[HN Gopher] Complex dynamics require complex solutions
___________________________________________________________________
Complex dynamics require complex solutions
Author : ckemere
Score : 202 points
Date : 2025-02-14 22:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mathstodon.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (mathstodon.xyz)
| ckemere wrote:
| Because certain concepts have been repeated so often they've
| become elements of faith (e.g., "taxes are too high", "government
| is filled with fraud and waste", "taxing the 1% will solve our
| country's financial problems"), careful conversation about the
| complexities of the modern world is difficult to have.
|
| I think that complex solutions CAN be grasped by the large
| majority of voters, but their time and attention are so captured
| by sloganeers that they aren't exposed to the explanations.
| crubier wrote:
| Ok, but taxes are too high though, for real
| JackYoustra wrote:
| Too high for what? Too high for desired services level? Too
| high for most of the people or few? Too high for value? Too
| high for your personal preference? It's really important to
| be specific, and what I've written is still impossibly vague
| to be even close to actionable
| Henchman21 wrote:
| In the US they're too high for what we get: essentially
| _nothing_.
|
| So if I am taxed, things need to be done with those taxes.
| Not just line the pockets of whomever get it. I sure don't.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| In the US, you get social security, medicare/medicaid,
| the world's most powerful military, transportation
| infrastructure, education, fire departments, VA benefits,
| and hundreds of other things. You might not value any of
| it, but that's the parent's point: You aren't getting
| _nothing_ , you're getting a lot of expensive things you
| don't value for your taxes. It's a completely different
| type of discussion to have and one that's much more
| amenable to productive discussion.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > transportation infrastructure, education, fire
| departments,
|
| Didn't recent events like LA fires demonstrate just how
| neglected those services are.
|
| Having a better military in a war is great, but having
| overtly fat military industrial complex isn't that great.
| daveguy wrote:
| Apparently you fell for the narrative that LA ran out of
| water because they preferred to save the environment.
| Just so you know, it didn't matter how much water was in
| any reservoirs. There was plenty of water. The two
| failures that happened were -- 100 MPH wind after drought
| conditions, and the fact that if you try to get water out
| of every fire hydrant in a large area you will run out of
| _water pressure_. The solution to water pressure is
| increasing the _number of reservoirs_ so that each one
| services a smaller area. That is done with infrastructure
| improvements that require a government willing to fund
| them, and residents willing to accept them. 100 MPH winds
| + drought conditions + fire over a large area is not
| addressable without massive over-provisioning. You may
| want to reconsider where you get your news from, because
| it seems you are being misinformed.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The local reservoir that serviced the palisades was out
| of service for months due to a tear in its roof which had
| yet to be fixed. The repair, per a competent repair
| person, would have taken a week if they had done it.
| That's why the water pressure locally was so low. They
| had already done what you wanted, and increased the
| number of reservoirs, but the relevant one had been out
| of service for months. It can both be true that Trump is
| a bloviating liar and the LA government is incompetent.
| daveguy wrote:
| It may be a bit more complicated than what a nameless
| "competent repair person" thought it should have been. Do
| you worship your news sources too?
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/reservoir-pacific-
| palis...
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Are droughts, fires or fast winds unknown conditions in
| LA?
|
| A government should be preparing for them. Doubly so a
| government that believes in climate change. Which was the
| opposite of what happened with firemen raising warnings
| but they falling on uninterested ears.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I will not receive social security or medicare/medicaid,
| as they are actively being gutted today. Our military
| goes on adventures I have never supported (Iraq?
| Afghanistan?). I am not entitled to VA benefits.
|
| My education was trash. I'll grant you fire depts &
| transportation, though the transport stuff isn't at all
| properly invested in. I don't care to make car companies
| more money.
|
| These are all the same as nothing to me. You can split
| hairs and say I am getting something not nothing, but
| that doesn't change the lived experience of being poor,
| sick, and badly educated in the wealthiest nation.
|
| This world doesn't exist for people like me-- it exists
| for all you folks.
|
| And boy, lemme tell ya... I would be super happy to _burn
| your world to the ground_ , and I say that with horror in
| my eyes as I look at the fires that Elon is starting.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Just because you don't support the decisions about how
| the military is deployed doesn't mean you don't benefit
| from its existence. Being an American citizen already
| comes out of the box with a bunch of benefits, and I'm
| unaware of any place with a similar standard of living
| that has lower taxes overall.
| riku_iki wrote:
| but are you sure if those standards of living are because
| of striving economy and hardworking people or because of
| military adventures?
| JackYoustra wrote:
| who is "all you folks"? Kinda, how do you say, too vague
| to be useful?
|
| and I'm sorry you were poor, sick, and badly educated,
| but the closest thing to "don't do that" was the American
| Rescue Plan's permanent child tax credit which cut child
| poverty in half and oh god wait that's a scheme in a huge
| bill and I've already lost everyone because that's still
| too complicated and now it's gone.
|
| That's the problem. Every time you repeat the cynical
| meme that nothing can be done and all taxes are wasted
| and everything you sap strength from the progress that
| can be made when we actually pull in the same direction:
| https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/09/26/the-
| offi... (see the image: https://www.economist.com/cdn-
| cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...)
| caspper69 wrote:
| Slightly pedantic nit:
|
| I know you're pointing out what "taxes" get you, but most
| people look at the tax brackets for income taxes and
| correlate that with the level of government services they
| receive.
|
| It's important to note that _income taxes_ do not fund
| Social Security and Medicare. These are funded through
| FICA taxes, paid 7.65% from the individual and the
| employer match of another 7.65%. That 's why if you are
| self-employed (or do 1099 work on the side), you pay self
| employment taxes, which is both halves to the tune of
| 15.3%.
|
| So people actually pay their income tax (less the
| standard or itemized deductions) on the stairstep up to
| the top bracket IN ADDITION to FICA.
|
| Not passing judgment on whether it's an equitable deal
| for everyone involved, but we do get taxed pretty
| heavily. Especially when you throw state income taxes
| (for those states that have them) and property taxes into
| the mix.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Income taxes absolutely do fund Social Security and
| Medicare. Those programs would be even more insolvent on
| FICA taxes alone.
| caspper69 wrote:
| Excuse me, sir. Please don't just tell me I'm wrong
| without doing some research.
|
| SS: https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/HowAreSocia
| lSecuri...
|
| How is Social Security financed?
|
| Social Security is financed through a dedicated payroll
| tax. Employers and employees each pay 6.2 percent of
| wages up to the taxable maximum of $176,100 (in 2025),
| while the self-employed pay 12.4 percent.
|
| Total income, including interest, to the combined OASI
| and DI Trust Funds amounted to $1.351 trillion in 2023.
| ($1.233 trillion from net payroll tax contributions, $51
| billion from taxation of benefits, and $67 billion in
| interest)
|
| US Social Security Expenditures in 2023: $1.351 trillion.
|
| Do you see income taxes in there other than those from
| recipients?
|
| I won't dirty up this post further, but Medicare is
| likewise funded; like SS, income taxes on Social Security
| benefits _do_ go partially to fund Medicare, as those
| people are generally program recipients. The final
| funding source is Part A premiums.
|
| I don't mind banter or disagreements, but please do not
| tell me I'm wrong when you have not even bothered to
| look. Your gut feeling is not a good basis to dispute
| someone's premise.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You left out the cost of medicare from that calculation:
| $1.02 trillion of outlays in 2023 per the CMS (CBO has
| $800 billion here). Medicare taxes were $350 billion in
| 2023 per the CBO. Where does the rest of that money come
| from?
|
| Medicaid is another $600 billion and is also supposed to
| be supported by the Medicare tax.
|
| Social Security is mostly covered by its ~12.5%
| regressive tax (an extortionate rate, IMO). Medicare is
| not. In 2023, Social Security, per the CBO, had a ~$200
| billion shortfall also (draining the trust fund), but
| that's small potatoes compared to the >$1 trillion hole
| in medicare/medicaid that is being supported by your
| income taxes.
|
| You linked a nice fact sheet, but the reality as shown by
| the group who actually oversees where the money goes is a
| bit different.
| caspper69 wrote:
| The irony here is that nowhere in my original post did I
| claim there was no commingling of funds.
|
| In fact, I was trying to point out that our taxes were
| actually HIGHER than most people think due to FICA. Did I
| say these programs were covered?
|
| My point was that they were taxed separately.
|
| And to answer your question, the dirty little secret of
| government is that they raid the trust funds. Why else
| would the trust fund have interest income?
|
| But it's not really from income taxes, it's from raising
| money through issuing debt.
|
| I was not making the point you thought I was making.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Money is fungible, my friend. A dollar of tax income is
| equivalent to a dollar of debt.
|
| The trust fund, to be clear, is only for _social
| security_. It is not for Medicare.
|
| I should point out for full accuracy that Medicare part A
| also has a trust fund that is similarly draining
| (although this one is almost insolvent), but most of the
| programs in Medicare are not funded by the part A trust.
|
| Final edit: The Medicare trust fund also has a generous
| contribution from "general revenue" of the government -
| aka tax dollars.
| caspper69 wrote:
| It's only fungible at the point of expenditure. Tax
| income is a dollar in hand that creates no liability;
| debt must be repaid with interest.
|
| Not sure I get your second point- I am aware of what is
| meant by the trust fund; actually, I thought it was the
| only one- you enlightened me about Medicare's. (If you
| re-read my post, you will see my use of the plural
| "funds" in "trust funds" was referring to the money
| itself, not multiple funds).
|
| Anyway, I see 12-years of reserves at current projections
| for the HI (Part A fund for Hospital services), while the
| SMI (Part B for Doctors and outpatient services) isn't
| even listed- this fund is the one that seems to be the
| dog. Wow. And it's not even close. Yowza.
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum
|
| I don't think it's fair to bring Medicaid into the
| discussion. There's no separate tax for it, and the vast
| majority of people don't receive it- it's a subsidy to
| the poor. If you'd like to discuss that I'd be happy to,
| but I'm more comfortable on fiscal realities than judging
| what amount to local humanitarian efforts; my opinions
| might not be well received because they are not
| particularly generous. Additionally, I think it is far
| outside the scope of my original point that people's
| taxes are much higher than they think.
|
| I'll close on this note: I think it's important that
| people speak in specifics, especially in trying times.
| Both platitudes and demagoguery are damaging to the
| public discourse, as is information presented out of
| context and the substitution of opinion for fact.
|
| I spoke out of my rear-end on Medicaid (you did kind of
| catch me out of left field), and I generally try not to
| do that. I did some more digging (unlike SSA, they are
| not very forthcoming), and I'll take my medicine.
|
| Thanks for the eye opener. Take care.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| Hijacking your comment to make a point, how complicated
| are we already getting? The point of "taxes are too high"
| is now "a specific tax is too high relative to the
| residual benefits mix after cutting out two huge benefits
| programs, if we hold the possibility of future transfers
| from outside the dedicated revenue streams out" which,
| again, already so much more complicated and still way
| less than necessary to actually get to the goal.
|
| lots of taxes though yes
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Senior citizens get Medicare SSN, impoverished get
| Medicaid. The military contractors make money from the
| military. I pay for a private school because it's the
| only single-sex option.
|
| Sure, I get transportation and infrastructure. So do a
| whole ton of countries. We are the wealthiest country in
| the world. If all the average person will get is
| transportation and infrastructure, it can be improved
| from what it currently is.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| SS and healthcare are the two most expensive parts and
| will likely always be, and the nature of healthcare is
| the average won't see anywhere near the amount of money
| they're spending. The social choice we've come to is
| we'll spend the money anyway because it's (in general)
| morally repulsive to let (most) medically-addressible
| suffering go on for want of money, so I'm not sure how we
| can get around that.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| "Americans get nothing for their taxes" is... certainly
| an opinion.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| An opinion that can only seriously emerge atop the
| safest, most prosperous empire to ever exist.
| yard2010 wrote:
| For some people, living hell for the poor.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| It's someone who was born on third base complaining that
| they have to run to home plate.
| orf wrote:
| > In the US they're too high for what we get: essentially
| nothing
|
| He wrote, using his 5g phone connection and the internet
| from the safety of his home. Outside, a car sits silently
| in the driveway.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Yes, I am very safe in my little cage where I take my
| antibiotics and still kiss with saliva. A cage is still a
| cage.
| orf wrote:
| And it's an entirely different point to the initial one.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Are you speaking to me or everyone BUT me?
|
| Because I'll be both direct and honest: this is the type
| of bullshit that causes me to withdraw from interacting
| with the bulk of humanity.
|
| Mock me all you like.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| the point is that all the things that commenter listed
| are enabled by the taxes we pay - it's the price we pay
| for living in a civilized society. Saying that they don't
| directly pay it misses the forest for the trees: we
| decide to pay taxes for things in a system that overall
| produces these outcomes, treating them separately is to
| split parts of a coevolved system
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Civilized society doesn't require a layer of working poor
| at the bottom to function. That is what I am a part of:
| the great mass of unfulfilled workers with no choices, no
| chance for advancement.
|
| I'm a blue collar worker right on the edge of high end
| white collar work. I see on a daily basis _that which I
| can never possess_.
|
| The system produces these outcomes because that is the
| desired design goal of the system. If this is
| "civilization" I want no part of it. But then, we don't
| get that choice anymore do we? Where could I go on Earth
| to escape my fate? Because all I see is _my own death is
| the only escape_
| yard2010 wrote:
| I understand you, no one should live his life living in a
| cage, even if it's a metaphorical one. Some people are
| shit posting because of their reasons, this shouldn't
| change anything on your side IMHO. Easier said than done,
| I know.
|
| Instead of mocking you, let me send you love and respect.
| I hope you enjoy your life and find your freedom in your
| own way, and have fun doing so, preferably with other
| people.
| orf wrote:
| > this is the type of bullshit that causes me to withdraw
| from interacting with the bulk of humanity.
|
| Nobody is mocking you, however your taxes allow you to do
| this without having to live in a shack in the woods and
| forage for food.
| Swizec wrote:
| As a non-american paying american taxes: I would like more
| of my money to go into welfare and social transfers to make
| the country more liveable to all, and less into million
| dollar bombs thrown at thousand dollar homes.
|
| Or, like, at least fix all the potholes maybe?
| JackYoustra wrote:
| STILL too vague - _most_ of the federal budget goes to SS
| and medicare / medicaid. Potholes are almost exclusively
| a local-level thing, so calling them "american" taxes is
| a bit off, you'd be thinking more about state and
| municipal taxes at that point.
|
| The impediment that sucks up ~40% of CPI is housing, and
| that is overwhelmingly constrained by really crappy
| zoning and building regulation at the local level. Not
| much the federal government can do against that without
| going full constitutional crisis or amendment.
| Swizec wrote:
| > _most_ of the federal budget goes to SS and medicare /
| medicaid
|
| Okay but social security isn't the government's money,
| it's ours. The program is profitable afaik (gets more
| than it pays out). Govt is just holding/managing the
| money and needs to track it as debt when they use that
| money for anything other than giving to people.
| majormajor wrote:
| > The impediment that sucks up ~40% of CPI is housing,
| and that is overwhelmingly constrained by really crappy
| zoning and building regulation at the local level. Not
| much the federal government can do against that without
| going full constitutional crisis or amendment.
|
| Housing cost in popular areas/major cities is not solely
| an American problem. So a lot of the American-specific
| stories about why it's high - "zoning", "parking
| requirements", "NIMBY's" aren't fully satisfying.
|
| Few places have solved it. Big successful cities often
| keep growing around the world which means constantly
| increasing demand which means an affordability trend that
| rarely goes in the right direction.
|
| In a classically-efficient market, where those with the
| $$$ to do major development projects often substantially
| overlap with those who have major $$$ stake in prices
| staying high, few things are more necessary than housing
| so why wouldn't we expect the price to approach the max
| that individuals could bear?
|
| Removing regulation isn't enough, IMO, since nobody with
| the money to make major investments in housing wants to
| rock the price boat too quickly or suddenly. You need
| proactive regulation on both pricing and public
| development efforts to undercut the current market.
| scarmig wrote:
| The level of taxation is not the most relevant thing, even
| though it attracts the most attention. There are countless
| socially valuable things that they can be spent on.
|
| The core issue is that Americans don't get back much for
| their level of taxation. The USA is a fundamentally dog-
| eat-dog place. Given that, working Americans pay an absurd
| amount of taxes.
|
| I pay over 40% of my income in local, state, and federal
| taxes. Despite that, it's not hard to imagine being thrown
| onto the streets to die after experiencing a single issue.
| Where is it going? Not to me, and not to any services I'll
| be able to access in times of difficulty.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| No
| tomtomtom777 wrote:
| I don't no which country you are from but in the western
| world, if you compare countries by their tax rates, countries
| with high taxes [1] tend to score quite well on quality-of-
| life comparisons.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by
| _ta...
| yard2010 wrote:
| I would cross check it with corruption levels, sometimes
| high taxes are just organized crime with extra steps.
| winwang wrote:
| And you know this to be true (indubitably), based on what,
| exactly? (I'm not even sure which country you're referencing
| either).
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It reminds me of all the naive engineers that look at a complex
| codebase, don't fully grok it, and say "this is a mess, it
| needs a rewrite!".
|
| They then find out that every complex rule had a reason for
| existing. The rewrite takes time and resources to reimplement.
| As they go they hit snag after snag and add a specific business
| rule for that only to find out that they are just recreating
| the original "too complex and inefficient" codebase with a
| whole lot of effort and money wasted.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| We're basically paying the government per line of code
| written currently. Ask Microsoft how that turned out.
| daveguy wrote:
| What do you mean by that? Is that how doge is working? No
| one in the government has previously been paid per line of
| code. Am I missing something here?
| lwansbrough wrote:
| It's a metaphor for how we pay for the evolving and
| deepening complexity of government, without any effort
| being put into processes that might help eliminate
| complexity -- because there's no real accountability for
| spending.
|
| I think "DOGE" is conceptually a good idea, and if it
| were executed by a competent administration could lead to
| great outcomes, as was the case with the USDS.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Trump could have put someone good on it, but he prefers
| loyalty over competence.
| daveguy wrote:
| Well yeah, government efficiency is obviously a "great
| idea", but that is ridiculously simplistic. No one is
| paid for "great ideas" without any clue how to execute.
| Poorly implemented good ideas screw things up just as bad
| as bad ideas. Maybe worse. If it's a good idea,
| implemented poorly, you have a lot of cheerleaders
| worshipping the idea. But if it's a bad idea, at least
| you have people offering alternative ideas.
| rjbwork wrote:
| While true, a lot of the time the problem is organization.
| Complexity exists and our job as engineers is to wrestle with
| it and organize it into a grokkable whole. Something being
| messy and needing a rewrite or significant refactor is often
| down to inexperience of initial implementers or too-short
| timelines causing entropy explosion rather than taking the
| time to build structure for arranging and organizing the
| complexity.
| phito wrote:
| There's also the many cases where the code is an actual mess
| because it had unclear requirements during its whole
| development, or it was written by someone who doesn't fully
| grasp the language they're using.
|
| I've rewritten several of such projects, successfully reduced
| complexity and improved performances just by _knowing what I
| am doing_.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > knowing what I am doing
|
| _This code is a mess, I don 't understand what it's doing_
| is very different from _I get what it 's doing but this
| code is a mess_.
|
| The first should probably be a strong sign you should _not_
| start rewriting the code, while the second can be a decent
| position to consider rewriting it.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I think I'd distinguish between rewrites and refactors. A
| rewrite starts from a blank slate, where a refactor
| starts from the previous version.
|
| Being unable to understand the code in its entirety does
| not mean that somebody is unable to understand pieces of
| the code. Refactoring those pieces into easier-to-
| understand portions can be done, even when the end-to-end
| flow is still being contemplated.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Refactoring those pieces into easier-to-understand
| portions can be done
|
| Right, but the main point still stands I think, that if
| you don't understand the full code, you run a risk at
| introducing bugs when refactoring portions of it.
|
| Code that seemingly does nothing might in fact do
| something due to non-local effects, ie global variables
| in disguise, and other pitfalls. A "favorite" is using
| reflection to modify some non-local variable rather than
| accessing it directly, making it very difficult to find
| during code searches.
|
| Sometimes these bugs can be glaring, other times they can
| be more subtle and only be detected once they've
| inflicted significant damage to customer data.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| One of the challenges with proposing the rewrite of a
| complex codebase is that it requires the person planning
| and executing the rewrite to understand the requirements
| and the source of complexity.
|
| I used to think that there existed some queries that would
| benefit just from being rewritten from first principles.
| And then someone rewrote them incredibly naively. That is
| no better than the original!
| godelski wrote:
| I don't think this is a great analogy. While it can be true
| I'm not sure it even usually is. A lot of complexity in a
| codebase comes from the fact that the end goal isn't
| specified from the start. In fact, it really can't be. The
| code evolves along the way, goals change, the hardware
| changes, dependencies change, and patches turn into
| solutions. This isn't to say that everything along the way
| didn't have a good reason, in fact it most certainly did! But
| a good codebase is also constantly rewritten. There should
| never be shame in this because the goals changed. There are
| unknown unknowns that can't be avoided. But you need to
| constantly profile, fix, and rewrite. There is no end as long
| as time marches on.
| istjohn wrote:
| Not to nitpick, but "taxing the 1% will solve our country's
| financial problems" comes off as a bit of a strawman. "Tax the
| rich" is a common sentiment, but I don't often hear people
| saying the rest of it. There are plenty of plausible reasons
| one may want to tax the rich even if you don't believe it is a
| total solution. For one, you may be concerned about the power
| imbalance created when a handful of people have more wealth
| than half the country combined [0]. Recent developments have
| brought that concern into even sharper focus for many.
|
| 0.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-08/top-50-ri...
| silotis wrote:
| It's usually not stated so explicitly, but often implied by
| people who advocate for expansive entitlement programs. When
| pressed on how to pay for such programs, "tax the rich" is
| often their only answer.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I think you're misusing the word "entitlement" as it is
| used with respect to US government spending. Can you
| elaborate what you think the connection is?
| neilwilson wrote:
| When the real answer is, you pay for it by spending the
| money.
|
| Because money is a circuit, tax is a percentage and money
| doesn't stop at its first use.
| willturman wrote:
| The technical term for the number of times a dollar is
| spent in a given time period is the velocity of money
| [1]. The velocity of money in the United States has
| dropped sharply over the past 30 years [2] as inflation
| on inelastic goods like housing, education, healthcare,
| and food have far outstripped the consumer price index
| and people opt to spend their money buying things from
| large corporations instead of small businesses in their
| communities.
|
| The velocity of money is about as good a high-level
| measure of where the balance between "Wall Street and
| Main Street" lies as you'll find - and there's not much
| juice left to wring out from your typical American when a
| typical dollar is spent 1.2 times before it winds up
| accumulating interest in a billionaire's bank account all
| over again (and that's with the Federal government
| spending at unforeseen levels running an all time high
| and increasing deficit).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
|
| [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
| riku_iki wrote:
| Rich in fact are not taxed much. High income people are
| taxed.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Unfortunately that requires that the tax you apply to the
| rich has incidence on the rich. And of course it doesn't
| because they have the power to pass the cost on and they do.
|
| Therefore "tax the rich" logically means "give the rich the
| power to choose who actually pays the tax"
|
| As it turns out the best way to "tax the rich" is to increase
| the number of competitors (Including, if necessary, publicly
| funded competitors. ) in their markets and squeeze the profit
| share down towards the zero theoretical minimum.
|
| Or "euthanise the rentiers" as somebody once said.
| achierius wrote:
| This seems unfounded. How exactly would e.g. a hedge fund
| manager "pass along" their income tax?
|
| It feels like you're confusing this with corporate taxes.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The Western world used to tax the rich much more than what
| we do now (check out income tax level under Nixon for
| instance, and it's not just about income tax). And as a
| results, they were much less powerful (the robber barons
| had disappeared for multiple decades before making a come
| back during the modern days gilded age).
| kubb wrote:
| I find it fascinating how robust ideologies are. They have
| to contain countless responses to thousands of ways of
| questioning their coherence.
|
| In this example, to the concern about a power imbalance
| there was an immediate, trained response of ,,it can't be
| done" - there's simply no way to diminish the concentration
| of wealth.
|
| It's fantastic because you acknowledge that the imbalance
| is there and that it's problematic - that can't be argued.
| So instead you argue that it's inevitable.
|
| Intricate web of beliefs. Stable and resilient to any
| challenge.
| cle wrote:
| This phenomenon applies to any widely held ideology: if
| it weren't robust to challenges, it wouldn't remain
| widely adopted (for some subtle definition of "robust").
|
| Ironically, dismissing an argument with an ad hominem--
| like calling it a "trained response"--is also a mechanism
| that makes ideologies resilient.
| kubb wrote:
| You might be under the impression that I'm trying to
| argue myself (you mention "dismissing an argument") and
| employ an ad hominem as a rhetorical tool. Not so!
|
| I'm well aware that discussion or debate isn't an
| effective way of having a person question their ideology.
|
| Ironically, by ascribing this dark pattern to me you
| could also be seen as employing an ad hominem, because it
| casts me as a dishonest, disrespectful person.
|
| Alas, I am a human full of contradictions and vices. If
| it helps you maintain your mental composure, do feel
| comforted by my perceived malice :)
| corimaith wrote:
| You sound just like those Sophists that Socrates was
| warning about.
| kubb wrote:
| It hurts to be disparaged like this... I forgive you, but
| please don't address me anymore.
| sympil wrote:
| I don't believe this qualifies as an ad hominem. The
| person was not attacking the individual but rather making
| an observation about the dynamics of ideological
| thinking.
| geysersam wrote:
| > and squeeze the profit share down towards the zero
| theoretical minimum.
|
| Nitpick. Zero is not the theoretical minimum profit, you
| can have negative profit.
|
| Zero is the profit predicted by basic economic theory in a
| market equilibrium.
| atoav wrote:
| It is absolutely astounding to me that practises that are
| literally done elsewhere right now are (still) consistently
| considered impossible in the US.
|
| Complexity in the tax system will be gamed by people who
| have the resources to do so (and those are _not_ poor
| people). That means if you want a controlling force that
| affects _everybody_ (e.g. to avoid runaway values in how
| rich individuals you are) you need simple rules that can 't
| be gamed.
|
| In society those simple rules also have the added benefit
| of being more broadly accepted since they are more broadly
| understood.
|
| But if someone asked me to build a system that could be
| gamed by the rich I would aim for as much complexity in the
| rules as I can get away with, each piece added with a good
| marketing slogan, in effect resulting in the CEO paying
| less taxes than their poorest worker.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Not to nitpick, but "taxing the 1% will solve our country's
| financial problems" comes off as a bit of a strawman.
|
| I've seen it at least three times on hackernews and countless
| times on reddit.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Considering it was a heavily repeated slogan of Bernie
| Sanders in 2016, and a common sentiment from his vocal
| minority, it's hardly a "strawman" (whatever that means in
| this context). You can see his focus on the "1%"/"0.1%"
| (which interestingly, the latter excludes millionaires like
| himself and would be the percentage taxed) on his website
| here: https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/
| istjohn wrote:
| The very first words on the page you linked: "In order to
| reduce the outrageous level of inequality that exists in
| America today..." Nowhere does it say that this alone would
| solve our financial problems.
| tristramb wrote:
| The history of very wealthy people bringing down democracies
| goes back to Julia Caesar and Pompey bringing down the Roman
| Republic, and probably even further.
|
| The question is, how to make democracy stable against
| interference by very wealthy people?
|
| One idea that occurred to me was to have non-linear money
| that becomes proportionately less valuable as it is
| accumulated into larger and larger amounts. Add $100 to $1000
| and you increase that value by approximately $100, but add
| $100 to $1000000 and you only increase that value by say only
| $1. Of course this is impractical in this form, but this is
| in effect what progressive taxation does.
|
| So maybe a democracy could be made stable against
| billionaires by having progressive taxation which prevents
| people from accumulating more than a certain proportion of
| GDP, say.
|
| This would lead to a sort of capitalism in the small but
| communism in the large.
|
| The revenue from this progressive taxation wouldn't even need
| to fed into the governments fund's, if its purpose was to
| supress billionaires then it could just be destroyed or
| 'burnt' and still achieve its purpose. Another possibility
| would be to distribute it to the citizens of the country as a
| sort of 'divident to shareholders', but you would have to be
| careful with this because some would-be billionaires might
| use this as a lever to build their popularity.
|
| So a stable democracy would be a voting system plus an army
| (to prevent takeover from outside) plus progressive taxation
| (to prevent takeover from inside) plus a few other things to
| deal with things like citizenship and immigration.
| cutemonster wrote:
| A rich person can then let their money stay in companies
| they own, and avoid taxation? Control the company by owning
| most shares, and make the company act on one's own behalf.
|
| Or move the money abroad and hide it, no one knows how much
| they have.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > The question is, how to make democracy stable against
| interference
|
| ... from other nation states - an even harder question, in
| that they have even more money and tools like Twitter,
| TikTok, Facebook.
| csours wrote:
| One that really gets me is "Big Government" - we are the
| government. What you mean is "Big Unaccountable Organization" -
| which can just as easily be Big Business or in some cases Big
| NGO/Nonprofit/Religion/etc.
|
| I know that my comments do not address the original meaning of
| "Big Government", but over time "Big Government" has come to
| encompass anything the government does. Apparently including
| things that I depend on, but don't know about because they just
| silently work. Until someone turns them off.
|
| Also, remember (or learn) that it was Carter, not Reagan that
| the bulk of the deregulation.
|
| See Dan Davies - Unaccountability Machine
|
| ---
|
| The version of the narrative that we fight about is the
| stupidest version of that subject.
|
| Gamer's Gate taught me this. From the outside, everyone looked
| like stupid assholes. I definitely have more empathy for one
| side vs the other, but each side's narrative is forced into the
| minimal version that carries the most moral weight. The great
| tragedy is that we use the moral narrative that appeals to US,
| not to THEM or even to BYSTANDERS.
|
| See Jonathon Haidt - Righteous Mind
|
| And Amanda Ripley - High Conflict
|
| ---
|
| I think the greatest qualities of humanity are curiosity,
| humility, patience and empathy. To me, nonviolence is not about
| naivety or tolerance of evil or being unprepared, it's about
| maintaining the ability to learn about the world and the people
| in it.
|
| Historically nonviolence has been one component of a diversity
| of strategies - nonviolence itself implies the possibility of
| violence.
|
| The emotion of anger makes people feel right and righteous in
| themselves - no matter if they are helping or hurting overall.
| A person's anger does not know what side they are on. Anger
| makes the world much, much simpler.
|
| Our current political environment does not allow for complex
| problems or complex understanding of other people's needs. You
| have to fit in my simple worldview. You have to be exactly as
| angry as I am at all the people I'm angry at.
|
| No matter who you feel started this or who you blame, this is
| all happening inside each of us. We are all being exploited and
| treated like broken toys. The fight is making us all act and
| speak very, very stupidly.
|
| So if you feel like you have to fight, and you already know who
| to fight and how to fight them - I am not trying to change
| that. I am NOT saying that "the other side" has a valid point
| of view or that the other side has some good people. I am
| saying that the other side is made of flawed people each with
| their own history.
|
| I am asking you to find some time for curiosity, humility,
| patience, and empathy for the humans in the world.
|
| The tragedy of all anti-war movies is that they show us the
| horror and terror and destruction of war ... but 'this' is the
| fight we need to fight, this fight is needed, this fight is
| good.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42261315
| energy123 wrote:
| One small culprit is the human tendency to think
| _categorically_ and, as a consequence, to think
| _metaphorically_.
|
| Abstractions and conceptual thinking can simplify reasoning if
| used responsibly, but more often this cognitive shortcut is
| abused to reach emotionally convenient conclusions.
|
| Reasoning that contains the string "this is like" is usually
| suspect. This is a red flag that the individual has categorized
| the subject of analysis into an overly broad abstraction, and
| is now attempting to draw a spurious relation to some causally
| unrelated thing that allegedly belongs to the same category.
|
| The difficulty is that this way of thinking is evolved and
| natural to us. This low-energy, cheap heuristic served us well
| in our simpler ancestral environments. It's maladaptive in the
| modern environment.
|
| - https://hbr.org/2019/09/the-dangers-of-categorical-thinking
|
| - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9343778-word-thinking-
| is-a-...
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQKk02pgmY
| XorNot wrote:
| Anthropomorphization is another problem. As soon as people
| give things names, they start to treat them like they're
| individual people even if they're anything but. How many
| times have you heard someone say "China will..." or "The US
| thinks..." or "Europe's opinion..."
|
| Now these are all potentially useful, context-dependent
| shorthands...but they're absolutely ripe for
| misunderstanding. Something I find myself doing a lot these
| days is asking people to explain what exactly they think is
| happening on an individual, human level when they declare
| anything greater then that is "doing" something...because of
| course, no large organization ever does anything - they're
| all composed of individuals taking action, potentially under
| direction but still as individuals.
| xg15 wrote:
| I think the other extreme - to think about people only as
| isolated individuals without group identity or power
| relations - is also too simplifying.
|
| (It's also a useful thought exercise to deconstruct
| sentences like "the US decided to do X" and understand who
| or what really is meant with "the US" in that sentence. The
| US government? The political class? Some mainstream opinion
| in the general population?)
|
| But in general I agree with you, especially in the recent
| years. I find the level of anthropomorphization of
| countries lately honestly scary, and believe this is a
| strong sign of how much the political discourse already has
| shifted back into a "war" vocabulary.
|
| The intensity with which people argue this stuff also makes
| me wonder if they're still understanding it as a metaphor
| at all. Emotional attachment to flags, nations, peoples,
| shapes on a map, etc is real and is also a central
| component of war propaganda.
| jebarker wrote:
| > I think that complex solutions CAN be grasped by the large
| majority of voters
|
| Not sure I agree. Not because the large majority aren't
| intellectually capable, but because there isn't the
| interest/attention span in most people to understand the
| nuances of the complex problem that is demanding the complex
| solution. I feel this in myself increasingly and opt to just
| not have an opinion on proposed solutions when I believe the
| problem is much more complex and multifaceted than I'm even
| aware.
| SilasX wrote:
| I have a saying:
|
| 1) Welfare-enhancing
|
| 2) Politically-popular
|
| 3) Simple
|
| Pick any two.
|
| There are policies that meet all three ... but they've already
| been implemented, and no one debates them.
| xg15 wrote:
| What annoys me is that the assertion "there are no easy
| solutions" has become a slogan itself, often with the practical
| meaning that you shouldn't even attempt to understand the
| problem (let alone think about solutions) and instead let the
| people in power handle it. In the same sense, "its a complex
| issue" becomes a weird sort of chiffe for "it's so intractably
| complex that it's impossible for any mortal human to
| understand, so you shouldn't even try".
|
| Another implication is also that there is no way at all to
| _solve_ any of those problems, the best we could hope for is to
| manage them and mitigate the effects.
|
| I think _this_ line of thinking is ultimately authoritarian and
| paradoxically _increases_ "simple solution" thinking or
| avoidance to think about political topics at all - because that
| would be all that's left to think about.
|
| I like the approach of the OP much more, who argues that we
| should embrace the complexity of our currently world and try to
| understand it, instead of shying away from it. That's what I'd
| understand as "thinking for yourself".
|
| I believe, the "simple solutions" can even have a useful role
| in this - as starting points. E.g. "why can't we just get more
| water from the Pacific to put out the fires?", "why can't the
| people in Gaza just go somewhere else?", "why can't we just
| build more housing?" etc. could be interesting questions to
| start tackling that complexity.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| When controversial problem remains unsolved, "there is a
| simple solution" means that you think that people in power
| could have solved this already but they haven't because they
| are evil or stupid or both, and "there are no easy solutions"
| means that you don't really want to do anything and would
| like to be not blamed for the outcomes.
|
| It's the same as when people talk about politicization, free
| speech, etc.
| LeroyRaz wrote:
| I don't like the title. Complex dynamics often require simple
| solutions. E.g., a complex chaotic system can often be made
| simple by adding damping (a simple solution).
| aabhay wrote:
| While I agree with your view point, I think the celebrity
| mathematician status of Terrence Tao made it obvious to me that
| the title was referring to mathematical solutions e.g. solving
| a system of equations.
| tlb wrote:
| You can make systems less chaotic with damping, but that's not
| always good. A damped 3-body problem (orbiting planets under
| gravity) results in the planets losing momentum until they all
| smash together. If you have an active control system like for
| controlling a robot arm, adding damping in the wrong place can
| make oscillations worse.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| aka "reality has a surprising amount of detail"
| lopatin wrote:
| And people on the internet are simplifying it into memes.
| Shocker.
| concordDance wrote:
| Related: "rounding to the nearest common cliche"
| r3nruturnEr wrote:
| I've noticed this a lot with climate science, especially. People
| are waiting for a silver bullet that will reverse climate change
| and I think in reality, it will have to be a huge, complex,
| coordinated effort.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Who's waiting for a silver bullet? Certainly not the climate
| scientists or anyone actually working on climate?
| r3nruturnEr wrote:
| Definitely wasn't talking about climate scientists. Many
| policy makers, voters, the lay-person. People want a silver
| bullet solution that is convenient.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Yeah I think this is more like... a huge number of people
| literally don't care or don't think it's a problem
| whatsoever, then a huge number think we should be doing
| tons of little things, and then a small number who are
| actively working to produce breakthroughs.
|
| Group (1) is the impediment to progress on the problem.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| $2.1 trillion was spent on the clean energy transition in 2024.
|
| It's a huge complex effort, but it's definitely not coordinated
| and never will be.
|
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-investment-in-the-energy-...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Most normal people (not scientists or experts) who got invested
| enough have given up and see a not so slow approaching doom
| horizon, but keep a glimmer of hope deep inside, just in case.
|
| I personally don't think climate change can be _reversed_ and
| also don't believe a significant effort will be done in that
| direction except if it somehow becomes a global strategic
| stake, like the race to build nuclear weapons or race to space.
| And no, I'm not holding my breath, which is a tough thing to
| explain to children.
| szvsw wrote:
| Doom is not _quite_ the right word, at least in the
| apocalyptic connotation... it is too eventful, punctual,
| eschatological, teleological, suggesting a particular point
| of no return. Especially when combined with the word horizon,
| which suggests a point we can't see beyond, a climatic
| singularity. Uncharted system dynamics? Cascading failures?
| Suffering? Wet bulb death zones? Crop failures? Another
| pandemic? Population collapse? Yes yes yes yes yes maybe
| maybe. But not a doom horizon. So fatalistic a term... does
| it simply function to absolve ourselves of the chilling
| experience of actually taking the time to think through what
| the world looks like beyond "the horizon" - absolution we
| seek simply because the truth is it will be terrible, but
| only incrementally so, and in a recognizable rather than
| unrecognizable way.
|
| We can attempt to think through how things will play out,
| given what we already see happening and simple assumptions
| about power dynamics. People will live through it all,
| especially the wealthy (cutoff threshold: unknown; or rather,
| where is the elbow/knee between suffering and resilience? I
| don't know) - some of whom will experience some degree of
| climate shock (cf. the palisades, Malibu etc for a recent
| example) but will largely find ways to continue exploiting
| their advantages to survive, even thrive, while others will
| suffer the incrementally normalized dangers of simply being
| alive, like frogs slowly boiling in someone else's kitchen.
| People will keep fucking, having kids, trying to work shitty
| jobs, trying to work fun jobs, doing science and research,
| making music and bad reality television shows and brilliant
| novels and bad novels, crossing continents for better lives
| (whether that's economic opportunity or merely to escape
| climatic incompatibility with life) while others resent them
| for it, and people will continue to post on Hacker News long
| diatribes lamenting the state of things.
|
| I do think it is accurate to say we are *doomed* to this in
| the sense of being *fated* to it though.
|
| I guess what I am saying is that to call what will happen a
| doom horizon is just a hood we put over our own eyes because
| it is too upsetting to really think with nuance about the
| most probable trajectory.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| My word choice and vocabulary was pretty poor, I also don't
| think humanity will die.
|
| But more than the gradual climate degradation, I fear we'll
| have an increasing number unforseen failure modes that will
| make it pretty hellish to survive (e.g. whole swaths of
| land/water accidentally poisoned, non human viruses we
| can't properly deal with, environment adapts in ways that
| is a lot more unfavorable to us than we assume). As you
| point out, I'd bet on uncharted system dynamics leading to
| cascading failures.
|
| If life continues while slowly getting worse I'd see it as
| a win, the worse scenario being a lot bleaker with people
| barely maintaining a viable number of human to keep society
| going.
|
| It's not fate and I'm part of the generation that truely
| didn't give a damn about climate for most of it's
| life...which is perhaps why I feel I'm not in a position to
| just assume everything will be shitty but somewhat fine and
| the next generation will just be slightly worse.
| danjl wrote:
| Simple, obvious answers appeal to a broader, less-knowledgeable
| set of people. In fact, it really doesn't matter if there is
| _any_ basis for the answer, like a lower-dimensional
| approximation. If repeated enough, _more_ people tend to believe
| the simple, baseless answer. I feel this is a bigger issue these
| days than needing to use more complex answers among people who
| understand the complexity of the problem.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| This is what the Murdoch news empire does. It creates the
| mindset it wants people to have by repeating lies.
| cam_l wrote:
| There is value in perceiving and responding to the inherent
| complexity in things, as it meshes you closer to reality giving
| you a greater predictive and responsive capacity.
|
| This doesn't work as well with other people, with society. Even
| if they individually all try to approach reality as above.
|
| Manipulation and coercion are just much more efficient at
| creating a predictive capacity with other people, because you
| don't need to deal with reality or complexity. You already know
| where people are going to (metaphorically) run if you are
| leading them and herding them.
|
| I did enjoy the finer point Terry alluded to though, that even
| these simplified coercive memeing systems are based on a
| complex underlying system of reality. And when they get
| stretched too far, they break in unpredictable (complex) ways.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >As such, empirical laws that were trustworthy in the past, may
| become significantly less accurate, and can in fact become
| dangerous to rely upon too blindly.
|
| Read a really good book on this a few years ago by John Kay and
| Mervyn King, _Radical Uncertainty_
| (https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324004776), where they talk about
| the issue of applying the logic of "known uncertain" systems
| (like games of poker, or volcanic eruptions) to completely
| dynamic "radically uncertain" systems where any attempt to
| quantify outcomes is effectively completely made up. Election
| forecasts being one example, where there's no guarantee that you
| know the rules of the game, if they stay constant between
| elections and so on.
|
| I think this is very timely because these days you see this kind
| of cargo cult empiricism where people will say "I am 30%
| confident that..." as if just talking in a quantitative language
| means you've somehow understood something about the future or
| have reason to be more confident.
| lanstin wrote:
| A sick burn.
| light_triad wrote:
| If you press people on why they believe what they believe, you
| will often find that the axioms underlying their reasoning are
| slogans, trite phrases and hackneyed soundbites.
|
| But here's the catch: the memes, short texts, or short videos are
| spread through a complex machinery of interrelating parts with
| global reach. Explanations are plausible, wrong and very
| profitable in front of the right eyeballs.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Well for better or worse we are a democracy, so salesmanship
| for the important ideas is absolutely critical
| pylua wrote:
| The reason people summarize things, often without being correct,
| is that the world has become too complicated to model. It's an
| outcome of the situation, not just a corresponding trend.
| NiloCK wrote:
| Some particular systems have grown in complexity, but the
| general point isn't 'new' or emerging. No map has never been
| its corresponding territory.
| uoaei wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that this is about as excoriating a
| jab as Terence Tao can dole out against the brute and
| unconsidered actions of Ol' Musky on our (federal) government.
|
| For our sake, I hope Tao is also correct in that damage to the
| federal system may not necessarily destabilize structures at
| other (state, county, municipal) scales as regards socioeconomic
| organization in the USA.
| istjohn wrote:
| Sadly, while this sentiment may be useful to a small segment of
| society that is highly skilled in navigating our polluted
| information environment, the vast majority of our society cannot
| even maintain a grasp on reality, much less coherently reason
| about solutions of any kind.
|
| People live in alternative realities depending on if they get
| their news from CNN, Fox, TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, or
| BlueSky. Here's a recent clip from Joe Rogan that illustrates
| this perfectly [0]. He talks about the different perspectives of
| liberals and conservatives on USAID.
|
| It's likely this will get exponentially worse once our social
| media feeds become full of AI imposters competing with one
| another for everyone's attention with outrage bait and fake drama
| and entire fabricated social media bubbles in which each user is
| made to feel like the ruler of their own little fiefdom.
|
| Video and audio content appealing to every unique combination of
| biases, superstitions, and political orientation will be
| available in an endless deluge. I got a preview of this recently
| when I saw the surreal, gross videos YouTube Reels serves up to
| my toddler. Similar slop gets eaten up by easy targets on FB. But
| the slop is going to become more and more sophisticated until
| everyone is consuming it.
|
| I can only hope the solution comes before it's too late.
|
| 0. https://youtu.be/yj9jXMEzCZY
| ckemere wrote:
| I was shocked to find AI generated post match interviews after
| the recent Liverpool derby. I was watching and thinking "whoa -
| I thought Mo Salah was classier than that". Then I noticed the
| channel was called "DangerousAI". But generated within a few
| hours of the final whistle and undetectable from a quick
| glance...
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Me and my wife play a game where we look through The Website
| Formerly Known As Twitter and try to discern from generated
| vs non-generated art, and while it's typically rather easy
| (artistic style plays a big role) some pieces just absolutely
| blow us away, and I have been tricked a few times.
| 2358452 wrote:
| I'd put it this way.
|
| Current society largely (but not completely) relies on experts
| building highly complex systems. This includes not only public
| infrastructure like waterworks, buildings and information
| systems, but also say the very bread you eat (to get it at a low
| price and high productivity[1]), the computer we're reading this
| in (mind-numbingly complex system), the internet. It's a feature
| of capitalism (really, a feature of many administrative systems
| and product interfaces) that the consumer thankfully doesn't have
| to be too much of an expert on say computers (say theory of CPU
| architecture, pipelines, assembly, etc..) to buy a laptop or use
| software. The consumer only needs to be able to tell which
| competitor product is best for his use (although often, as he
| should, relying on expert reviews). We are good at hiding
| complexity behind interfaces as well, packaging complexity and
| hiding away its intricate inner workings. All of this enables
| life in a complex society.
|
| I think it's misguided or hypocritical to completely distrust
| experts specially when it comes to public policy, public
| administration and science, given how much we rely on experts for
| everything else. It's not even much of a choice, I believe: the
| fact that we rely on those complex mechanisms _inevitably_ will
| make certain failures that often demand public attention also
| complex. Say a food company synthesizes a highly complex (and not
| present in most natural products), but good tasting, substance.
| Then we kind of need equally complex review of its impacts on
| human health. A highly complex computer network will need highly
| knowledgeable (and correspondingly highly complex) solution to
| certain bugs that might appear, specially in cases like cross-
| domain failures where complexity encapsulations fail for various
| reasons. Think how unlikely it would be that every discipline has
| been exploited to extremely high complexity, but just by chance
| we could get away with simple solutions for public-facing and
| public policy problems.
|
| I like simplicity, and I even like the idea I wouldn't often
| require experts to understand a public or scientific issue of
| public concern. But I don't think I'm willing to give up most
| products of complexity, including computers, medical procedures
| and diagnosis, and more -- and even if I were willing (I might be
| able to live with say an early 2000s computer :) ), I don't think
| it's realistic or feasible to really do that. In part because of
| collective agreement, in part because of for example the sheer
| population we have to contend with today. Earlier methods of
| agriculture for example probably can't sustain that many people.
| We should therefore apply Einstein's wisdom: try to make things
| as simple as possible... but no simpler. And trust experts when
| sensible, when the problem at hand is complex enough to be beyond
| our comprehension (but still important).
|
| Of course, experts can be wrong, but that is something we just
| have to contend with (like we have to contend with the
| possibility all the weird procedures we do to produce food or
| acquire and purify water -- which are managed by experts -- may
| go wrong, even with significant efforts to otherwise). We can,
| and probably should, demand explanations (which may be hard to
| understand for the general public) of the experts and they
| explain their reasoning. We can examine and expect that their
| scientific field is healthy, there is consensus and there is a
| good level of academic integrity. But we should not approach
| their well informed opinions on important issues from a baseline
| of arrogance and distrust, because likely they do know much
| better, in certain cases.
|
| [1] Modern agriculture is highly complex. This includes special
| seeds, harvesting machines, soil science, weather prediction, and
| so on. Each of those is in turn highly complex requiring experts
| to exist at current performance.
| arscan wrote:
| The system dynamics[1] view here would be that complex dynamic
| system behavior tends to be dominated by feedback loops; and once
| identified let you ignore many of the other factors. And the
| trick is to figure out ways to introduce or activate feedback
| loops that work in your favor, instead of against it. To me that
| gives some hope of the existence of "simple" solutions to
| managing complex system behavior over time.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
| neiman wrote:
| I adore Terence Tao, but this one feels like stating the obvious.
|
| Basically, he says that simple solutions to complex situations
| work sometimes--for example when a simpler system can approximate
| your system.
|
| But many times it's not true! So you need a complex solution to a
| complex situation.
|
| That's kind of stating the obvious, no?
| ozim wrote:
| I would say yes for myself but as software developer I am
| baffled by business people to whom I have to basically explain
| this.
|
| Some things are complex and will take months or years to
| complete - but if it doesn't fit in a quarter where they can
| put it as a win on their list they feel offended.
| cowsaymoo wrote:
| I don't think so. He is rather talking about the properties of
| emergence in complex systems, and claims that the predictive
| theories we rely on to navigate the world will not hold in a
| dynamic system this interconnected ('no effective dynamics'),
| so we ought to be regularly retesting our assumptions.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| Tangential; why is math popular on mastodon like computer science
| is - but little other subjects? What do physicists use, chemists,
| mechanical engineers?
| ColinWright wrote:
| Specifically, this is a post on _Mathstodon_ ... note the
| spelling.
|
| Yes, it's on "Mastodon-the-Platform", but this particular post
| is on a server that literally has the words "maths" in its
| name.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| This is what I mean, there is no physicstodon or similar
| ColinWright wrote:
| Ah ... sorry ... I mis-understood.
|
| _Shrug_ ... no idea. Christian pung me back in March 2017
| and said:
|
| There's this new social network thing with different
| servers ... maybe we should make one to focus on
| Recreational Maths.
|
| We thought for a while, and when we hit on the name (it's
| his fault ... he came up with it) we figured it had to be
| done.
|
| But thinking about it ... there's very little "Recreational
| Physics" or "Recreational Mechanics" or "Recreational
| Electronics".
|
| There is, I guess, "Recreational Programming" ... but that
| doesn't feel the same.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Mathstodon welcomes cs, physics and other science-related
| posts (as well as off-topic posts in moderation---the
| creator views mathstodon as being less about the topics and
| more about the people: interested in mathematics, cs,
| problem solving etc).
| orbital-decay wrote:
| No offense intended, but this is idealistic and somewhat expected
| from a person living in an ivory tower.
|
| _> long-standing assumptions are tested and updated as new
| information about the current state of the world comes in_
|
| The entire problem is that this mechanism doesn't exist in
| practice. Real-world systems tend to accumulate incidental
| complexity that serves no purpose, with no real way to review it,
| as any potential mechanism is subject to the same accumulation.
| That's called corruption.
|
| The only way to compress and simplify the outdated complexity
| that has _some_ chance to work is total system destruction and
| rebuilding, with previous iterations taken into account. But when
| you 're stuck a local minimum it makes things even worse. Now, if
| you have another, easier way that would actually work in real
| world, I'm all ears.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| No, I think he's completely wrong.
|
| The world isn't being ruined by a meme. On the contrary, our
| problem is the complexity bias, which seems to have developed
| over the previous century.
|
| As the result, nobody understands anything anymore. I fact it
| seems that more complex solutions have been worked out, that
| allow to run on sone kind of protocol, with little to no thinking
| involved.
|
| Time is being wasted on dealing with problems in overly complex
| ways, and there is no room left for what can't be simplified.
| temporalparts wrote:
| I think Terrance makes a great general point in general, but the
| specific claim is not always true: complex dynamics can arise
| from simple initial conditions, therefore, simple changes could
| resolve those complex dynamics.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-15 23:01 UTC)