that you (or I) have some moral superiority over Elon Musk: With his wealth, you or I would be just as dangerous as he is.
No, such an inference would be a complete non sequitur. It's more or less like saying a tiny few individuals are exceptional at BMX, therefore the drive to ride a bicycle must be innate to human nature.
There is no innate human drive to accumulate wealth.
Or if there is—if we have some genetic compulsion to self-aggrandize—then we just as surely have a genetic compulsion to altruistically cooperate.
We just happen to live in a society that psychopathically compels us to maximize the former at the expense of the latter. We should not mistake the product of contingent circumstances for some universal truth.
@SallyStrange
So, why aren't people voting for Green polticans? An example, The UK could have voted Green and had Carlonie Lucas as PM but they chose Cameron/May/Johnston. No one voting Tory or Labour is taking Clinaye Change seriously.
Similarly Australia could have voted Green and Adam Bandt would have been PM or NZ similary but they didn't. Hell even the US could have voted Green and elected Stein but they chose to continue deliberately destry the biosphere instead.
Now, you could argue it's becase a few wealthy araeholes poured millions into lying to the electorate, buying polticans etc and that may be so but were all aware.of that.. For 30 years the clinaye scentiers have yelled we have to stop burbing fossil fuels, its not like we just heard this yesterday ... .and then that comes back to, they still had a choice, so why did they not make the responsible choice?
Which brings us full circle to the point of the article you didn't want to link to, why didn't we ? Because it might be we're simily not evolved to; greed, stupidity, denial are who we are. Those rich arseholes are only there because of us.
Thay aside, your point about anyone trying, there is nearly no one A few people in here doesn't move the needle, even then we're mostly LARPing concern; flying, driving cars etc justifying it with weasel words.
Covid is another case in pont, can't be arsed to wear a mask in a crowd.
I've been voting mostly Green for over 20 years and I wear a mask every day. Does that mean I "evolved" differently? No, it means my parents both had science education and we're able to teach me critical thinking skills from a young age.
Culture is not biology. Upbringing, environment, and education influence our behavior in powerful ways.
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