eyechoirs's recent activity
-
Comment on Tildes Book Club discussion - Piranesi in ~books
-
Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
eyechoirs Link ParentSunbather is an awesome album! I would also check out Oathbreaker's Rheia, MØL's Jord, and Anti-God Hand's Blight Year as excellent examples of blackgaze.Sunbather is an awesome album! I would also check out Oathbreaker's Rheia, MØL's Jord, and Anti-God Hand's Blight Year as excellent examples of blackgaze.
-
Comment on New Music Fridays: Kacey Musgraves, Four Tet, Tierra Whack and more in ~music
eyechoirs Link ParentThat Sacrificial Vein album absolutely slaps. A lot of the guitar riffs remind me of Noise Trail Immersion's approach to harmony. Need to listen to it a bit more, but it's a definite contender for...That Sacrificial Vein album absolutely slaps. A lot of the guitar riffs remind me of Noise Trail Immersion's approach to harmony. Need to listen to it a bit more, but it's a definite contender for this year's top 10 list.
Don't know if you checked out Wasted Death's debut, also out this week, but it's pretty good - kind of in the thrash/grindcore spectrum, but also with the occasionally slow, sludgy passage.
-
Comment on Best foreign films and TV shows? in ~tv
eyechoirs LinkEl Conde (Chile) - Pretty weird without quite being 'arthouse', imo - the basic story is that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is actually a vampire. He lives in exile and, tiring of the whole...El Conde (Chile) - Pretty weird without quite being 'arthouse', imo - the basic story is that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is actually a vampire. He lives in exile and, tiring of the whole eternal life thing, seeks to tie up loose ends with his family. Nothing about this movie is remotely predictable. Best appreciated if you are interested in politics, though.
The Handmaiden (South Korea) - I saw someone else recommend 'Oldboy', but imo this is Park Chan-Wook's best film. Thickly layered plot involving seduction, abuse, revenge, all in the historical era of Japanese-occupied colonial Korea. Keeps you guessing, but never arbitrary in its twists and turns.
I Saw The Devil (South Korea) - South Korea is well known for its thriller/horror films, and I feel this one to be sorely underrated. Perhaps the most extreme revenge film I've ever seen, but more than just gore and hatred, it's a pretty amazing exploration of the psychology of sociopaths and the toll of revenge on the revenge-taker.
Tokyo Godfathers (Japan) - I saw someone else recommend 'Millennium Actress', which is great, but frankly all of Satoshi Kon's films are worth a watch. Not sure how you feel about anime, but they are on the accessible end of the spectrum for sure. 'Tokyo Godfathers' is my personal favorite - in which three homeless people (an old tramp, a teenage runaway, and a transvestite/transgender drama queen) find a baby in the garbage, and resolve to return it to its mother. Hilarious but also heartwarming. A great Christmas movie.
The Promised Land (Denmark) - featuring the ever-amazing Mads Mikkelsen, this clash of hard-headed men is like if you set 'There Will Be Blood' in 18th century Denmark. Historically interesting and well-acted, with lots of eye candy if you like looking at the endless rolling heath of the Jutland.
Rare Exports (Finland) - a B-movie horror that asks - what if what we call 'Santa' were in fact a bloodthirsty creature of myth? What if he's been buried for centuries but becomes unearthed by a mining project? And finally, is Finnish stoicism up to the task of dealing with this unearthly threat? This film is not serious art but it's fun as hell.
-
Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
eyechoirs LinkMy inlaws' dog recently passed away, so I had the idea to do a pen and ink drawing to memorialize her. https://imgur.com/a/Il63JEC I don't draw often. It's hard on my wrists and it takes forever...My inlaws' dog recently passed away, so I had the idea to do a pen and ink drawing to memorialize her.
I don't draw often. It's hard on my wrists and it takes forever to finish anything. But when I do draw, I like using this abstract figurative style that emphasizes texture. I take a lot of inspiration from Louis Wain.
-
Comment on Unique things to do in Las Vegas? (and Los Angeles) in ~travel
eyechoirs LinkI've never personally been, but I have friends who have visited the Omega Mart in Las Vegas and said it was one of the coolest experiences of their life. Described as an 'immersive art exhibit',...I've never personally been, but I have friends who have visited the Omega Mart in Las Vegas and said it was one of the coolest experiences of their life. Described as an 'immersive art exhibit', it's basically an extremely trippy, labyrinthine homage to the uniquely American conception of the supermarket.
-
Comment on The psychopolitics of trauma in ~health.mental
eyechoirs Link ParentI agree that the narrative surrounding war probably has little effect on shell shock, and I think examining differences in how modern vs. ancient wars were fought can strongly support that view....Perhaps one could make the argument that earlier warfare was substantially different in some other ways, but surely the narrative that war is heroic and inspiring did nothing for victims of shell shock in WW1.
I agree that the narrative surrounding war probably has little effect on shell shock, and I think examining differences in how modern vs. ancient wars were fought can strongly support that view. To wit, WW1 saw a sea change in how war is fought due to the advancement of military technology. These days, we take the use of bombs in war for granted, but even a mere 50 or so years prior to WW1 during the Italian war of independence, targeted aerial bombing was limited to incendiary balloons, which were not at all accurate (nor was their use widespread).
If you look at the experience of a soldier in the 1800s or earlier, the vast majority of their time was spent without imminent threat of death. Sure, there were plenty of challenges - physically punishing marches, hunger, disease, boredom - but none that are acutely traumatizing like impending violence is. Of course, a soldier would be in physical danger during combat, but combat usually had a somewhat limited, predictable script - you encounter other soldiers, and the closer you approach the more danger you are in; you fight, often for as little as an hour, or sometimes as much as a day or two for larger pitched battles; then the battle is over, and this acute danger more or less vanishes. Occasionally, there would be ambushes or assassinations, but in many wars, relative to the average soldier's experience, these would be fairly infrequent.
It's true that even this type of combat could be traumatizing. Susceptibility to trauma is a spectrum, and there are plenty of early historical accounts of trauma in war (here's a good, brief article on the subject). But the warfare of WW1 was especially suited to cause trauma. A soldier on the front was essentially in constant danger from bombing. They could be sitting down to eat, sleeping, playing cards, taking a shit, and at literally any time a bomb could instantaneously kill them - or worse, wound them so grievously that death was inevitable after hours of immense physical suffering. The likelihood of this happening varied according to time and location, but was always high enough to weigh heavily on the soldiers' minds - pretty much every soldier knew of hundreds of others that had been recently killed in this exact way, many of whom were likely acquaintances from training, or from life prior to war.
And unlike the relatively short battles of previous wars, soldiers in WW1 would often be on the front for a week at a time - a week of uninterrupted, 24/7 imminent death. If they survived (and a truly massive number didn't survive), they would be cycled to second-line trenches (in which a similar death was still possible, though somewhat less likely), and then a week in reserve before returning to the front-line trenches. The human psyche is not equipped to handle this level of protracted danger, and despite the lack of detail on this subject in the historical record, it is almost certain that rate of war trauma was higher in WW1 than for almost any previous war due to this factor. Narrative likely has nearly nothing to do with it.
-
Comment on Book recommendations, specifically in ~books
eyechoirs LinkI have a request that is both very specific and very vague: I am looking for a book that gives me the same vibes as the Caretaker's 'Everywhere at the End of Time'. This work of music fills me...I have a request that is both very specific and very vague: I am looking for a book that gives me the same vibes as the Caretaker's 'Everywhere at the End of Time'. This work of music fills me with images of sepia photographs and faded print wallpaper, black and white movies, abandoned parlors and ballrooms. Lots of nostalgia but also loneliness, sadness, and a disturbing undercurrent of mental decline. It all adds up to a really specific feeling for me.
I get snatches of this nostalgic feeling from authors like Vladimir Nabokov, in his more daydream-like moments, or maybe Milan Kundera. But neither of these really evoke the 'psychological horror' element that makes these albums really interesting. On the other hand, there's not much explicit psychological horror genre fiction that is written delicately enough to do the job.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentEven when corporations monetize ideas produced by research institution, I don't think it's fair to say that the research institutions do 99% of the work. People tend to view monetization as 'not...Similarly, the academic inventions that are monetized by corporation tend to be the type that least need that intervention - research institutions do 99% of the work and then the actual income is captured by corporations doing the clearly-easy stuff, whereas the hard problems that research institutions could really use help with go untouched because it's not as profitable. This is less of an issue if the invention is monetized by the non-profit research institution themselves, and this sort of ideologically-mandated privatization wrecked CSIRO.
Even when corporations monetize ideas produced by research institution, I don't think it's fair to say that the research institutions do 99% of the work. People tend to view monetization as 'not real work' even though it takes a lot of effort and resources, and is usually absolutely necessary to actually produce goods. In reality, there are many steps between the initial idea and the product being made (only at which it point it can become 'good for society'). I'll speak to pharmaceutical development since I have experience with it - there is 1) background research in biochemistry, 2) more specific/targeted research in pharmacology, 3) drug 'discovery' (i.e. finding drug candidates), 4) drug development (i.e. assessing synthesis, ADME, formulation concerns), 5) pre-clincal (in vitro/animal) research, 6) clinical trials, 7) regulatory review, 8) commercialization and production, and 9) post-market surveillance. Realistically, research institutions primarily deal with steps 1-3, maybe 4-5 in some cases. Whereas corporations usually handle 4-9, though often 3 as well. Do you not think that these later steps count as work?
There's also a danger here of serious circular logic (or perhaps the texas sharpshooter fallacy) - claiming that if a thing is profitable then it's valuable, and then claiming that corporations are valuable because they're profitable and QED they're good for society.
Meanwhile, the main argument for market forces is almost explicitly that we're bad at defining what is good for society - or more specifically that governments fundamentally fail because their goals are detached from the people whose interests they are trying to fulfil, so even if their execution was flawless they wouldn't reach success (the platonic ideal of this example being planned economies).
So on the one hand, govt fails because we can't properly define what's good for society, but on the other hand capitalism is good because it better produces what's good for society - a claim that can only be verified if we have some way of defining what's good for society.I think you're equivocating on 'what is good for society'. There is a difference between the observed 'what is good for society' - i.e. an outcome that we judge as being beneficial or not - and the predicted 'what is good for society' - i.e. which granular inputs to the economy will lead to the production of things which are good for society. As a society, we can do pretty well with the former, but are terrible at the latter. It's kind of like the helicopter-in-a-tree analogy - I don't know anything about how to fly a helicopter, but if I see it in stuck in a tree, I know someone fucked up.
Similarly, I think you're equivocating about value - there's a difference between value as a measure of a person's preference, and value as an abstract 'good for society' goal. Profit is simply a reflection of the former, the remainder in a comparison of preferences. If I value something you have more than you do, I pay you for it, and the difference in value is your profit. To say that corporations are valuable in this sense is practically a tautology. But it's separate from the notion that it's good for corporations to exist, in the sense that the economics system broadly leads to good outcomes. That is something we can observe without having to pay attention to individual transactions.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs (edited )Link ParentI don't think we can really view an abstract, intentionless system with a teleological lens. Everyone is working for their own ends in a capitalist system, and on the whole, most people benefit....Yes, but capitalism actively motivates for a single entitiy's self interest, the capital owner over the working class/the rest of society. Any good that comes to a society through capitalism isn't the primary driver, its a tertiary outcome. I suppose hypothetically if EVERYONE could be a capital owner somehow, then arguably you could say that capitalism isn't inherently bad as it promotes the capital owners, but that's not possible. Not everyone can own the means of production in capitalism... after all that's socialism. If we choose to live in a society as a collective group, capitalism is inherently bad for anyone who isn't a capital owner.
I don't think we can really view an abstract, intentionless system with a teleological lens. Everyone is working for their own ends in a capitalist system, and on the whole, most people benefit. What you call 'tertiary outcomes', I have another word for: outcomes. Profit to a capital owner is an outcome, so is affordable goods to laborers. I think in view of your later comment...
This is a narrative capitalism apologists use all the time. Corporatism, crony capitalism, and techno feudalism are all the same thing... capitalism. A doberman, a golden retriever, a pitbull... they are all dogs. Same concept.
... that you claim otherwise because when capital and labor have competing interests that capital tends to win. But at least in a truly free market, capital loses all the time and this does not have impact on (or merit obligation from) labor. Labor has no need to strive to keep failing businesses afloat, outside of punching the clock in a contractually obligated manner. If a business fails, another tends to fill the vacuum, resulting in little long term effect on employment rate, in most cases. The greatest loss is often just bankruptcy for the capitalist(s). But problems arise when capital attempts to cheat the system, lobbying the government for undue influence in the market, making it less free. I think there's a tendency to view this process as inevitable, because it's the situation we're in. But as long as there are governments, there will be those who attempt to selfishly influence their exercise of power. This is not specific to any ideology or economic system, it's just human nature. If you don't think we can combat corruption that occurs alongside capitalism, then you might as well just say every economic system is the worst version of itself. Capitalism is corporatism, the Nordic model is a bloated, bureaucratic welfare state, socialism is a leftist Soviet dictatorship, anarchocommunism is Lord of the Flies.
I ask you, who do you think is responsible for the development of drugs? Who do you believe is responsible for the bulk of the research for medical developments?
If you wanted to continue this discussion you could have given me the answer (not sure if you were going to take the 'it's universities, not companies' stance or the 'it's labor not capitalists' stance). I should mention though that prior to my disability I worked as a pharmaceutical formulation chemist. I wasn't making an off-the-cuff comment about the complexity and resource-use of drug development.
I've not seen data that that supports the concept that younger people actively choose to use disposable income on experiences over material items and I don't know how you test that hypothesis because the actual value of an "experience" varies while physical material items actually have a value assigned to them, like diamonds. What are you going to set as a control to test experiences over things like diamonds? Example being, a flight to a vacation spot, a hotel, and activities can be more or less expensive than an engagement diamond.
Experiences and physical material items both have a nominal value assigned to them - their price. If a diamond and a vacation both cost 4000 dollars, and a person choose the vacation, then it is more valuable to them than the diamond is. It is a bit more complicated when there are a range of goods at varying price points, but my point was that diamonds aren't really a good marker of disposable income. The reduced popularity of Veblen goods could be due to lower disposable income, or it could be shifting values in a society that is beginning to care less about conspicuous consumption and have more ethical concern for their purchases.
I think this illustrates that we are just not going to come to any sort of middle ground. Drugs that we produce should be produced without being bound to profit. The drugs that get produced should be drugs that save lives. Very basically, I value human life over profits. No matter the cost, we should always be working towards saving lives for the betterment of society. Using profit as the motivator, increasing someone or something's wealth as the driving force to save lives is such and irrevocably broken way to exist in society, I am just not sure how to combat that.
I think you are underselling the complexity of deciding which drugs save the most lives. It's not as though a committee could sit down and simply plan every aspect of the drug development process 'no matter the cost'. The price of raw materials, instruments, performing clinical studies, buying IP rights (assuming the economic system has them), and labor all have to be taken into account. If natural prices don't exist, as in a planned economy, then you might be almost done developing drug X when you realize your supplier of Y can't give you enough of it to meet demand, leaving a huge number of people untreated. This is far less likely to happen in a free market because prices serve as a single unified measure, that everyone involved in every aspect of the process can continually monitor. The moment the drug X project manager realizes Y is an essential input, he can see whether that drug (or at least that production process) is feasible.
And, perhaps unfortunately, the only way to have prices is to allow profits. If people don't stand to personally gain or lose from a transaction, there is no way to guarantee the price reflects something real about it. There is a huge difference between saying, 'I'd pay top dollar for a house with this kind of view', and actually paying top dollar for it.
And even aside from whether profits are a better driving force for saving lives, it's weird to me that you would consider this aspect of society broken. People should be self-interested, at least to some degree. The only one who knows your true preferences, your true needs, is yourself. Whether those preferences are about what makes it worthwhile to fill some productive role, or how badly you want some product, no one else should be deciding that but you. Maybe society should strive to be more altruistic, but altruism cannot accurately judge one person's needs against another's.
Regardless, I thought this was a very pleasant conversation and thank you for the book recommendation. I will for sure investigate.
Thank you, I also enjoyed our discussion. I do hope you check out the book; Joel Mokyr has about as descriptivist an outlook on economics as it's possible to have. I'm sure you'd get something out of it even if you disagree with some of it. It is a bit dry, but that's just economics for you.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentLike all economic systems, capitalism may have some bad outcomes - this doesn't make it inherently bad. The profit motive is incredibly useful for spurring invention/innovation, which is, on...It's inherently a bad thing because that means human progress/well-being takes a back seat if it cannot generate profits. When a medication doesn't have high demand, but saves lives do you think corporations continue to make that medication? I'm sorry but fuck your kids because we can't monetize this drug very well anymore.
Like all economic systems, capitalism may have some bad outcomes - this doesn't make it inherently bad. The profit motive is incredibly useful for spurring invention/innovation, which is, on balance, beneficial for human progress/well-being. To use your example of medication, it takes a massive amount of resources to develop a pharmaceutical drug. What drugs should we as a society develop? The profit motive, as an organizing force, prioritizes drugs that have a wide application. It's unfortunate that rare diseases are less likely to be cured in this case, but would you rather neglect common diseases? Separately, the issue of people currently not being able to afford drugs with low demand is, I think, more to do with health insurance and intellectual property law.
Yes, but not for some kind of noble reason as if to make the product more affordable. Making something more cheaply is meant to increase profit margins. Whether this means to reduce staff and increase working hours, purchasing lesser quality materials to produce the good, or skirting regulations and potentially making an unsafe product, the purpose of making things cheaper is not to pass savings on to customers but to increase margins.
Making a product more cheaply is meant to increase profit, not profit margin. You can increase profit without increasing profit margin by making a product that is better quality or less expensive, enticing a greater number of people to buy it. It's true that sometimes the profit motive results in worse products, but this is just as often due to regulations which make products more expensive to produce (thus incentivizing cutting corners), or by stifling the profit motive in some other way, reducing the incentive to improve products or lower prices in order to remain competitive.
If by "being superior at it" meaning extracting profit, then yes. It is absurdly brilliant at filtering wealth upwards. Capitalism is an ouroboros that will continue to filter profits (wealth) to a small few until there is no more available wealth to purchase the products it creates thus causing it's own downfall. Why aren't millennials buying diamonds anymore?!?!
I think you're conflating capitalism with corporatism. The influence of corporations on policymaking has definitely had a negative effect, but it's not one I'd attribute to capitalism per se, nor do I think corporatism is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. Meanwhile, capitalism has provided unparalleled technological advancements which has made things like phones and computers so cheap as to be affordable by virtually anyone. All but the very poorest in our society still have a better standard of living compared to all but the richest prior to the industrial revolution. I'm not going to pretend capitalism is perfect, but to see the profit motive as inherently bad is just ridiculous.
Also, for what it's worth, millennials aren't buying diamonds because they'd rather spend their money on more meaningful products or experiences. The whole idea of diamonds is an economic bubble on par with Dutch tulips, especially when the market provides a huge variety of other 'luxury' goods that are far less expensive. Not sure how this is supposed to be some sort of flaw in capitalism.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentIf you want to keep tax exemptions for health insurance, why not let them apply to individuals too? Whether you're keeping them or getting rid of them, if the playing field is leveled between...If you want to keep tax exemptions for health insurance, why not let them apply to individuals too? Whether you're keeping them or getting rid of them, if the playing field is leveled between individuals and employers, then there is no way for employers to use health insurance as an enticement. The fact they do is an absolutely artificial result of regulations.
It seems like you want companies to provide money earmarked for insurance or something, but why not just use your salary? If it's no longer worthwhile for an employer to provide benefits because individuals can just buy those benefits on their own at the same price, then ceteris paribus, the money the employer previously used for benefits would be provided in salaries. There's no difference to the employer, whether they are paying you or paying for insurance for you - it's the same entry in the debit column. The difference would be that individuals have much more choice when they are allowed to just pay for their own insurance.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentThere's also hundreds of thousands of examples of technologies being developed by academic and government run organizations which are left sitting on their workbenches or written up in some paper...There's hundreds of thousands of examples of technologies being developed by academic and government run organizations without seeking any kind of profit motive and only AFTER their discoveries and a viable monetization strategies developed are they adopted by capitalistic forces.
There's also hundreds of thousands of examples of technologies being developed by academic and government run organizations which are left sitting on their workbenches or written up in some paper languishing in an obscure journal. I don't think the profit motive is any better or worse than this - but you point out yourself that capitalism's defining power is monetization strategy, and I refuse to see this as inherently a bad thing. Monetization is frequently a process of determining what people's actual needs are (and thus what they are willing to part with their money for) and shaping/developing inchoate technologies to meet those needs. Monetization usually also entails finding a way to produce a technology cheaply. Call this a 'middleman' if you wish, but it's absurd to think that we'd be able enjoy the technologies we do today without these intermediate steps happening somewhere. And capitalism has frequently shown itself to be superior at it.
Also, your example of the wheel is kind of a straw man - the wheel was such an early development in human history that it's likely that capital as we understand it did not really exist yet. There are, however, hundreds of thousands of counterexamples to the notion that corporations don't invent the technologies they end up selling. Elsewhere in this thread I referred to Joel Mokyr's 'Lever of Riches' as a great book on the intersection of technological invention and market economies, and if you're really interested, it goes into absolutely excruciating detail about the invention/innovation of technologies and their subsequent adoption by society at large. In the majority of cases, inventors play a large role in the commercialization of their inventions, or at least reap a large profit from being bought out, for instance.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentCompanies would not be able to 'weaponize' this imbalance against employees if it did not exist to begin with, as would be the case in a free market. The whole premise of how capitalism is...Companies would not be able to 'weaponize' this imbalance against employees if it did not exist to begin with, as would be the case in a free market. The whole premise of how capitalism is 'supposed to work'* is that even though individual companies are amoral, if they have to compete on an even playing field, they will be fair to consumers or employees, because if they don't, another company will, and will eat their lunch. Now, we could argue about whether capitalism always works this way, but at least in this individual case, it probably would. If your employer is offering you a benefits package, it is because it is cheaper for them to buy it for you than for you to pay for it yourself. If you level playing field by removing your employer's tax exemptions, their monopoly on health insurance will disappear, or at least be replaced by insurance contract negotiators which aren't tied to employment. In either case, you will be far more free to choose insurance plans, and in aggregate this will force insurance companies to be more competitive and lower prices.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentI want to point out that this practice is in large part due to wage controls that the federal government established during World War II. Unable to entice workers with higher wages, companies used...Decoupling healthcare and various other benefits (dental, vision, retirement etc..) from being controlled by your employer (in the US at least) to being controlled by the individual. Why does my work get to dictate what insurance company I use? Why does my work get to dictate which company I use for retirement planning? This would help employees reward companies based on their merits instead of the choice being tainted with survival concerns.
I want to point out that this practice is in large part due to wage controls that the federal government established during World War II. Unable to entice workers with higher wages, companies used health insurance and other benefits as a form of additional compensation. The government also did (and still does) allow companies to deduct the cost of these benefits from these taxes, effectively making it impossible for private insurance plans to compete with company-sponsored ones. I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame capitalism for healthcare woes when government regulations play such a major role in this situation.
-
Comment on The real danger to civilisation isn't runaway AI it's runaway capitalism (2017) in ~misc
eyechoirs Link ParentI would disagree - technology has always been used by capital to eliminate human labor. I recently read a book that touches on this subject, called 'The Lever of Riches', by Joel Mokyr. More...Technology is/has always been employed to make our lives as humans easier. Technology is meant to be used to make trivial tasks take less time or be eliminated.
I would disagree - technology has always been used by capital to eliminate human labor. I recently read a book that touches on this subject, called 'The Lever of Riches', by Joel Mokyr. More broadly the book is about the role of market economies (among many, many other economic factors) in technological progress throughout history. But here's what Mokyr has to say about 'resistance to innovation':
Technological change shocks the labor market, alters the physical environment, makes existing human and physical capital obsolete, and unambiguously reduces the producer's surplus of the innovator's competitors. In a repeated game, the gainers might have tried to compensate the losers. By its very nature, however, technological change is a nonrepeated game, since an invention is only invented once. Once an invention is made, an inventor often needs protection from those who stand to benefit from the suppression of the invention. The dilemma is sharpened by the fact that the benefits are usually heavily diffused, while the costs are concentrated. Thus the losers will find it easier to organize, and are quite likely to try to squelch technological progress altogether.
He goes on to give examples of this happening:
As early as 1397, tailors in Cologne were forbidden to use machines that pressed pinheads. In 1561, the city council of Nuremberg, undoubtedly influenced by the guild of red-metal turners, launched an attack on a local coppersmith by the name of Hans Spaichl who had invented an improved slide rest lathe. The council first rewarded Spaichl for his invention, then began to harass him and made him promise not to sell his lathe outside his own craft, then offered to buy it from if he suppressed it, and finally threatened to imprison anyone who sold the lathe. The ribbon loom was invented in Danzig in 1579, but its inventor was reportedly secretly drowned by orders of the city council. Twenty-five years later the ribbon loom was reinvented in the Netherlands - though resistance there, too, was stiff - and thus became known as the Dutch loom.
There's another page of examples listed, and the basic theme is repeated in other sections of the book that deal with specific inventions or time periods. It seems like pretty much any time a paradigm-shifting invention is made, there are people who it will put out of work, and in many cases those people resist the invention by any means necessary. It also seems that the most successful, technologically advanced societies are those that quell resistance through strict enforcement of property laws and support for inventors.
I think the question that AI poses is - will it be just another invention in a long line of inventions that briefly disrupt the economy until it becomes an element of new jobs? Or is AI technology so advanced and its disruption so profound that it will permanently limit the number of productive jobs in the economy? In either case, technology is a threat to labor - the question is how large the threat.
-
Comment on Album of the Week #19: The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity in ~music
eyechoirs Link ParentI agree 100% about Ire Works. Way underrated - I think some people felt that Dillinger was starting to lose their sense of aggression, with poppy songs like Black Bubblegum/Milk Lizard or more...I agree 100% about Ire Works. Way underrated - I think some people felt that Dillinger was starting to lose their sense of aggression, with poppy songs like Black Bubblegum/Milk Lizard or more atmospheric, introspective songs like Sick On Sunday/Dead as History/etc. But frankly the addition of those to the record gives it much more dimension, with lots of creepy and sinister vibes in addition to raw power, and on a full listen, the heavier songs sound even heavier by contrast. Fix Your Face and 82588 are some of the most brutal tracks they've ever put out. Personally, I think Option Paralysis is a slightly better album overall, but Ire Works may be a close second.
-
Comment on In search of approachable, readable philosophy (or philosophy-adjacent) books to help me navigate the world in ~books
eyechoirs LinkIf you like Frankl and Camus, I would also highly recommend checking out Irvin Yalom. Though he is a psychiatrist and not a philosopher per se, his therapeutic practice is one of 'existential...If you like Frankl and Camus, I would also highly recommend checking out Irvin Yalom. Though he is a psychiatrist and not a philosopher per se, his therapeutic practice is one of 'existential psychotherapy' - akin to his well-known contemporary Ernest Becker, and also drawing from the works of Rollo May and Otto Rank. The core of this approach is to examine the role of death, meaning, and freedom in human life, behaviors, anxieties, and relationships, taking the generalized conception developed by existential philosophers and applying it to the lives of specific, individual people.
Yalom's books fall into a few overarching categories. Many, such as Love's Executioner, Momma and the Meaning of Life, and Creatures of a Day are essentially a collection of case studies: each chapter being a description of a real patient, their psychological difficulties, how Yalom analyzed them in existential terms, and how they changed as a result of the therapy. These are all very approachable, and though they aren't very systematic, these real-world examples make it very easy to see how to apply existential ideas to your own life.
Others are more geared towards psychiatrists themselves, such as the aptly-titled Existential Psychotherapy. I found this one to be very readable, albeit painstakingly comprehensive in its treatment of the subject. Of course this ends up unearthing all kinds of fascinating subtopics - such as a discussion of death awareness in young children, or a primer on the clinical manifestations of 'decision avoidance' - things you might not encounter in more pop-sciencey kind of work.
Yalom has also written a good deal of fiction, most of which revolve around depictions of therapy and/or group therapy. Some of these, such as Lying on the Couch and The Schopenhauer Cure have a modern setting, while others, such as When Nietzsche Wept and The Spinoza Problem have a historical setting, imagining the hypothetical psychoanalysis of various historical figures. Though fiction, these latter books provide a unique look at philosophical ideas by hypothesizing (with well-researched justification) about the life experiences that must have led to them.
-
Comment on Unpopular opinion: Capitalism is a better ideology than socialism or communism because greed is a more tolerable emotion than fear/envy in ~talk
eyechoirs Link ParentI think a lot of the problems with health insurance (for instance) these days can be traced to anti-competitive legislation, such as the exemptions built into FDR's wartime wage and price control...I think a lot of the problems with health insurance (for instance) these days can be traced to anti-competitive legislation, such as the exemptions built into FDR's wartime wage and price control legislation. By making employer contributions to benefits non-taxable, it strongly incentivized people to rely on employment for health insurance, and made individually purchased health insurance comparatively more expensive. Now insurance companies have less incentive to cut prices or increase quality on individually-purchased insurance plans. Furthermore, these laws incentivized the use of health insurance to pay for non-emergent, budgetable health expenses - kind of like if you were using your car insurance to pay for gasoline and oil changes. The whole concept of insurance is built around defraying rare high costs with common low payments, so overusing insurance to pay for trivial things ends up making it untenably expensive.
Another legislative blunder for health insurance was the HMO Act of 1973, which subsidized HMOs and forced employers to offer an HMO as an option. There are also quite a few anti-competitive laws that affect non-insurance aspects of healthcare, such as 'certificate of need' laws implemented on a state level. So it becomes very difficult to pin today's healthcare woes on the free market, when the government is screwing with our existing market at every turn.
-
Comment on Unpopular opinion: Capitalism is a better ideology than socialism or communism because greed is a more tolerable emotion than fear/envy in ~talk
eyechoirs Link ParentI think you are underestimating the difficultly in distinguishing between these two possibilities. Intention is opaque - we can never really know what a person's (or a movement's) intentions...Saying those revolutions and regimes were initially about upholding basic human decency rather than political power plays using the veil of basic human decency seems generous.
I think you are underestimating the difficultly in distinguishing between these two possibilities. Intention is opaque - we can never really know what a person's (or a movement's) intentions really are, especially before we get the benefit of hindsight. Maybe by now it's apparent that Mao was more interested in gaining political power than promoting human flourishing (though there are many tankies who would disagree with that, of course). But as China's cultural revolution began, think of how many people really believed that Mao was the genuine article, a noble, well-intentioned leader who would lead them to prosperity.
What we can judge more reliably than an ideology's intentions is its results. Instead of relying on the prognostications some politician's pet ideology, we look at the closest examples of that ideology in history. There is a sort of unavoidable subjectivity in any analysis of politics/economics, but we can at least try to be somewhat scientific.
I don't care about debating capitalism vs communism vs socialism vs whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-your-economic-system-ism, I just want everyone to be able to afford food, housing, education, healthcare, and pleasant working conditions. That shouldn't be controversial (in my opinion) but somehow it is.
Again, the controversy isn't about the preferred outcomes. Pretty much everyone, no matter their political beliefs, wants affordable food, housing, education, etc. The question is about how, in practice we can achieve these things. Saying 'just give people what they need' invites the question of 'how?'.
I also want to point out that social security, workers rights, child labor laws, etc. are not socialism. Socialism is the state or community ownership of industry; what you're describing is capitalism with welfare, or 'social democracy'/'social market economy'. It's unfortunate that the word 'social' is utilized by both of these concepts because they are quite different.
There's something about metaphysical houses, as a subject, that I'm a sucker for. Probably because I read 'House of Leaves' in high school, and even though 'Piranesi' isn't nearly so dark or postmodern, it was an easy choice to read after I saw it nominated for Tildes Book Club. And sure enough, 'Piranesi's descriptions of sprawling Byzantine halls full of marble statues and strewn, mysteriously, with seawater and birds and clouds, forming an isolated ecosystem unto itself - that really scratches a specific itch. I felt it easy to inhabit this bittersweet dreamworld. A world without politics, social perplexities, television, traffic sounds pleasant enough, and with 'Piranesi's initial mysteries (the 'other', scattered skeletons, a missing origin story) enough was provided for me to ponder while still enjoying this alternate reality's relative peace.
Once the story was in full swing, I grew conflicted. On one hand, the tension kept me invested, wondering what would happen next, and some of the hints and clues were fun to mull over. But I felt that altogether too much was explained by the end of the book. That is a very difficult balance to strike in any book of this style, especially since explaining too little can leave the audience feeling unsatisfied. I'll also grant that 'Piranesi' uses its full explanation to communicate an interesting message, with the first half sort of asking us these questions about identity and memory and purpose, and the end letting us see how much courage and trust are required to really answer them.
It wasn't until I had finished the book that I read a little bit about the author, Susanna Clarke. It turns out that she suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and that her work on 'Piranesi' was definitely shaped by the limitations of this illness. All of the sudden, everything clicked into place for me. I also suffer from (severe) CFS, and there are some really specific parallels that I had only appreciated half-subliminally while reading the book. To illustrate: I spend 98% of my time lying down either in my bed or on a couch. I virtually never leave my apartment. Since getting sick, I have very little direct experience with the world - only what I see in movies and television, read in books, etc. I live with my girlfriend, who is at work most of the day, and I only see other people face-to-face infrequently. My day-to-day is mostly about survival and passing time. In many ways, my house IS Piranesi's house - calm, lonely, full of sterile images.
I've had many people ask me 'how can you live like this?' and really, the answer is you can't. At least, 'you' can't, and you really need to become another 'you' in order to tolerate the boredom, pain, isolation, etc. of a severe chronic illness like this. I was 30 years old when I developed CFS, just when I really began to feel like I had figured myself out, and now four years later, I'm a whole different 'myself'. Moreover, I've always wondered what would happen if I suddenly recovered, out of nowhere. I like to think I'd just as suddenly recover all my old personality, my goals in life, my joie de vivre. But I can't even remember what half of those things are like. Maybe the process would be less immediate and less complete than I should hope. I'm a hostage of my illness, and maybe a part of me is too comfortable with my current level of suffering to embrace change, even such a good, healthy change. Piranesi himself faces a similar dilemma at the end of the book, and I find the decision he makes rather heartening. All in all, 'Piranesi' became a much more meaningful book for me after picking up on these elements.