pretty bearish on humanity here, Mike …
Discussion
I’m not bearish on humanity. But I think surviving the technological age is not without certain perils that need to be acknowledged honestly, if we are to successfully navigate them.
How is that different than 25, 50, 100 years ago or 200 years ago etc? Why is this time different?
I’m not entirely sure that you are wrong, but I am entirely sure the most moral path is to act *as if* you are wrong.
have faith in every human soul - “faith” being an especially sneaky word choice here …
I don’t think you can rely on the notion that some conception of normative ethics can be expected to represent some sort of center of gravity, which pulls individual behavior, and by extension, collective behavior towards functional outcomes that more closely align with that under their own weight.
This is actually at the middle of my objections to many arguments people make about the “inevitability” of certain futures: be it hyperbitcoinization, or the belief we will regress towards something more like an anarcho-capitalist future, merely because of some functional behavioralist weight that these supposedly universalist conceptions of ethics supposedly tend towards. Because those systems are somehow more "self-consistent" in terms of their ethical constructions (a point I object to, but will not do so here), or that the a priori arguments around the superior incentives in some conception of economics will wash away the hypocrisy.
I believe these sorts of arguments are fanciful thinking, and indirectly advocate for depoliticization. That we don't have to engage in political power games to advance our interests. Instead, we can simply wait for the hypocrisies and self-contradictions of the current systems of power to play out, and can expect future outcomes to "naturally" come into alignment with some notion of universal ethics and purer notions of economic incentives.
I just don't buy that. I know it makes me feel like a party pooper to say that. But I don't think the completely a priori arguments that get made in that direction seem reasonable against what I understand about human nature (particularly as it pertains to group dynamics), collective action problems (like classic tragedy of the commons issues), or empirical counterexamples from history itself.
I try to push a pro-bitcoin narrative through the lens of accepting these as problems. Rather than assuming these problems just "go away" when everything comes out in the wash.
I think you misunderstand my point. I’m not saying this *will* happen for xyz nonsense axiomatic reason. I’m saying that, as an individual making decisions, you should act as if everybody *can* “lower their time preference through learned self-restraint,” even if that may not be true.
in fact I’d go further and say that successful group dynamics and the resolution of collective action problems to a large extent depends on it: people only cooperate and restrain from negative-sum violence at all when there is reason to believe that meaningful trust can create a positive-sum outcome. if you don’t believe you will be treated fairly because you are just a high-time preference idiot/idler/whatever then you won’t develop or reciprocate any trust. hence for those who are low-time preference clever/industrious/whatever, the moral thing to do is to act as if this (probably to some extent true) underlying distribution is actually false.
I’d even go as far as to say that civilisation depends on the self-fulfilling inertia of this choice continuing to be made by a majority, if not a supermajority.
I don't think that most people would disagree in the abstract that you should strive for low time preference behavior and act morally, though. The real arguments come in around how we structure society to achieve that.