Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

The key element of this piece is its recognition of the social, political, institutional, model-and-frame, and epistemic roadblocks to addressing the hyman predicament.

People, writ large, don't want to hear this. Happy stories are far more compelling. Complex stories with unhappy endings, not so much. And all systems stories are complex. (They don't all have to have bad endings, though many do.)

Politics, particularly large-scale democratic systems, hew away from intellect and sophistication. Aristphanes wrote of this in ancient Greece, The Frogs. One of the most accessible and concise developments I've seen is H.L. Mencken's 1926 essay, "Brayard vs. Lionheart", on the Coolidge-Cox U.S. presidential race. Highly recommended.

https://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lio...

Our institutions, cultural, governmental, commercial, and otherwise, can address the situation at best poorly, and often directly contribute to the problem. I don't have a handy argument as to why, though I'm thinking much on that. The "P Literature" -- Parkinson's Law, the Peter Principle, Putt's Law, and Stephen Potter's Gamesmanship seem to form part of a core. I'd add the Jevons paradox, Gresham's Law, and John Gall's Systemantics as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successfu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics

Broken models and frames -- theory and ideology -- contribute hugely. I've been focusing particularly on economics and its general failures to properly address both costs and value. (The realisation that "cost", "price", and "value" are three distinct, and frequently only tenuously-related concepts, is a breakthrough in understanding.)

And failures of understanding, communication, and processing of information -- our epistemic system -- are another wrench thrown in the works. Not trivially addressed, and perhaps best considered a fundamental system constraint rather than a bug.

>People, writ large, don't want to hear this. Happy stories are far more compelling. Complex stories with unhappy endings, not so much.

I don't think this is clearly true. I was pretty convinced by Pinker's latest two books, and even though a lot of historians were critical of them, I wasn't convinced by the criticisms. I think that people have undervalued the tremendous increases in average quality and length of life across the whole planet in the last 200 years, and that people generally like doom-mongering stories. If we go on the basis that the media tries to make a profit by producing the stories that people like to read, opening up any news source would seem to provide evidence that people like to read bad news.

Pinker tells happy stories.

He also fails to account for the mechanisms, and limits, of progress.

Yes, my point is that his emphasis on the positive side is an outlier.

Yes, for small stories, addressing others, especially.

But most of us prefer to subscribe to large-scale myths or ideologies offerring hope, salvation, redemption, etc. That is the backbone of every major world religion, and most political ideology. It's certainly what the economic orthodoxies mantra of perpetual growth pretends.

Sad songs say so much, but Pop is overwhelmingly Happy.

Story arcs tend far more to Comic than Tragic. "Hollywood ending" is a trope for reasons.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hollywood-ending

And in politics, realism is the kiss of death. Carter's "Malaise" speech:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32596

We remember (or have been indoctrinated with) Churchill's "we shall fight them on the beaches", but not the full paragraph, and far bleaker thoughts, which follow it:

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/20/greatspe...

Thanks for that. I submitted this because, although environmental issues come up here relatively often (the collapse of civilisation will, of course, affect tech), I have seen very little with regards to the long-term consequences of our anemic approach to the situation (even the Paris accord is like a band-aid on a shotgun wound). It was nice, for the most depressing value of "nice", to see someone who has shown prescience to just come out and say that there is not much reason to think that we'll get out of this one with an intact civilisation, and to address that Teslas and reusable grocery bags aren't going to fix this. I also thought the mention of focusing on music and love and the things that used to mark a well-lived life as opposed to greater economic extraction might be the best approach.

We've been taking out loans from the atmosphere for a couple centuries without too much trouble, but nature is eventually consistent.

I've been looking into the question for some years. The "doomer" literature (not all of it is inherently dismal) is ... far more substantial and substantive than is generally credited. That is not, however, what he's generally remembered for, that would be cost-benefit analysis

E.J. Mishan is an example I've only just discovered. He was a University of Chicago trained economist who questioned the growth mantra beginning in the 1950s.

Leonard Silk, also an economist, ran a fascinating column in The New York Times from the 1960s - 1980s, and addressed Mishan several articles. This one, from 1972, I'd submited to HN without traction a few days back:

"Economic Analysis: Dangers of Growth (1972)"

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/20/archives/growth-vs-enviro...

> the collapse of civilisation will, of course, affect tech

I've been wondering about that for a few months. I am fully aware that the current organisation of the world will come to an end in like, ten to fifteen years; is it wise for me to continue working with computers, which I love, hoping they will still be of some use after the collapse of civilisation?

As far as vantage sites to observe what's occuring, it's not a bad one. Some skills are transferrable, if you consider them well.

Timing societal collapse is even more fraught than timing the market.

> People, writ large, don't want to hear this. Happy stories are far more compelling.

Any evidence to back this up? I would say the fact that news runs on ratings and overwhelmingly offers negative stories suggests it's false.

As I've commented elsewhere in thread: small-scale vs. large. Hollywood endings and pop music. Institutional responses to pessimistic forecasts or calls for self-sacrifice.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16930303

News media post 10 times as many negative as positive stories so not sure what you base the idea that people like to see more positive than negative. In fact the climate change discussions is dominated by negative stories.

Project Censored tracks underreported stories.

These are overwhelmingly negative. They're typically systemic (e.g., they aren't easily solved, and they are complex, which means hard to report and make accessible). They often fit poorly into established narratives, and/or are outside the Overton Window. Many challenge Establishment and/or Power. Or concern low-appeal / low-sympathy victims.

http://projectcensored.org/category/the-top-25-censored-stor...

That underreported stories are overwhelmingly negative does not mean that reported stories are overwhelmingly positive those two have nothing to do with each other.

Negative stores are what we hear most not positive ones.

http://www.journalism.org/2000/10/31/negative-vs-positive/

https://qz.com/307214/heres-what-happened-when-a-news-site-o...

Again, you're arguing a point I've not made, and I seem to be poorly communicating that large stories with complex dynamics, often with unsympathetic or marginalised victims, and or which challenge cultural narratives or established powers, and most especially, challenge the reader's well-being without offering a clear solution or course of action, are poorly represented.

There are a few studies of news content and coverage. The Tyndall Report looks at prime-time news coverage, overview available online. The PEJ News Coverage Index looks at TV, radio, talk radio, and print for selected national sources, though it's not. The Vanderbilt Archive similarly has national news data (and content) dating to the 1960s (summaries/headlines online). Local TV, radio, and print are a whole 'nother barrel of fish, though notably a major staple of Los Angeles (and many other regions') live TV coverage is ... vehicle chases.

Much of the coverage is both, yes, negative, and non-substantial. Commercial, entertainment, sport, celebrity, "weird", and otherwise trivial matter.

But not, as a rule, matters of serious existential import.

http://tyndallreport.com

http://www.journalism.org/news_index_methodology/

https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-high-spee...

Ok so we agree that there is more negative news than positive.

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