[HN Gopher] The Emperor's New Clothes: a story of motivated stup...
___________________________________________________________________
The Emperor's New Clothes: a story of motivated stupidity
Author : dash2
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-11-20 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wyclif.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wyclif.substack.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The last paragraph:
|
| But as Upton Sinclair pointed out long ago, ignorance is hardest
| to eradicate when someone's breakfast depends on it. Individual
| dumbness is worth getting rid of. Collective stupidity's future
| is assured. It pays for itself.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Sometimes it isn't even their breakfast, it's just their ego.
| JamisonM wrote:
| "Individual expectations needn't be stored in linguistic form:
| you can have a feeling about which horse will win the race,
| without thinking up a sentence about it."
|
| Are we sure about this? This sounds made up, I don't know. Does
| the idea of a race even exist in one's mind in a non-linguistic
| form?
| cee_el123 wrote:
| > Does the idea of a race even exist in one's mind in a non
| linguistic form ?
|
| Yes, especially in visual form.
|
| Language is often a big handicap - it is linear, inefficient
| and usually biased towards some worldview (imo)
| cymian wrote:
| Using a term like concept instead of "linguistic" to denote a
| mental representation (which could be "auditory", "visual",
| "kinesthetic", "feeling", etc). Then you are absolutely
| correct.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I rarely think about things in words and sentences. Only when I
| have to really nail something down logically or communicate it
| to someone else does it get expressed that way.
|
| Concepts and ideas are more like some kind of abstract space,
| with relationships between things, but not visual. It's a
| model. Hard to describe really.
|
| I was amazed to learn that many other people apparently have
| some kind of continuous monologue going on in their heads.
|
| I
| cortesoft wrote:
| This made me think of one of my favorite quotes from "The Wire":
| "if it's a lie, we fight on that lie"
|
| The point was that they can't stop the war, so it is
| counterproductive trying to expose that the thing they are
| fighting over wasn't actually true.
|
| https://youtu.be/oOQCuRdWt-A
| hootbootscoot wrote:
| front-end build toolchains and the alleged difficulties in coding
| es5, cough cough...
| jetsetgo wrote:
| let me tell you about horrors of react-native
| dash2 wrote:
| Tell me more. I can think of so many examples from my own area
| of work....
| notpachet wrote:
| React Hooks.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Reminds me of the Abilene Paradox:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
| blondin wrote:
| very interesting write-up!
|
| social media could be accelerating groupthink. it's so easy for
| people to form a group that shares the same beliefs and opinions.
| in the past it may have taken years.
|
| nowadays it's a matter of minutes.
|
| that sentence at the end about rationalists got me thinking.
| there is a group of people identifying themselves as rationalists
| on twitter. i have been very surprised how similar they are in
| their way thinking and doing. they recommend the same books,
| share the same ideas, do the same things, etc. a self-fulfilling
| prophecy.
|
| just something i have been thinking about lately...
| zby wrote:
| Ad rationalists - I don't quite understand your objection - if
| rationalists were different from each other - then they would
| not have a common name. We name groups of things and people
| because we think they are similar.
| mistermann wrote:
| What's interesting about rationalists to me is that they seem
| to be irrational in such similar ways....which I suppose
| shouldn't be surprising, but it is kind of counter-
| intuitive/paradoxical.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Like news and other media, I think social media is better at
| framing the questions we are supposed to think are important
| rather than the particular answers.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| As a counterpoint I left religion in part because of recurring
| encounters with different evidence and perspectives online.
| It's possible I'd still believe in invisible friends without
| such low friction opportunities to interact outside my
| geographic bubble.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| At a certain point it doesn't matter if the invisible friend
| is real or not if the relationship is beneficial. People have
| probably been personifying abstract ideas for this purpose
| since language began.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Maybe. My experience included a lot more negatives for no
| benefit, so I'm not a fan.
| mistermann wrote:
| How important do you consider the "invisible friends" aspect
| of religion to be in your overall calculation of the value
| (as opposed to the ~"objective correctness") of it at the
| individual &/or societal level?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Regardless of level I now see only negative value in all
| aspects of religion.
| mistermann wrote:
| In Hindu, this phenomenon is referred to as Maya.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/maya-Indian-philosophy
|
| To me, this is an extremely valuable insight into the
| nature of reality, although it is generally frowned upon
| by scientific materialists even though neuroscience and
| psychology agree (traditional religious people aren't the
| only ones who don't follow their scripture to
| perfection).
| [deleted]
| toss1 wrote:
| >>BWhen collective beliefs meet new evidence, the most sensible
| thing to do is often ignore it. If you think the Emperor is
| naked, and everyone else is acting as if he isn't, you get no
| benefit from stepping out of line. Even if you think everyone
| else can see the Emperor is naked, it is still risky to say so.
| Even if you think everyone else thinks that, and also thinks you
| think so, that is still no help unless you're sure they are going
| to act on it.
|
| This is especially true in autocratic regimes (political,
| corporate, or social).
|
| The repeating of a lie is both a loyalty test and a loyalty
| builder. Even if everyone knows that it is a lie, to get someone
| to repeat it both commits them to a risk for 'the cause' or 'the
| leader', and simultaneously demonstrates their loyalty to the
| cause and leader.
|
| The bigger the lie, the bigger the commitment needed to repeat
| it, and the bigger the demonstration of loyalty.
|
| It also has the simultaneous effect of successively isolating the
| followers from other factions. Eventually, the only ones who will
| tolerate 'those crazies' or 'the faithful' are the group of
| followers, which provides further motivation for everyone in the
| group to stick with the group.
|
| When leaders of any sort ask directly or by implication to do
| something sketchy or morally compromising, run the other way; the
| path you're being asked to follow is never good.
| dash2 wrote:
| Vaclav Havel made this point in Living in Truth. The truly
| political act is the grocer who refuses to put a political
| slogan up in his window.
|
| But I think liberal democratic societies suffer from this
| problem too.
|
| * One way to solve coordination problems is to have a leader,
| and everyone follows his plan. Advantage: the leader can update
| the plan in the light of evidence. Disadvantage: the leader
| biases the group's plan to favour himself.
|
| * Another approach is to have no leader but to agree on some
| collective beliefs as the basis to plan from. (Forms of words
| like "this house believes...", "this committee resolves" are an
| example.) Advantage: everyone gets input at the start.
| Disadvantage: belief-updating gets more complex, because unless
| we all do it together, we end up miscoordinating. Hence it can
| become easier to ignore new evidence.
|
| In the story, the Emperor can't admit he has no clothes on,
| because he's constrained by his political rivals. A truly
| unconstrained Emperor would be able to be honest, but of course
| that might bring its own dangers....
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, I'd read about it most recently from Garry Kasparov.
|
| That example of the grocer who refuses to put up the slogan
| is excellent!
|
| I'm not so sure the problems you cite for actual liberal
| (small-d) democratic societies are actually the same,
| although I agree there are similarities.
|
| Trying to avoid the No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think
| actual liberal societies are requiring false signalling in
| order to administer a government. To the extent that they are
| requiring spreading and repeating of outright lies, I'd say
| they are failing to behave as liberal democratic societies,
| and are instead and falling into autocracy.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| There is a cure that works 100%. Its called _diversification of
| collective stupidity risk_.
|
| Never let empires grow too large. Whenever you hear / see
| something is "scaling" throw a spanner in the works, pull the
| plug, burn a fuse.
|
| No questions asked, no justifications provided, no evaluation of
| good or evil, just an automatic breaker that is based on "N", the
| scaling unit.
|
| Having lots of little emperunculi running around with no clothes
| is fun and it doesn't put us all in great, potentially
| existential, danger
| version_five wrote:
| I think this is the point of the story of Babel.
|
| And I also think that social media had kind of short-circuited
| the benefits of having our opinions/orthodoxy/norms more
| localized (I mean geographically, culturally, linguistically,
| etc) and led to, as you say, much greater danger or the whole
| world being able to coordinate on delusions.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Yeah maybe instead of big nation, we could divide into like 50
| sovereign states. Those could be divided up into smaller
| counties, and those into cities.
|
| Then each could democratically decide what is best for
| themselves.
|
| Nah that's crazy. It's better to have 49% of a nation be
| unhappy with things, even in cities where 80% think one way,
| they must do what the 20% want because at the national level
| that 20% is the 51%.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Unfortunately in my state, the party of small government does
| not like cities deciding what to do for themselves and has
| taken away a lot of our city's power to make rules for
| itself.
|
| I for one am in favor of the kind of division you mention,
| for precisely the reasons you mention. But some people are
| not happy just deciding things for themselves. They are only
| happy when they also can decide for others. Lots of people
| from all walks of life and government like this.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| How would that work geopolitically? How would all those tiny
| nation states defend themselves against behemoths like the
| Russian Federation and the PRC?
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Perhaps they could be united in some way for defense while
| preserving localised governance.
| mkka wrote:
| This is where I always plug Infomacracy by Malka Older. Micro
| democracy with all voting blocks the same population size,
| can switch party/state.
| bwanab wrote:
| It already exists - it's called Switzerland.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| If it wasnt obvious, the pandemic demonstrated beyond any
| doubt that the distribution of decision making power in
| society is completely broken. The nation-state in particular
| is way too dominant and distorting, especially when you have
| a bunch of self-absorbed "meta-nations"
|
| Think about governance as a spectrum, we need it to be more
| flatly distributed, from the smallest unit (neighborhood
| dealing with local issues) to the largest (United Nations
| dealing with collective threats)
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm not really sure that we saw anything is broken in the
| US. There isn't a strong consensus for intervention among
| the people, and we saw some states with intervention and
| some states with out, and not a lot of federal
| intervention. The results of intervention or not don't seem
| to have convinced many people to change their opinion,
| either.
|
| This is what I would expect on any issue where there are
| large groups with strong feelings for and against
| intervention. Only if there is broad concensus or at least
| broad apathy would I expect uniform decision making.
|
| It's certainly true that it's hard to make major
| interventions in such a decision making environment, but
| that's the system we set up. A benefit is that it's a lot
| easier to move to a different US state than to move to a
| different country if you don't like the government.
| dash2 wrote:
| Surely the pandemic showed the advantage of the centralized
| nation-state. It could take into account externalities,
| like vaccination benefiting others, and use its power to
| keep everyone safer. Decentralized decision-making led to
| e.g. some states in the US deciding not to lockdown and
| having higher disease rates, which then put the whole
| country at risk.
| version_five wrote:
| You've missed the point entirely of the parable and the
| parent comments. Even if you like the way something
| worked out (or pretend to for the reasons discussed)
| bring subject to large scale collective decisions in a
| single state leaves one completely vulnerable to bad
| decisions being made. The solution is to insulate people
| from the whims of collective thinking though strong
| protections of individual liberty. You can't have it both
| ways, where you can force people to act a certain way
| when you agree with it, but are free to not do things you
| disagree with. It amazes me how many people ignore this.
| dash2 wrote:
| I wrote the parable, at least this version of it. I hope
| I haven't missed its point entirely.
|
| We can't avoid being subject to large-scale collective
| decisions. Humans can't live in hunter-gatherer bands any
| more. The individualist US, just like collectivist
| Sweden, spends large amounts on public goods via its
| government. Even in an anarcho-capitalist utopia, large
| firms and other collective bodies would emerge, and would
| have to coordinate upon collective decisions.
| version_five wrote:
| > I wrote the parable, at least this version of it. I
| hope I haven't missed its point entirely
|
| Haha I obviously didn't catch this. I guess then I missed
| your point. Between your essay and the parent comments,
| my takeaway is about the danger of enforcing collective
| decisions on everyone, because even if everyone says they
| agree, they can still all be delusional, or at least just
| too scared to speak out.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| As well as things like climate change right?
|
| The problem is imagine if all the investment put into
| green energy was actually put into just making fossil
| fuels and their use far more efficient.
|
| It might've had a far better impact on the environment,
| but it would've hurt the pocketbooks of the congressmen
| who have money invested in these specific solutions. (The
| other side pushing for more fossil fuels doesn't actually
| care they just have their investments there).
|
| An individual is still able to make the best decisions
| for themselves and the less you allow them to do this,
| the more danger and misuse of resources you'll find.
| dash2 wrote:
| If you are claiming that individual action would've
| solved climate change, this seems like a fantasy. Public
| goods problems are real.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| It does a pretty good job of figuring out the correct
| price of things.
| edouard-harris wrote:
| It's easy to forget this in our era, but the reason the
| nation-state exists in the first place is that it's the
| most effective means we know of to defeat an external
| adversary in a contest of organized violence. The nation-
| state's _internal_ distortionary effects on its population
| -- which I agree are absolutely real -- are simply the
| collateral damage you get when you optimize hard enough for
| victory in the _external_ contest. It 's not immediately
| clear how one might do better on this level either, since
| any serious decentralization effort has to sacrifice some
| degree of external security -- and then you risk just
| getting conquered by a different centralized nation-state.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Its a very interesting question why (in the spectrum of
| community organization size) it is the nation-state scale
| (> 10 mln or so) that has come to become dominant.
| "Defeating external adversaries" is in general more of a
| sabre rattling game than actual warfare, so maybe that is
| the scale where "mutual destruction" is assured
|
| But this precarious equilibrium is not technology
| independent. What works for blades and projectiles and
| missiles might not work for engineered viruses. If we
| don't find ways to quench this adversarial dynamic maybe
| our days are numbered...
| smegger001 wrote:
| no one wants to use engineered viruses for war because
| its to indiscriminate. if the viruses is effective a
| crippling a adversary it will do that to my people to.
|
| you can't make a American seeking virus any more than yo
| can make a Chinese seeking virus. at that level we are
| all just bags of the same lipids proteins and ions. and
| all national boarders are porous and it will get through
| and kill your people.
|
| viruses are in the same bucket of bad war ideas as
| mustard gas that we dont use because they kill everyone
| instead of who i point them at.
| burnafter187 wrote:
| I think that's wrong though. Hypothetically you could
| have a vaccine engineered alongside the virus and deploy
| it in secret, or at least using some mode of obfuscation.
| Not that it would be simple, and not that it wouldn't
| leak, but it's not an impossible scenario to have a
| country immunized, I don't reckon.
|
| I mean, look at COVID response, Russia and China both
| have their own vaccines, what's to prevent them from
| sliding in something extra to prevent another disease
| which has been engineered?
| smegger001 wrote:
| to do that you would have to start mass manufacturing a
| vacine a somehow administer it to the whole population
| secretly. without any other country getting wind of it.
| then you have to pray it doesn't mutate enough to make
| your vaccine ineffective. it is to big a project to not
| leak just based on everyone involved having to not tell
| anyone. from the researchers the administration of the
| program to the people working at the production facility.
| anders_p wrote:
| > to do that you would have to start mass manufacturing a
| vacine a somehow administer it to the whole population
| secretly.
|
| To play devil's advocate:
|
| This could be happening _right now_.
|
| 1) Create and release CoVid.
|
| 2) Engineer a vaccine, that also protects against a
| secondary, 100% deadly virus. (SinoVac?)
|
| 3) Vaccinate your own population.
|
| 4) Release the super-deadly, secret 2nd virus.
|
| 5) Profit.
|
| > it is to big a project to not leak just based on
| everyone involved having to not tell anyone.
|
| Yeah. This where it, and most of the other grand
| conspiracy theories, start to become unrealistic. It
| would be impossible to keep the secret from coming out.
|
| But it would make a great plot for thriller novel.
| texuf wrote:
| "media-nations"
| hbarka wrote:
| This is why I love the hacker news
| jollybean wrote:
| Economies of scale are real, this is not even controversial.
| Stopping things from growing arbitrarily is not a strategy of
| any kind.
| wrnr wrote:
| What a great article, finally someone with the courage to speak
| through to power!
| prewett wrote:
| This is in contrast to Victor Havel's essay on Communism, "The
| Power of the Powerless". Everyone except the boy in this story is
| Havel's green-grocer, who puts up a sign he doesn't believe in
| because that's how the incentives are aligned. Havel says that
| the only real solution is to not live a lie; it will probably
| result in more hardship for you, but it is the only way to avoid
| losing your humanity.
|
| [0] https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-
| powerless-v...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-20 23:01 UTC)