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Comment by zo1 | Hacker News Reader

"Why did you bring guilt into question?

Each individual may have perfectly rational reasons for their behaviour. It can still be interesting to study side effects of their group behaviour." If only they kept it to just "study[ing] side effects of [..] group behaviour". However, all these meta and orbit-view studies' conclusions are used as justification for all sorts of orbital-level intervention that has real-world consequences on individual's behavior and possibly well-being.

The gist, the implications of the article, and any possible government-level consequences need to be preoccupied over! This isn't just some nifty little article we're reading on the internet. This is your entire environment being slowly manipulated by agendas and "reasoned" responses to correct supposed "problems" such as statistical inequality. Be informed.

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But if there is a systemic-level issue, systemic-level intervention is precisely the right response. Individualist attempts to address systemic issues are mostly romanticism.

I think what he's suggesting is that a systemic issue might not require systemic-level intervention, ceteris parabus. It is possible for regions to decline when overall welfare per person who comes from that region is rising. In a world where people are mobile, this is what you expect to happen.

More broadly, an issue that's "systemic" in that it's observed in a system might not be "systemic" in the sense that something is broken in the system.

I would say that pretty much all of 4500 years of western history directly disagree with this statement. There were dozens of non-individualist societies when we started, there is arguably a single (relatively new) one left, one that is at least partially individualist, and a single new one. There is the western civilization (sometimes referred to as western individualism, especially by non-western scholars), islam, a relative newcomer that is certainly more individualist than most the competition it massacred out of existence (like e.g. the Roman Society it is mostly modelled on), and communism (which is arguably dead today, as China can hardly be called an example of a communist society. Who is left ? North Korea ?).

Any solution that requires individuals reacting against their own self-interest on a large scale is a complete non-starter, for such a thing would not be Nash Balance. Non-Nash-balanced things can only survive until the first unexpected event, and require ever increasing infusions of energy to save their existence. Even that is only true if you can make it a global intervention. If not, it will simply get out-competed and replaced outright.

I don't agree that Western individualism is incompatible with addressing systemic problems on a systemic level. Joining the two ideas is more or less the "Nordic model" that we use here (Denmark): Western culture, mixed public/private economy, a high degree of state planning, and a universalist social welfare system. To some extent the German model is similar. There is individualism as well, but not to address systemic problems. No one expects individual action on its own to build the rail system, address economic inequality, safeguard the environment, ensure sensible urban planning, or maintain a national defense. Individual activity is part of all of those, but individual activity within the framework of rationally designed policies.

Western society is certainly individualist in some senses, especially culturally, and on a micro-level economically as well. I'm not arguing for a fully collectivist society, just to solve systemic problems using systemic approaches. Which we are perfectly capable of doing even in Western culture, using tools like a democratic government.

I can't really wrap my head around the notion of "addressing systemic problems on a systemic level" in the first place? How is it possible to act singularly with respect to the macro-equilibrium of a system that is by definition the product of intersecting micro-level behaviors?

The notion of acting systemically - rather than merely observing the emergent patterns that the system reflects - seems to be almost a kind of creationist mentality: you need to posit some sort of demiurge that is external to the system, and can therefore treat the system as a singular entity that can be manipulated as an engineer would manipulate the overall parameters of a machine he was working on. But there doesn't appear to exist any such demiurge in real life; human individuals and insitutions are limited to shifting their own particular micro-level behaviors. So how is it even meaningful to speak of acting directly against a complex system's macro-level equilibrium?

The big fallacy of modern political ideologies is to equate the particular insitutions of politics with the emergent equilibrium of society at large. The political state is just another micro-level input into the overall pattern; casting it into the role of a demiurge, and charging it with tweaking the parameters of the macro-level social system generally always leads to failures in the form of unattained goals and unintended consequences.

I don't think that this meshes very well with your previous post, where you claimed:

"But if there is a systemic-level issue, systemic-level intervention is precisely the right response. Individualist attempts to address systemic issues are mostly romanticism."

Systemic level intervention without individuals contributing to the effort will simply be fighting against exponential growth. It'll work really well in the beginning ... and fail.

I am aware that the requirement that any intervention policy must create a Nash balance is an onerous requirement. But you should treat it as a law of nature. It's a requirement that defines reality.

I am simply saying that your claim of government intervention simply fixing things is akin to saying that gravity can be ignored when building bridges. Reality just doesn't work that way. Anything that isn't a Nash balance will crash and burn, just like any bridge that isn't stable under gravity.

Sure, intervention should also be designed in a way that works, and monitored/adapted so it continues to do so. :-)

What I have in mind as "romanticism" is the more American idea that major societal problems just need some Ingenious Great Men to fix them (maybe together with something vague like "startups" and "innovation"), rather than actual policies.

Would you recommend any literature/links on the subject you speak of? I'm curious...

So you do not wish to understand the issues involved because they might lead to "government-level consequences", including "orbital-level intervention". Yeah, good to know that college degree of yours wasn't wasted.

I would have loved to stick around to here more about the statistical inequality as opposed to other kinds of inequality but I have to go. Best of luck to you.

no, but unless you push back the moment they start preaching the right and wrongness, then they will use it to implement government policy to push their ideals, probably at 'your' expense. you may not be able to see what the article is doing, but many of us know too well.

I have literally heard urban planners cry foul to plans to fund schools with extra money with the idea that you would get a greater return back in taxes as the neighborhood improved because it would 'push out lower income people' and 'ruin otherwise beautifully economically mixed'.

Yes, this!

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