I wonder if it's less about rate of change (but don't really take any exception to that claim) and more about divergence of change from expectations. 1950's or 60's expectations (at least in pop culture) was flying cars and smart robot house servants -- think Jetson's here. 

People of the early 20th Century had the direct experience of living though some very significant events which they probably had not really expected. The future became much more uncertain so receptivity to more possible outcomes probably increases. The situation is a bit different up to now, so I wonder if that doesn't place greater weight on a view of the future as some trend path with variation but mean-reversion.

The quick post is short, the effortpost is long

Years ago when I was in school one of my professors told me (well probably the whole class but...) you should be able to write the thesis of your entire paper on two or three index cards.

My initial thought was, then all the other writing is really a waste of effort I could put elsewhere. Not quite true. But that does seem to map over to the doodle - finished art point made. A lot of writing in the paper is the details and often can prove more distracting/noise to the main insight.

But I do have another thought on that. If you can put an interesting idea down in a very short set of statements or bullets the core to the thought is clear. The rest of what you write is about the author's view. Just offing the index card view opens up the field for every reader to take that idea/thought where they want to explore. That is often much more interesting for a reader.

I do think that is good advise, and true regardless of trollish or good/bad faith. I read your comment and immediately thought of the shooting messengers rather than messages. In other words, don't let the messenger distract you from the actual message. 

Reading the comments, though, it almost seems like many still focus on the "messenger" rather than the message carried -- and here I'm not specifically pointing at Elizabeth's post but the whole annoying/sneering/troll/just plain difficult person aspect, in other words the characteristics of the delivery rather than the value of the message/information/things the other person might contribute.

I think there may be a fairly critical confusion here, but perhaps have missed the key bit (or perhaps by seeing this particular tree have missed the forest the post is aiming at) that would address that. It seems that in "human values" here are defined very much in terms of a specific human. However, "goodness" seems to be more about something larger -- society, the culture, humanity as a class or even living things.

I suspect a lot of the potential error in treating the terms as near to one another disappears if you think of goodness for a specific person or thinking of human values in terms of human as a group that holds common values. (Granted, in this latter case get to specific values will be problematic but in terms of pure logic or abstract reasoning I don't think the issues are nearly as bad as implied in the OP.)

Yes, it's weird semantics but I think it's become a way to get more than just a small fraction of the legal rights real persons enjoy and are entitled to under law. I would challenge the claim "This is universally agreed to be a good thing". True, there are some very clear benefits to granting corporation the status of a de jure person -- a central party to allow contract. But we get a lot of costs that go with that (ability to avoid personal accountability, undue influence in public policy) when taking the legal fiction beyond what was necessary.

Granting ships and rivers "personhood" (and I would actually include corporation as a person in this too) seems sloppy/lazy at best (probably could have gotten to where you needed to get without such confusion) and intentional corruption of an idea at worst to some alternative gain that would have been rejected outside draping a veil of "personhood" for legal purposes. 

Other than policing the EU buildings and facilities, does that force do other things? Does it function as some supra police force that investigates throughout the EU?

A lot of this reminds me about an old econ article I read in school. Ron Heiner's The Origins of Predictable Behavior. As I recall, the basic argument is baysean in reasoning and largely gets to how social rules evolve to deal with very infrequent but highly costly, socially I want to say but also individually, actions by members of society.

The infrequency and lack of firsthand knowledge creates a lot of tensions in terms of views about the existing rules. Broadly that can fit into the view of resistance to change and "sky is falling" type fears and rhetoric that does generally slow the rate of change.

I'd be much happier with a post with the target I think you're aiming at if there was some comparisons to as many other pandemic events as possible. 

To be honest I don't find the bit about global GDP loss or the lack of follow through with some planned program funding that convincing or even relevant. Most of the programs announced in 2022 were likely all suggested in 2020 or 2021 so likely more knee-jerk "we have to show the people we're doing something" rather than well thought out. Then in 2022 and 2023 you have politics starting to dominate and since they are competing with other spending needs may well have been poor options for spending (compared to preventing future pandemics or other programs that also have some greater discounted value to social welfare and overall health). So not clear that we should take each or even any of them as good ideas we should have implemented.

Similarly, looking at global GDP from the World Bank data it's not clear that the hit to GDB was as bad as claimed. Sure, 82T is a big number. So is 17T but over 5 years in the context of global GDP not so shocking. I think that was a case of seeing something big in isolation and so thinking it's a bigger issue and it real is. Also, MR had a post about the impact to income in the USA and the government response. The estimate was the the lock-down reduces incomes by $15B a month. But the government support in response was something like $30B a month. A bit hard to see that situation supporting a big hit to GDP/incomes. I would agree that the USA situation is not representative of the world, but not too different from other developed countries (which I would include China in) and those are the countries that drive global GDP.  The chart on the World Bank site supports the supply shock to GDP for 2020 but then basically a return to the prior growth path, or even a steeper one. So I don't actually see that it's an easy case to make that we had some significant, persistent negative impact to global GDP. As such, I'm not seeing how this might support any claims about human's not having learned anything from the pandemic.

Feel like I should add one quick point as well. I think it's a mistake to make the type of aggregate claim "humanity learned almost nothing". That is either a claim that no one learned much or just wrong. as such I think framing the question that way is likely to lead one into a sub optimal analytic framework and so reduce whatever value such an inquire might produce. 

While not quite buying votes elections in the Philippines, at least local elections, have near ubiquitous payments to potential voters by candidate -- including forms with the name of the recipient (eligible voter) for each in a household (seems to help ensure that someone doesn't front-run the payment and keep all payments when they can only cast one vote). 

But when talking with people about the whole arrangement no one seems to think it actually changes results or makes anything better in terms or official or policy or effective governance. Just a small bit of extra cash candidates have to payout -- and so will then want to recoup in terms of bribes or other forms of political corruption.

Not something I've made a study about so all anecdotal but seems to be a real world case that is similar to your thoughts. But also different in that each candidate is making a payment and no real enforcement mechanism to ensure the vote is given to the highest bidder (or whatever the buy structure might be).

I don't think selling or buying votes is a good solution. There is a reason why we have multiple forms of social institutions: they solve different types of problems using different types of tools. If you think the problems of governance and policy are solved via a market mechanism I think your first task is to show why the market solution never emerged in the first place. But I think if you want to go down that path why stop at votes, why not take David Friedman's approach of a market anarchy where government largely doesn't exist but private solutions provided in a competitive market setting do.