18 Comments

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"

I've been calling Roissy the new Timothy Leary for a while now.

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Karl Smith is unperturbed, though not exactly along those lines. I linked to his response to Hanson earlier, and I'd really like to hear Robin's response.

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Damaging an economy enough to make less prosperity generally available doesn't sound like it would take especially detailed control.

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Hippies and hunter-gatherers rarely had as strong of an emphasis on in-group vs. out-group as other groups, so they had a hard time getting organized to take on the enemy. Slash-and-burn gardeners are OK at it (their counterparts in advanced societies are the black inner city), but it still doesn't reach a very large scale.

The groups who get the most intense in-group vs. out-group feelings are pastoralists and settled farmers. That's mostly who's been duking it out for recorded history and even a good deal of pre-history. Introduce either one, let alone both, into an area of foragers or gardeners, and the latter get wiped out or shoved into the most marginal lands.

Between herders and farmers, the main difference is how hierarchical or rigid the role structure is, with herders being more egalitarian. So if you want a society where larger-scale organization, action, and defense are possible, but where internally we don't have a strict bureaucracy, you want to adopt a more nomadic herder way of life.

Of course you'll catch a lot of flak from the forager-like hippies for bringing a "cowboy culture" to politics, but sometimes it's either them or us (sometimes the "them" lies within our national boundaries, like criminals). And at least it'll be more of a band-of-brothers group instead of a do-what-the-elders-say hierarchy. Knights of the Round Table.

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Medicine is not that important, so the government should cut half of it. Except...doesn't that also suggest cutting medicine might not be that important, and we can leave it alone, if messing with it is a hassle?

May I suggest being playfully serious? Of noting that being playful isn't that important, and so playing the seriousness game?

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I think you mean "hippie".

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Perhaps part of it is the way politics is funded. Winning elections requires money. "Serious" business interests have money and have large financial stakes in political outcomes. At the same time "party-fun-loving" interests don't have money, and "party-fun-loving" is not so sensitively staked on political outcomes.

And so maybe it's these pressures which direct politicians to focus on the "serious" issues, to find "serious" solutions to them, etc.

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Probably the dope is making me paranoid.

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When U.S. spending on medicine is irrelevant to the population's health, is the correct inclusion that it's medical science that's worthless? Why shouldn't medical care eat up an ever-increasing part of the GNP? What is a more worthwhile expenditure?

If spending doesn't correlate with efficacy, isn't it obvious that the problem is with the delivery system, not the science, which rightfully costs more and more with increasing wealth?

Why would anyone expect medical-care delivery to be efficient when decisions are made by mostly stupid and greedy doctors competing in the marketplace?

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Hrm... A bunch of people just trying to live their own lives without bothering too much about the nitty-gritty details of actually running gov't, more interested in loving their kids and enjoying their lives... What would it take to mobilize these people into actual political activism?

Maybe the Tea Party folks are closer to what you're describing here than most might think.

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" One might imagine starting a Party Party, based on a fun-loving hippy-style emphasis on simple living. But alas those who agree are less eager to be political."

Might I suggest a non-party party?

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Lack of concern for a paycheck probably made it easier to consolidate power over labor... even if there was nothing alarming going on there was no reason not to jump on the opportunity to do so. But this was still near-term thinking, because this could only make people in the future care more about a paycheck than they otherwise would have, making the same old conflicts occurring again inevitable.

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"Avoiding information-theoretical death is easy: just get frozen."

I doubt it's that easy, although I hope so. Simple solutionism seems to me to be a demon at least of our time, if not throughout history.

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Avoiding information-theoretical death is easy: just get frozen. When you think about it, it's a very hippy solution: all you need is liquid nitrogen, antifreeze and a relatively modest amount of savings (or a a life insurance policy).

Medical spending has negative value at the margin, so reducing it makes a lot of sense. Funding for basic research is a very low portion of GDP, and medical research funding is poorly managed: just look at how little money is going to the most worthwhile approaches (i.e. SENS).

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This is the optimal path towards avoiding information theoretic death?

Cutting defense spending in half and reducing housing subsidies seem like easy claims to me.

Cuting medical spending in half and reducing educational subsidies seem like harder claims to me. It's not clear to me that we should be spending less money on medicine and education (except perhaps narrowly to avoid bankruptcy) -I intuit that we should be spending the money differently. I think that's an important distinction. Unless you're separating out medical research and public health from medical spending, and funding basic research at universities and targeted investments to train the workforce in skill shortage areas from education spending?

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That implies the people running things have the kind of understanding and control over the economy to arrange such things. I assure you they don't. Hanlon's Razor is firmly in effect here.

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