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Comment by m15i | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we can transform our society into one that is less depressing?

I feel like this is something that is often ignored when these discussions arise. We tend to heap blame on some failure of willpower or chemical imbalance within a given individual. Though there are a number of individuals with such a chemical imbalance, how often do we sit down and consider that maybe, just maybe, our society and way of living is fucked up and that is what’s driving so many people to breakdowns and suicide?

I don't think this problem is "often ignored" as much as it is seen, rightly, as so difficult to be near unfeasible. And looking for intermediate fixes that can help many in the meantime is a reasonable strategy. Anything that would fix society at large, in a reasonable timespan (i.e. to help the people most afflicted) would by necessity require a legislative overhaul and/or massive reallocation of resources. There is no easy path to that.

Maybe not often ignored, but often mentioned or seriously evaluated? I guess my point is: As someone who has struggled with mental illness and PTSD for most of my life, I generally get the sense that somehow I’m to blame for it because I don’t exercise, meditate, eat well, etc., enough or can’t just “visualize” myself without it (Though I’m not saying that’s what you’re saying should happen, and I get the monumental difficulty involved).

Of course I don’t believe in absolute free will so that may have something to do with my outlook...

http://dsausa.org

The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. 11 * 1 Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn't function if everyone starved; it attends to people's psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn't function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. Too much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects that most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo "retraining," no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity. And for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse.

The concept of "mental health" in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

Meh. Competitive race to dehumanization, ruthless proggressivism, are not physical laws. If there are sufficiently many actors unwilling to make accords, sure, it's inevitable. But there is enough structure and organizations, and interested humans, such that we can alter society to give a little more weight to basic human values than surrender to the endless march of domination.

We needn't halt it -- after all, if we can create a good desirable society, a billion more societies would be welcome.

But we have, and should continue to, what's truly valuable and worthwhile to pursue. An universe filled with automatons (even if scientific or mathematics god-like savants) is boring -- and I love mathematics -- but in general problem-solving ability is certainly not the whole story of cognitive experience, even general problem-solving ability. The life experience of Lee Sedol is more interesting than the synthetic "experience" of AlphaGo, even if it is superior at his life's work. If we had an AGI strictly geared towards solving technological problems the same might be said, even if ultimately other aspects of human experience are "wasteful", unnecessary for conquest and dominion.

There's a lot of variation in depression rates between countries so probably things can be done https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/11/07...

And maybe we can teach children that it's possible to avoid the eternal pursuit of the next thing, that buying stuff doesn't bring happiness and joy.

> buying stuff for the sake of happiness and joy doesn't bring happiness and joy

FTFY

When I buy stuff because I feel empty inside, sure. When I buy tools to pursue a certain goal, things look a bit different.

exactly, the goal is not to buy, it's a side-effect of wanting to pursue a different goal

I don’t think that would help at all. What’s the study that was done on people that won the lottery vs. ended up paralyzed?

After 6 months they had the same level of happiness.

Humans are great at growing accustom to their circumstances and then wanting more. It would help for a little while, but then everyone goes back to how they were before.

We can't do anything of the sort. Nobody really has control of society. We're a bunch of bumblebees trapped in a beach ball. Sometimes it goes in the direction we want it to go, other times not.

No one has absolute control, but it can certainly be nudged in certain directions if the will is there and the population is relatively unified, something I don't foresee happening in the West for a very long time.

Isn't that saying the same thing as the bumblebee beach ball analogy?

Had never heard of that before, but after reading I'd say it's exactly that.

Getting the bumble bees back to a state of working in the same direction so we can be competitive with countries who've already achieved that is the tricky part.

Coordinated human rights movements have made major improvements to the human condition. That's of course not to say they are easy or always successful, quite the contrary.

The Enlightenment/democracy, abolition of slavery, civil rights movements, unions/labor rights movements are all examples of humans consciously improving their societies.

While I agree with the fact that the Enlightenment helped to get rid of some harmful superstitions, I think it also contributed to the mechanistic industrial mindset that ended up causing a lot of harm e.g. colonialism and eugenics.

Great list though, maybe add on reproductive justice and climate science.

What do you make of wars, revolutions, and protest movements then?

Very few people want to have wars, yet they persist, which kind of proves the GP's point.

Maybe the people who wanted them got their way, sometimes.

People that profit from wars "want" wars. Presumably that means there should be ways then to remove profit motives from wars. Because the majority of people don't want wars, one might assume that it should even be theoretically possible to make that happen in a democracy, at least.

Let me be blunt and say that this attitude is exactly why nobody ever tries to change society. Instead of assuming that because you're one person you don't matter, why not take the attitude that you're one person and what you do has an impact on everyone around you?

You can't change the world by treating everyone well but you can sure as shit make all their days better, and that's what we should be doing. If you want to live in a world that isn't isolating, stop isolating the strangers around you.

I generally agree with you that people are apathetic and assume that something can't be done simply because it's hard or they don't feel like trying.

That said I think there's an element of truth that society generally creates incentives that can lead to outcomes nobody wants [1]. You can get equilibriums where without effective coordination people are trapped, sometimes the trapped state can prevent effective coordination itself.

It's not an easy problem to fix.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

This isn't an easy problem to fix systemically, but we need to be making different decisions as individuals. Society changes in the little decisions we make every day, and not by leaps and bounds through fiat.

When people chose to smoke pot, knowing that it was illegal, they were normalizing it. Those were small decisions by individuals that snowballed into legalization. Gay marriage and the acceptance of homosexuality followed the same pattern, where individuals decided to be more accepting, and that snowballed into societal acceptance.

Society is made up of individuals, and we are part of society. Throwing up our hands and abdicating responsibility doesn't serve anyone.

This is usually where someone brings up Fred Rogers. There are multitudes of inspirational people. Fortunately/unfortunately the digital age has knocked a lot of saints off their pedestals. Hopefully, the dust will settle and more will rise up to take their places.

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