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buybuydandavis comments on Should LessWrong be Interested in the Occupy Movements? - Less Wrong
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Change is anything different than now; it isn't much of a goal.
A blind monkey could see that something was wrong with trillions of dollars of bailouts and debt assumption. If you're not really identifying what that something is, I don't think you're adding much to the discussion. As it is, the one sided attack on corporate culpability for the mess, while ignoring government's hand in it, leaves me to conclude that any diagnosis they come up with will miss the mark.
The movements I think are worth looking at are the ones that create value, routing around current institutions. Basically all the open source efforts to actually make things by harnessing the cognitive surplus of an increasingly educated and connected world.
Doing is more important than squawking, as long as the regime isn't completely oppressive. The increasing maker culture, bringing technology and design to solve problems, is more transformative than politics as performance self entertainment.
I downvoted this comment because I feel it dives too far into the specific politics of the situation, without being constructive in specific ways. That makes me think it is likely to increase the amount of mind-killing, without really raising the level of the discussion.
EDIT: I am curious why this was downvoted. I was trying to be more polite than offering a simple downvote by offering information which could be used to create more productive comments. If I haven't done that well I'd appreciate a response in kind rather than simple downvotes.
Yeah I realized that myself shortly after writing it, mostly the 'blind monkey' bit.
What do you mean here? You're not the one who wrote that comment.
I mean that I shouldn't have snarked back like that using that language, it was immature. Sorry about that.
... Wow I seem to be getting a lot of downvotes.
Upvoted again.
Actually, a lot of the movements have addressed the political source of the problems. Some of them locally (A lot of Occupy Oakland's rhetoric has been against the decisions of the city trade council and its mayor) some of them more universally (occupyDC has drafted a deficit/jobs bill in rough, and is currently petitioning and protesting to get it through, http://october2011.org/99 )
And the squawking itself also serves a purpose. Because a blind monkey sees a lot better than the legislative bodies of most modern nations, if the rhetoric and bills and such are any indication. Sometimes you do have to create a lot of noise to draw attention to a problem.