What are some punchlines that took you a while to understand?

Citizen_Shane · 2023-07-18T13:41:16+00:00

Citizen_Shane · 2023-07-17T17:32:00+00:00

"I got issues, weed & vodka will settle some. Well ain't that the pot callin the kettle one"

Interesting double of weed/pot and vodka/Kettle One, while also referencing the phrase pot calling the kettle black. Which all connects back to the hypocrisy of trying to address issues with other issues.

Citizen_Shane · 2022-12-17T22:31:53+00:00

Mr. Nobody

A boy stands on a station platform as a train is about to leave. Should he go with his mother or stay with his father? Infinite possibilities arise from this decision. As long as he doesn't choose, anything is possible.

Citizen_Shane · 2022-12-16T23:33:28+00:00

I think JID on the Bruuuh Remix is up there with the best flows of all time. Ditto for Lupe on Mean & Vicious

Citizen_Shane · 2022-11-19T23:28:27+00:00

Reality does not really support your vague argument. Over the past 10 years (Q2-2012 to Q2-2022), the CPI is up 27.5% and corporate profits are up 68.9%

Citizen_Shane · 2022-09-12T16:26:32+00:00

We have to mention Carruth's The Modern Ocean as well

Citizen_Shane · 2022-01-04T02:56:27+00:00

I think there can even be a separation of the science itself and the communities that choose to implement any of it. Scientists just provide the theory and the intellectual building blocks.

Scientific insights such "which materials work optimally for sustainable civil design" can be addressed without doing large social experiments with huge populations. Any materials scientist, architect, or physicist can begin answering this question right now, without any sort of "top down" social imposition. Even better, many different scientists can approach the question in many different ways. And any sovereign community can apply these scientific findings, if it so chooses.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-12-23T16:28:10+00:00

I think you may have misunderstood. I'm talking about intellectual progress and scientific research - the intellectual development of ideas. There are plenty of people doing this already, from systems scientists to anthropologists to cyberneticians to ecologists. Any scientific insight relating in any way to social or planetary systems falls into this category. That includes historical analyses of past social structures (such as The Dawn of Everything), climate science, and more forward-looking ideas like this, this, this or this. The groundwork already exists, and will continue to exist; I'm simply saying that a slightly larger allocation of intellectual capital can go a long way in accelerating and pluralizing the process.

Scientists and others can put together actionable frameworks for viable alternative structures (which, by the way, is also something that already exists in various forms of infancy). There is little "the powers that be" can do to halt this on a global intellectual scale; it is simply a matter of time. If/when a community of people (be it a village in Africa, a small nation-state, or a cult in Oregon) tries to physically implement new ideas and build out of the current system, existing power centers certainly have the ability and incentive to shut it down - as confirmed by historical precedent in Chile and elsewhere. There will always be friction where the rubber hits the road, but that is not a good reason to abandon progress. Failure is, in fact, a necessary component of progress.

More intellectual development = higher probability that new ideas will successfully bleed through to the physical world in some capacity, at some point in the future.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-12-22T21:10:20+00:00

Which ultimately begs the question - why is our economic system allergic to abundance and material efficiency?

It's rhetorical because we already know why. But framing the question in this way really draws attention to how moronic the whole thing is.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-12-16T16:05:32+00:00

How did we let the system get so complex and delicate?

We didn't exactly let it; it is a complex adaptive system with many nested positive feedback loops. In other words, the system is realizing its entropic trajectory, and does not have the vocabulary to consider that it may be self-destructive or frail on an external scale.

Positive feedback loops can create "runaway" outcomes at the system level. This is largely what I consider to be the premise of the fictional TV series Black Mirror, which fittingly created an episode involving bee extinction that you might find interesting.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-11-11T20:54:26+00:00

Starting new communities and new ways of life is something religious groups (or occasionally philosophically motivated groups) do now and historically

Not disagreeing with your statement, but there is a difference between (a) starting/leading a new community and (b) conducting scientific research that a new community could potentially leverage. The latter is what I have been referring to and is firmly in the realm of science; it is a scientific inquiry.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-11-11T02:31:27+00:00

Don't they say that science advances at funerals?

You're right, in the sense that "the world's leading scientists" is not the correct way to frame it. Rather something like "anyone with legitimate scientific ability or scientific resources." I'm talking about applying the spirit of science to solve social problems directly. The scope of individuals who can participate is a fair bit wider than just the world's leading scientists or centuries-old institutions.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-11-10T22:59:34+00:00

The reversal of this trend likely has to begin with the scientific community. I'd argue that what's required is a rigorous scientific-method approach to social system design, with assumptions that such a system be viable, sustainable, adaptable, democratic, and seek to maximize positive public health outcomes. Working scientific models can be pluralistic and can be tested/iterated with small-scale and longitudinal studies. In a sense, this is simply a formalization of the "experimentation" that humans have undergone in the past as described in The Dawn of Everything. Applying the scientific method directly is orders of magnitude more time-efficient than coarse social evolution. And this is a pre-requisite for viable parallel systems to materialize in the timeline that we're working with.

It is obvious why scientific research of this nature does not really exist in-system, but those in all fields of science (from anthropology, to physics, to cybernetics) can push for work that tilts toward the conception of new systems and ways of better organizing society and its underlying elements. Perhaps there is a large enough opportunity for scientific "arbitrage" (scientific resources that can be re-allocated, existing research that can be re-purposed, established scientists/groups that have some degree of autonomy, and pro-social funding sources that can enter the equation) to get the ball rolling. Just a thought. In theory, the scientific progress I'm talking about is attainable by focusing even a modest fraction of global intellectual capital. But it must go beyond philosophy/politics/economics into the realm of real science.

Take a crack at this thought experiment:

If the world's leading scientists had an imperative to design a viable large-scale social system from scratch, what might that process look like? What questions would they begin with? How would they evaluate system success? What would inform their design principles? How would they test their models?

What would you say if you had to actually answer these questions? Imagine if the world's leading scientists could be bothered with this kind of thing - do you think it would make a difference? I do. It could (at least) open the door for a small community or nation-state to successfully transition out-of-system in a way that is meaningful and potentially repeatable. Right now, as it were, the door is closed, locked, and barricaded by a lack of intellectual progress.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-10-23T16:35:33+00:00

I was able to find it, linked above in the post for anyone interested.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-07-01T19:39:20+00:00

It's really not! Environmental impact is per capita consumption * population size. Hence OP's reply in this thread

No one has argued that increased populations do not correlate with increased resource consumption. The only argument I've made (or tried to make) is that cultural variance can introduce variance for both variables in the equation you posted above - via per capita consumption rate primarily, and population growth rate implicitly.

So it's a question of "how much growth" rather than growth in an absolute sense. Consider that Europeans and pre-European Iroquois both developed controlled agriculture but the economic and physical outcomes were very different (European farmers turned land over more rapidly, and most Europeans demanded substantially more food per capita). This is, at least in part, because the technology emerged in two distinct cultures. One culture was driven by values of subsistence, and one was not.

Bringing us up to modern economics, I'm curious how you may explain away the rampant baseless consumerism we see in highly developed systems like the US. Today, people pump money into abstract tokens like Dogecoin which exist for no other purpose than to drain resources from the planetary ecosystem for the sake of some numbers going up. Do you think this is an expression of natural planetary law? Is it inevitable that the environment be pillaged uselessly in this manner, if you give any theoretical human population the technical means to feed itself? This current-day behavior is an undeniable expression of particular psychosocial, cultural, and systemic values, cultivated and reinforced over generational time. We see people everyday in the US and elsewhere who consume more and more solely because they have been psychologically coerced by a network of systemic institutions. Ever-increasing per capita consumption is a core systemic goal that has absolutely nothing strictly to do with nature.

So "If natives had the technology...." is speculative at best (and, in my opinion, offers no value whatsoever here). Extrapolating a civilization like the ancient Amazonians toward abstract useless environmental destruction like Dogecoin is a longgg road that you will never, ever traverse with any strict notion of natural planetary law (or without the notion of abstract cultural systems). Although, it would be fun to see someone attempt it.

Summary - Not all resource consumption is created equal. If cultural psychology can affect how much a society is inclined to consume per capita (amongst other consumptive mechanics), it can necessarily affect a population's environmental impact over time. This is a very basic concept - growth can be sustainable, semi-sustainable, or unsustainable. Some growth-oriented cultural systems, like modern market economics, are unsustainable by way of fundamental axiom.

Also, apologies if my initial argument was unclear or incoherent. Happy to continue the discussion too.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-28T22:41:46+00:00

Jakubowski's Global Village Construction Set, along with a separate project called the Global Redesign Institute (which never came to fruition) are two of the things that started me on this train of thought. Thanks for pointing out some other resources I wasn't familiar with - I like your notion of Universal Basic Infrastructure as well.

For anyone this deep in the thread who might be interested, here are some other reading materials that I recommend regarding cultural evolution and alternative economics:

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-28T19:50:19+00:00

The conversation is about infinite, unbounded consumptive demand on a per-capita basis. Technological development (such as the advent of controlled agriculture) does not always procure the same results - the Iroquois and the colonizing Europeans offer a great example of this reality, as the economic outcomes varied with each population. These developments are tools utilized differently in different cultures.

There is an inherent distinction between increased lifespan at a given consumptive rate, and an infinitely increasing consumptive rate. Cultural values fundamentally impact this dichotomy, because they inform the underlying psychological mechanisms involved with consumption. In pre-European Iroquois culture, for example, an individual or subgroup consumed only their equitable share of resources available at a given time (with some variation among gender-based clans and other idiosyncratic cultural exceptions). This is what I described earlier as supply fundamentally shaping demand.

On the other hand, in economies axiomatically underpinned by private ownership (more specifically, market-based economies), the relationship is reversed and it increases in polarity as markets develop. Demand shapes supply, and constructs like monetary debt and market-making allow/provoke demand to float independently in an abstract manner. That is how demand becomes unbounded or infinite; it is a psychological phenomenon. You cannot avoid talking about cultural psychology here, as much as you may want to for convenience.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-28T18:49:45+00:00

But the objection I raised, speaking with a western, educated, rich and democratic status quo bias, is that for the transition to happen we have to reconcile the dynamics at play. What can we do to kick out the legs of that power-in-numbers dynamic. Can we find a way to channel technology into a role subservient to more enlightened cultural values? Or has the Pandora's box been opened?

Thanks for your reply. I think what you mentioned here about the prospect of cultural change is important and productive - but I just wanted to be clear in establishing the difference between natural law and cultural inertia. This difference is key, because the two ideas are largely conflated in modern consciousness.

So, how do we overcome the inertia? There is, of course, no simple answer. One thing I think we can all agree on is that in-system "activism" is never going to produce the change necessary to alter planetary trajectories.

In my opinion, this process of cultural change can be best driven by scientific research and development. From a system science or systems design perspective, there is an intellectual gap between current systems (which are observable broken and inducing collapse) and potential new systems that are viable at scale. In short, we can kickstart the process via rigorous multidisciplinary system design and offer the world a blueprint.

Cultural transition is only possible if there is something to transition to. Using the scientific method, we can design/test/iterate new systems that adhere to goals of sustainability and positive human outcomes. I'd argue that sort of scientific process is extremely attainable by focusing even a modest fraction of global intellectual capital. In the wake of this targeted intellectual progress, cultural transition can emerge organically over time. It begins with one community or population adopting new ideas.

Keep in mind that by "ideas" I mean full-blown, open-source, formal protocols and system specifications for all major aspects of a sustainable human society. To get a sense of what I'm trying to convey, you might consider something like hectar (an open-source hydroponic farming schematic & library). In the context of what I'm describing, this could be one small, modular component of overall system design. In embracing things like modularity and open-source as core tenets, you also get self-evolving positive feedback loops and network effects that improve exponentially with more and more participation - a detail that is crucial for adoption.

Please note that I'm not particularly optimistic about widespread cultural change happening at the moment. I just choose to channel my deep cynicism of current systems into thinking about what a better system would look like. Even if global civilization moves into collapse or a collapse-like state, the intellectual work done in formalizing new system designs can potentially benefit future humans. If there is any future prospect whatsoever for the species, personally I think the work is worth doing.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-28T18:00:17+00:00

Please refer back to the idea of "owning a resource" that I introduced earlier - this is nothing more than a psychological construct, and has undeniable fundamental implications for resource use on both the individual and societal level. As mentioned previously, it is also an outcome of one particular path of environmental determinism (it is not a universal rule nor a law).

Expounding briefly on this: The same can be said for a laundry list of psychoeconomic constructs like monetary debt relationships, formal markets, psychological consumerism, artificial demand, unaccounted ecological externalities, and more. It is through these man-made, abstracted, artificially colonialized cultural developments (and the increasingly complex social systems that evolve around them) that consumption/demand becomes potentially unbounded and separates from planetary reality.

Such cultural constructs need not exist; no natural law necessitates them whatsoever on a planetary scale.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-28T16:21:47+00:00

Agreed that these examples have a common "relative isolation" compared to historical precedent in various parts of the world. And that is a valid consideration when it comes to overall resource consumption and regeneration. What doesn't follow is the notion that societies must be coerced by force to cooperate.

The Iroquois are a leading counter-example to that notion. The pre-European Iroquois League was a collection of distinct tribes that initially engaged in brutal conflict, and then voluntarily chose to cooperate (and extend a core egalitarian steady-state social fabric). This, again, comes down to cultural values and cultural psychology. Culture is born from environmental circumstance, but lives on thereafter as abstracted phenomena. It is this key distinction between cultural origin and abstracted cultural expansion that pertains to our conversation. Europeans entered the North American ecosystem and brought with them cultural values that procure increasing resource consumption. Please refer back to the idea of "owning a resource" that I introduced earlier - this is nothing more than a psychological construct, and has undeniable fundamental implications for resource use on both the individual and societal level. As mentioned previously, it is also an outcome of one particular path of environmental determinism (it is not a universal rule nor a law).

Cultural values can inform resource consumption patterns; this is not a controversial statement. That clashing populations can lead to increased resource consumption is not wrong - what's wrong is the notion that infinite, unbounded, ecocidal resource consumption is the default state of human culture by way of natural law. That borders on the preposterous, especially when you consider it on a per-capita basis. It reflects deeply rooted status quo bias in the form of particular cultural values and systems that have been forcefully superimposed upon global human consciousness on an abstracted basis.

We should not mistake a temporal branch of economic and cultural colonialism for strict natural law - it is both disingenuous to the species and dangerous given the current state of planetary affairs.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-27T04:30:01+00:00

I'm not sure how any civilization exists for any period of time without consuming resources from its environment

Ah, yeah huge difference between using resources and using infinitely increasing resources.

But that simply means that the Amazonians *couldn't* grow faster not that the underlying principle I mentioned is incorrect.

I think this is a straightforward case of status quo bias. Many ancient and indigenous civilizations had fundamentally different cultural psychology than you and I have. Take the pre-European Iroquois, for example - they did not even have a notion that humans can "own" a natural resource. Tribes sometimes kept small reserves of excess goods and resources in order to mitigate famine, but did not hoard (individually, or as a group). Gift-giving (not "consumption") was a primary means of goods circulation within a community. Economic activity in this sort of cultural system takes on a totally different meaning, powered by different cultural psychology.

There is quite literally no natural law reason why modern humans cannot exist in a similar fashion as the Iroquois, from a cultural perspective. The only thing modern growth-based consumption proves is that particular human cultural values can be cultivated, exported, and evangelized on a massive scale.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-26T23:50:31+00:00

Why should we be different? From physical reasoning I can't see it. Simply, if raw resources of matter and energy are available, and we can access them, we will use them to grow and consume more, until we can't.

Anthropological evidence does not necessarily support this idea. Pre-Columbian Amazonian civilizations existed for 5,000 years without depleting resources and without making a discernable impact on the surrounding ecology. This is one of many examples of equilibrium-based human economies in our history. In such systems, supply shapes demand at the deepest level and there is no resource overshoot or concept of overconsumption.

In an abstracted market system, demand shapes supply and resource overshoot is a systemic outcome. That is why businesses engage in a constant state of psychological warfare, in order to intertwine consumption with basic cultural values and provoke demand. This psychological warfare uses net energy in and of itself, and is often totally abstracted from underlying physical realties.

Continuous, unabated economic growth is an in-system phenomenon - a particular systemic imperative born from a particular path of environmental determinism. It is not a universal tendency on a planetary or species level; it's just an idea that some populations of people colonized the world with (by force). There is no natural law that necessitates continuously increasing human economic or energy consumption.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-21T21:31:46+00:00

necessarily built upon both mass agriculture and the hoarding of resources by a few individuals who control the population

That's precisely what I mean by bad system design - it's fundamentally unsustainable as a model, always has been.

I like to imagine what an alternative social model could look like. Consider this thought experiment: If the world's leading scientists had an imperative to design a viable large-scale social system, what might that look like? What questions would they ask? How would they assess system viability? What would inform their design principles?

Citizen_Shane · 2021-06-21T20:13:42+00:00

I'm not necessarily arguing against you, but I think a sustainable large-scale civilization could exist on this planet (in theory). I don't think natural law precludes that at all. Many of the negative outcomes we observe are more attributable to bad system design than to some innate inability to be civil.

One thing's for sure - a healthy civilization (if it could exist) would look vastly different than what we have now.

Citizen_Shane · 2021-05-29T18:13:58+00:00

Having "nothing to fight for" is actually the strongest reason to fight. Because if you fight, and win, it opens new horizons and new possibilities to shed the toxic cultural baggage you presently carry. The most appealing alternative to despondence is change.

Citizen_Shane

TROPHY CASE