Risk Aversion

The song version of "only my railgun" which was probably illegal for me to download has a series of clicks at the beginning and end, unlike the official music video which has images show with no sound. Okay that should be enough for people to not take this post seriously.

People will generally agree that problems exist in the world, like poverty, crime, war, and even famine. But it is more difficult to determine whether the existence of these problems serve a useful purpose, for other groups of people or the world as a whole. So people might avoid commenting on something which seems it might fix these problems. It seems like it might be possible that 'mean' people would end up fighting against each other, wasting effort, and possibly even causing evolutionary selection for being 'nice' if good intentions prevent these problems from causing harm.

This assumption falls apart if pretending that problems don't exist does not actually stop them from affecting you, in which case 'mean' and 'nice' begin to look similar. In that case, to the extent that someone being seen as 'mean' does cause harm to society due to people's unwillingness to help mean people, it is necessary to prove that someone who is seen as being mean is, in fact, just stupid.

Since in the theory of reality where many mean people are actually nice is one where being mean is a signal of being 'locally most intelligent', by implication it is also necessary to prove that most other people are also stupid in order to verify the provisional use of the strategy of appearing to be mean. This provides some evidence of the theory's correctness which shows it is acceptable to help people who appear to be mean and proves that 'everyone being nice' is not by itself an acceptable solution—that the distribution of human intelligence is such that the concept of authority is necessary but so is an awareness of the limits of that authority.

Digression: I agree with the thinking of Vernor Vinge that it is somewhat silly to conjecture what much more intelligent entities would act like, but this topic is similar to the description of a book I haven't read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem

But um, what this post is supposed to be saying is that this site hasn't really done much to answer the question. Thus the Aurora shooting. But to the extent it has offered a logical explanation for mean people's actions so that people who might not have been able to are able to explain problems in the world as the result of capabilities instead of intentions, it might have documented something useful. The fact that people have not supported the several efforts that should have been able to lead to change suggests that they do think it falls under the job responsibilities of economists and government people to think about solutions even if they wouldn't lead to higher GDP. According to the first post on this site, this kind of misunderstanding about responsibilities is a natural result in a society that does not know how to prevent it.

However, economists are very aware that fixing economic problems is as simple as giving people money, whether or not it also involves removing money from people with lots of it to prevent inflation. Unlike the version of reality where 'nice' people help each other and therefore succeed, economists are much more aware of the amount of inequality that exists in society and the number of 'mean' people with lots of money. This might even include everyone in the United States, where even homeless people have access to free emergency room visits and food from charities while thousands or millions of people in other countries starve.

So this means to morally justify the idea on this site might require showing that problems are the result of a failure in capabilities. But the first post on this site should have suggested that the more detailed explanation existed and so this is just another side issue.

I have been trying to allow other people to be in a position to support this idea with certainty that it will be used to fix the problems this site claims it will fix. There are many things I have not done, such as own a car, have a driver's license, drive a car in the US (I have driven an M577 on a dirt road), be successful in a job search, use any type of health care service on my own, be in another country for more than a day other than the Middle East, or make a direct suggestion that is used in that form for something important (one suggestion about an aesthetic issue might have been used).

Therefore, while the economic effects of this idea are relatively easy to understand and based off of readily available statistical information like 'marginal propensity to consume', the popularity of expensive brands even among the middle class and the apathy by same toward measures to shift more of national income to workers, it is less certain that it would help 'nice people' more than it helps 'mean people', if mean people actually exist. The argument that it would improve signal accuracy could also be wrong. But beyond this, even if it were correct it might not be possible to state the idea in such a way that people would support it.

While I wouldn't be in my current position if I did not feel the idea was viable, my confidence in my assessment is dependent on attitudes of other people. As mentioned before this is mostly the ability to pick similar strategies and predict outcomes. However, if two people are both using a strategy meant to ensure that mistakes are concluded to be the result of 'overestimation of the self', in some cases they will naturally disagree on the interpretation of results even if the strategy reflects the same underlying situation.

The result is an impasse, and external measures of value become unreliable. This can decrease confidence.

As I suppose I am the originator of the idea on this site, despite my lack of experience with some things in the world I should have had the most confidence about its chances of success. However, my situation was and is one where it is difficult to say I can answer any questions about what aspects of the world caused me to conclude that this idea would work. But that's just another excuse!

So, this post has only taken me about four hours to write. Before that I was going to make a short post referencing the Nightwish song Ghost Love Score—just its general idea—and the game/visual novel "Crimson Spider" which I won't link because it is not safe for everyone to look at and also in Japanese. But it seemed it would have been ineffectual as the message, "a problem exists", has already been stated on this site.

~food break~

I was optimistic about the accuracy of people's understanding of society and the economy and their ability to reform their opinions based on new evidence. If it is not rude to mention it, even my older brother—who scored a 1600 on the old SAT, the maximum score—questioned how standards of living would go up if skilled people worked less, resulting in the final question in the FAQ for the idea which answered this concern.

As a result, people who encounter this idea decide that the verification of whether it would work is the responsibility of economists. It is like deciding what type of nuclear reactor is the safest and most efficient once the world runs out of fossil fuels—for experts to decide, or for government leaders to evaluate the various proposals and approve the most attractive one. The average person in society only needs to say that things need to be fixed.

It is not without risk to support something which is contrary to the military-fueled economic focus of the past century or so. I began this post with the intention of saying that "the reason no one supported this idea earlier on is that they might have failed, and I would have felt bad, but now I accept that possibility" but it's difficult to say.