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greyenlightenment  investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...  1d ago (greyenlightenment.com)   835 thread views

Why does advice work so poorly?

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I don't think humans really attack themselves, they just close themselves off of the world in a manner which is unhealthy. It's like dying of thirst in front of a puddle of dirty water (edit: Or just water which you don't know the purity of before you drink it). Nietzsche advocated isolation for the purpose of growth, but he also wrote "whoever would remain clean among human beings must understand how to wash himself even with dirty water". I wonder if he thought of this as being possible.

It was much less true in the past, I think (at least, in our own communities. I'm not sure about our relation with strangers/outgroups). We've become much more exploitative, we're also more prone to look for the worst in others, as well as to look for weaknesses which can be exploited. I don't think old people are easier to scam because old people are dumb, I think it's because society has gotten less honest faster than old people have managed to adapt to that fact.

We're in the age of resource exhaustion, and "trust" is no less of a resource than oil is. Even "dignity" and "reputation" are resources. Companies like Blizzard are currently burning these. Resources like honor and respect are nearly depleted in the western world in my opinion. Mathematically, I think the solution is to optimize for the long-term rather than the short-term. If you optimize for an infinitely long period of time, it appears to me like you're immune to all social dilemma's and things like Goodhart's law and other harmful incentives. So the entire problem seems to be excessive short-term optimization.

Perhaps current parasites are no worse than those of old, but there seems to be many more of them now that we're all global rather than members of small local communities. And being "local" had advantages, I think it's the cause of the whole "high trust society" thing. A king would suffer if they hurt their own kingdom, so incentives like that protected against evil somewhat. But now, you can earn money by hurting somebody 1000s of miles away.

I'd ask "Which is best, to adapt well to a sick society, or to adapt poorly to a sick society"? Personally, I'm not entirely sure.

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