Comment by Estragon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Estragon | Hacker News Reader

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It's hard to step outside the systems of social domination which suppress dreams, encourage overwork, etc. because they operate from fears which are often so deep-seated we're often not even aware of them. Bringing those fears into the light and unlearning the reactions they trigger is the main goal of spiritual practice (at least of mine.) This sort of emotional study and training is on the critical path for all of the desiderata pg lists (again, at least for me) and would have to precede them on my todo list, if I had one for this sort of thing.

Something my teacher wrote along these lines: http://www.unfetteredmind.org/learned-helplessness/0

  Can learned helplessness be undone? Well, that’s the big question,
  isn’t it? The answer is “Yes.” The cost, however, is high. We can only
  undo learned helplessness by severing our internal connection with the
  system that gave rise to it.
  
  Our motivation must be clear and strong. We must really want to hear
  and respond to our own questions about life. We must really want to
  live our own life and not one prescribed by our family, society,
  culture, profession or tradition. Metaphorically, we must be willing
  to go north, the direction that takes us out of society. We must be
  willing to endure pain, know from direct experience, act on what we
  see and receive what happens. We must yearn to experience what is
  without relying on anything to confirm our existence.

A big problem is that the fears are not all irrational, either, at least not in all circumstances. For many people on HN, they might be, but on average we tend to have pretty marketable skills and middle-class backgrounds (with some exceptions). I think for a lot of people it's unfortunately the case that making yourself look as much like a shiny cog as possible really is the best strategy to making a decent living.

In sheer numbers, the largest path out of poverty is a pretty mundane one: find a stable middle-class job in a large company. There are more exciting rags-to-riches stories, but rags-to-decent-paycheck stories are a lot more numerous and high-probability. So, maximizing attractiveness to large companies is probably the highest-probability way out of poverty. And, large companies are large machines whose hiring processes usually aim to acquire new cogs that can be inserted into the machine as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Another tool for designing out choices is called "Nudge" [1]

By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better.

"Most people know they should save money, but many don’t save enough and may not even be sure what amount is enough. Most savings advice goes against human nature and asks people to make complex calculations. To help people save, nudge them. When it is time for employees to enroll in your firm’s retirement plan, make signing up the default. People can choose not to sign up or can quit any time, but inertia and the status quo conspire to keep them from doing what’s good for them. Try a “Save More Tomorrow” program that “invites participants to commit themselves in advance to a series of [savings account] contribution increases” as their wages rise. This approach recognizes that people fear loss, and may perceive savings as a loss of disposable income, so it links increases in their savings rate to parallel increases in their salaries. When people earn more, the company automatically deducts more in savings. They don’t have to decide to save."

Set up choices in a way that takes advantage of how humans make decisions. You can nudge people in beneficial directions. To facilitate better decisions, design a default option that benefits people unless they explicitly choose otherwise.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

quick summary - http://www.slideshare.net/sgmitch/nudge09

Interesting, but I think we're talking about very different things. You're talking about engineering systems which manipulate people into doing things you think are good for them, and I'm talking about largely undoing the system's scope for such manipulation, by undoing the internal mechanisms by which such systems operate.

The other post currently at the top of HN is about the poster's fear that by pursuing entrepreneurial ambitions now they are setting themselves up for economic irrelevancy in a few years' time. The top comment in that thread is currently from an experienced programmer saying that he has almost never had the optimal skillset for any job market of the last three decades, yet never been unemployed. That's the kind of fear which turns someone into a cog, and the kind of thing you have to undo to live out pg's desiderata.

The word "nudge" reminded me of a motivational speech I had to give in Speech 101 back in uni. I called mine "Small Balls" (for lack of a better term) and basically went on to explain why you don't necessarily have to have "a big pair" to experience something new. If you routinely step a just a little bit out of your comfort zone, you thereby create new and larger comfort zones. This process can be repeated as much as you like and I actually used my own theory to give the speech since I wasn't exactly comfortable getting up in front of an audience.

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