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The_Lion comments on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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So why are you focusing your complaining on Paul Graham's essay rather than on the essays complaining about "economic inequality" without even bothering to make the distinction? What does that say about your "ugh fields"?
In fact a remarkable number of the people perusing strategy (1) are the same people railing against economic inequality. One would almost suspect they're intentionally conflating (1) and (2) to provide a smokescreen for their actions. Also since strategy (1) requires more social manipulation skills then strategy (2), the people pursuing strategy (1) can usually arrange for anti-inequality policies to mostly target the people in group (2).
We hold someone like Paul Graham to higher standards than some random nobody trying to score political points. Isn't Graham one of the leading voices in the rationalist/SV-tech/hacker tribe?
Ok, while we're nitpicking Paul Graham's essay, I should mention the part of it that struck me as least rational when I read it. Namely, the sloppy way he talks about "poverty", conflating relative and absolute poverty. After all, thanks to advances in technology what's considered poverty today was considered unobtainable luxury several centuries ago.
Advances in technology have certainly improved living standards across the board, but they have not done much for the next layer of human needs - things like social inclusion or safety against adverse events. Indeed, we can assume that, in reasonably developed societies (as opposed to dysfunctional places like North Korea or several African countries) lack of such things is probably the major cause of absolute 'poverty', since primary needs like food or shelter are easily satisfied. It's interesting to speculate about focused interventions that could successfully improve social inclusion; fostering "organic" social institutions (such as quasi-religious groups with a focus on socially-binding rituals and public services) would seem to be an obvious candidate.
You have redefined "absolute poverty" to mean "absolute poverty on a scale revised to ignore the historic improvements", i.e. relative poverty.
The internet has done a great deal for that.
Which ones? Disease? Vast progress. Earthquakes and hurricanes? We make better buildings, better safety systems. Of course, we can also build taller buildings, and cities on flood plains, so the technology acts on both sides there.
Institutions that require focused interventions to foster them are the opposite of "organic". Besides, "quasi-religious groups with a focus on socially-binding rituals and public services" already exist. Actual religions, for example, and groups such as Freemasons.
I'm not 'redefining' the scale absolute poverty is measured on, or ignoring the historic improvements in it. These improvements are quite real. They're also less impressive than we might assume by just looking at material living standards, because social dynamics are relevant as well.