thanks for the reply too.

Before I dive into specifics, I want to note/argue something that might apply through the whole structure of the argument--

Firstly, the formulation of 'trying to get other people to kill themselves' seems disastriously phrased (conceived?) to me: things like blaming or dismissive-stonewalling someone might be intended to put pressure on someone's ego, and in the most extreme cases (like someone who was right on the edge of suicide that day, or a harassment-campaign of years), might lead to someone killing themselves, but the intention behind any particular instance of blame, 'no u', etc cannot be assumed to be to strike at someone's ego and (more fundamentally) even if it could it would not be accurate or fair to equivocate an intent to harm of that level with an intention to cause death.

And beyond being what I've argued is an unfair mischaracterisation-

(I was going to say "unfair and misleading", but then it occurred to me that the completeness of the summary might be less important than not risking that it comes across 'do you see how bad this is, aha!' thing. -so here we have a case where such recriminations can potentially be an accidental byproduct which arises without intention.)

-it also constitutes a serious accusation, which would surely stop people from trying to disentangle how the extreme endpoint is being used as a metaphor for the whole of a spectrum. (if that even is what is going on - I'm now trying to translate everything from metaphors into infinite turtles (if I have that one right xd))

TL:DR: you shouldn't equivocate [hostility], with malice, in turn with intention-to-cause-suicide, especially not all at once. -Despite lying on a spectrum of sorts, they are very different things with very different moral meanings.

>Hey, thanks for the reply! Sorry for the long wait; it takes me a while to formulate a response and I'm now just getting time to write it all down and organize it.

no problem. It took me a week the first time!

>I did put words in your mouth, sorry. I'm just trying to extend the lines of thought that might happen (which you aren't advocating for, I'll admit, but some other person might) and show an example of the dynamics of the situation and how it isn't static.

no intent, no insult!

(actually that's kind of related to what I was just saying)

>I agree that the compassion/wisdom axis is disjoint from the life/death axis is disjoint from the selfishness axis is disjoint from the morality axis, but there is a complex dynamic between all of them over time that every agent will jump back and forth between, and what I think will happen is that the life/death axis will serve as the final 'reality check' to test if they are cognizant of living in the hall of mirrors or not. An example of this 'infinite precision' in real life is

I understand that life-or-death axis can serve as a reality check to force people to engage with other intermediary axes, for example someone who is less vengeful/dangerous is more likely to be hassled.

-In fact, I've even posted a thread in this subreddit premised on the mechanism previously, https://www.reddit.com/r/TMBR/comments/8fsnzx/tmbr_a_big_reason_people_hate_people_who_commit/), and I've argued (not online though, so no link) before that it's good to have a small propotion of 'lunatics' (defensive hyper-escalators of conflict) in the population for this purpose.

What I was arguing is wrong is a plan to force/manipulate this idea on society in an inflammatory/divisive way, rather than enable society to coordinate and 'see eye to eye', so it can cooperate effectively.

As, if such drastic measures as you intitially seemed to be proposing (ahaha "do you see how your children die for your folly" scheme) *were necessary, they would be ineffective*. (because 1. people bad enough to need such measures would not be open to empathy or appeals to consequence, 2. in general it is reasonable to respond to manipulation and creeping hostility with warlike hostility 3. the full on subjugation it would require to work is immoral and impractical)

If however, it's something more like the slogan (sorry I mangle it a second time) 'if we continue to destroy the planet, we should give our grandchildren the right to die', that is a much less divisive and inflamattory idea: an appeal to duty via responsibility and empathy, and even in some way a direct appeal to the opposition's sacred values (freedom to provide for one's family), rather than an appeal to empathy and openness by ominous creeping threats.

(still somewhat controversial of course, but qualitatively less many times over)

_

I just remembered the other overarching point I meant to make before I got into specifics:

The mirror feedback mechanism you're trying to create already has a blueprint- it's called reciprocity, and it's natural to human beings. The less that decent people are at each other's throats, the more energy and attention they have for long term projects and protecting one other from genuinely malicious actors.

The idea of shaking people up seems to procede from the assumption that problem is complacency rather than a lack of coordination or cooperation.

I think looking back at how tumultous and disastrous recent history has been is good evidence against this view of society;

Not much more than 50 years ago, we had the mass insanity of world war 2, not long before that world war 1, and not long before that, the chinese boxer rebellion, very shortly before that, 'the scramble for africa', not long before that (a bit longer in this case, but likely this only reflects my lack of knowledge) the napoleonic wars (a direct consequence imo of the french revolution, which only lasted ten years), and in between was the american civil war and the perry expedition which forced japan to open itself to the outside world at gunpoint, who later joined the nazis in world war 2..

-This is not a history of people who's problem has been complacency, it is a history of people in the grip of madness, conflict, and overactive drives towards action.

(n.b., I'm sure I'm missing many major conflicts, especially as all of these relate to 'the west', which I'm from and hence is where I began to look back at history)

If the problem with society is that life has been too stable and easy, and hence people are complacent, then drastic action to shake things up is a natural solution. If the problem with society is that life has been too unstable and scary, and hence people become feral, trying to promote peace and harmony seems the natural path, and all that kumbaya shit.

But like I said before I don't think that slogan is bad. Thinking of one's descendants is something that people from all over the political spectrum can relate to. I believe the main obstacle to most postive political endeavours is (as you say) the lack of 'seeing eye to eye'.

Also, while I'm on the subject, I'd like to reemphasize that handling global warming (and other environmental impacts) is a very long term project, and long term projects are in precarious hands when direction of countries swings back and forth between enemies every few years. Another argument for reconciliation and stability.

__

alright, I suppose that is the main points covered, back to the specifics/line-by-line

>An example of this 'infinite precision' in real life is:

>sees problem and blames
>no, you
>no, YOU
>NO, YOU!
>It's either my way or the highway
>Go f*** yourself
>Haha, I win! Whatcha gonna do now?

>This is a rather blunt bottom-up conversation, but there are more polite phrasings and it's generally applicable and can be extended as specific as the situation demands. Both sides here are encouraging the other to kill themselves: the blamee is being direct about it, but the initial blamer is being indirect. Each is calling for the other to self-reflect and it's escalating into external reflection. "Words are wind" (borrowing from GRRM) to the blamer though, and if the blamee can't get numbers on his side, he might eventually wither and commit suicide. Here is where a life ends and where a reflection could happen, but the blamer will view it through a lens, and use that -ism/ideology as a mirror, leading to (what I think is similar, if not equivalent, to the self-indignant chaos that you're trying to get at) a hall of mirrors death spiral. Another example of this back-and-forth hall of mirrors blame game is this conversation in /r/collapse (sorry that I keep linking this sub, but it's got the highest signal-to-noise ratio if I want to find a signal).

1st, I don't read that conversation in /r/collapse near as hostile/malicious as you do. As weird as it seems, when someone says "you are to blame" (especially in a driveby comment on online platform) they are not usually 100% serious and sincere, but are posting for some other purpose, e.g. to instantiate some anger, or in this case to make a political point, meaning less *you personally* are to blame (are bad and should feel bad), as 'positions like yours are to blame'. Of course this is not most ideally harmonious to use one phrasing as proxy for other, but I think communicating in a somewhat more brutal way becomes habit for reasons I'll propose in a moment:

Also, I'm not sure if there is a very precise word for that kind of behaviour, so I sympathise with the need to find a stand in.

In my view the reason people develop such habits/engage in such behaviour is quite simple . If you make a lot of noise and unpleasantness, barking at people when they conflict with you, it becomes less profitable to conflict with you, hence you deal with less hassle, and less risk of relegation to designed-victim status.

i.e. Barking and instinctive shittiness doesn't come first from a lack of retribution, but from a lack of protection.

-If no one is going to protect you from the depredations of others, it's tempting and arguably understandable to become whatever is most obviously and unsubtly unpleasant to deal with.

Where do people learn this? At the mundane level, I think in school where teachers "don't care who started it", 'zero tolerance policies' expel the party who was assaulted as well as the one who attacked for no reason, "boys will be boys", and so on. There's this idea that children should get used to injustice and tyranny early because it will prepare them for the world.

And at the more extreme levels, often in the family or local culture.

n.b., while I am in this area, did you mean to suggest earlier when you said I was "employing the mirror", that I was "encouraging you to kill yourself"?

>My goal here is not the hall of mirrors, but to raise the question, "what kind of society would make both sides not want to encourage the other to kill themselves"? We can begin imagining possibilities and weighing their pros/cons rather than "try it and see what sticks". This is now hopefully pointing to the compassion/wisdom axis that we can agree on. It's like the /r/OSHA phrase (that I'm probably botching): safety laws are written in blood. People generally don't see the value of rules/norms for their own good and need to directly experience the damage, so they try to cut corners first. I'm not endorsing the damage, but rather the tension so that it is easier to extrapolate the blood through considering the consequences (with ourselves modeled in the game) rather than just "obey the rules or else".

Yeah I see this angle. It's helpful to make things real to people.

I still think the main thing is providing people security and getting them out of a feralish self-protection first mode of thinking. How sympathetic will someone be to what they perceive as left wing causes if, for example, their city gets upended in a riot and no one is punished despite CCTV footage?

Also, coordinated efforts can sometimes come off as quite insincere and disrespectful, and hence have the opposite effect, especially if they tend to be controlling, but maybe I was misunderstanding how draconian your ideas are intended to be.

>That's a good point you brought up, that the aggressor won't necessarily make the connection. This reminds me of a scene in Avatar, where they were debating whether to take down the Home Tree, and the head of the corporation was up in arms, saying:

Right, exactly. Someone who makes a habit of e.g. robbing people tends to adopt morals and self-identifaction which justify this for them. People are much less open to moral considerations after a lifetime of wrongdoing, and even after a lifetime of compromise. you can't just swoop in on the latter group with blame and recriminations, it's much more effective (and imo more fair but that's a seperate and I guess potentially contentious point) to take a view which sympathises and respects.

My schema for this is also quite simple. Everyone should ideally be treated with sympathy and respect (with careful attention taken not to, as you put it, "encourage them to kill themselves") unless they have actively revoked it themselves.

>Where the indigenous people are viewed as an obstacle to their (percieved morally correct) goal and labeled as "hippie tree huggers" who don't understand the violent tribe.

n.b. I think the problem with the world is much less violence and more a proclivity towards domineering and subjugation. two guys boxing in a ring is perfectly civilised, or even meeting for pistols at dawn over an irreconcilable difference (tragic perhaps, but not a part of the main negative force that seems to hang over history) it's the thing which leads to beating one's wife for the hell of it or making slaves of people that is the real/main negative force of the world.

>Another (crude) analogy, but you can kind of think of it as vehicular traffic. Every driver (agent) has the possibility of being crazy and so by the induction gap, you shouldn't be driving for fear of being hit by a crazy. But, everyone miraculously manages, and it could be boiled down to being locally selfish - I don't want to inconvenience myself so I won't inconvenience others. The too-fast interleaving one-more-car passer and the too-slow conservative grandma are outliers, but both still don't want a clash. There is still pressure exerted on them: "don't be an a**hole on the road", and "maybe the elderly need to retake their license test every so often" which trickles down and passes around as experience is shared and if the situation gets worse, then there is support for laws (e.g. DUIs), but of course some laws are passed without collective support. New technology (like faster cars) means new ways to disturb the network, like unsafe street racing. The "a**holes will be a**holes" though, but they don't think of themselves as "a**holes", and since they aren't prioritizing considering other's safety but rather their joyride, they need that hard limit of vehicular damage to themselves to know how far to push the envelope. With everyone not trying to hurt others (either because of consideration for others, following the "rules of the road", or ultimately selfishness), accidents are not the intended goal and people's business on the network can flow. People just want to get about their business in peace: they don't want to go down and experience the life/death axis, but they are always aware of it.

But people are locally considerate as well, and there is a central coordinating police which actually punishes and removes drivers from the road if they're seen to be breaking the rules.

Still, I see the point that having skin in the game can lead to a more considerate system. Actually I think it's quite closely related to the "principal-agent problem" of either economics or game theory. If the person who is at risk is oneself, (one is both the decider and the beneficiary/sufferer of the decision), one is incentivised to do one's best. If that wasn't the case, there might be less motivation and/or some temptation to put in less effort.

another related phrase might be "alignment of incentives", though I'm not sure if that's a technical term or just a description.

I think often where it seems order arises from following one's own interests, there is usually some underlying order that interlinks interests already. For example, the idea of reciprocity native to human nature makes it in people's "selfish interest" to see aggressor's punished.

>Consider an "aggressor" driver who leads the way in tech innovation and upgrades to max fun and (possibly inadvertently) max destroy, like spiked wheels, and is all together destroying the roads behind him with potholes/sinkholes/spike strips as they drive, and doesn't look in the rear-view mirror to see what damage he's doing. He doesn't know or doesn't care, and is having the time of his life while also being safe against other potential threats. The juggernaught of a driver doesn't notice the bad roads because, well, he's built like a tank, and so many aspire to be like that to adapt to the changing conditions. Meanwhile, other drivers have to deal with deteriorating roads but don't want to deal with this guy head on, so drive carefully around the potholes, or take different roads. The balance and the mirror in this situation is like predictive and historical pothole software augmented-reality glasses magically installed in every driver's vehicle, to see what damage could occur based on the capabilities of their own car, other cars, and a historical record of which car caused which damage already on the road. Now, the other drivers can see how their car can cause damage to the road ahead, and where the existing potholes came from. How precise is like how well the predictive models are trained, because all predictive models can be biased by the training data. The other drivers now have a tool to connect the dots and make a narrative that by avoiding and 'allowing' the aggressor to both improve their cars as well as run loose, they contributed to the deteriorating conditions. But, how to stop now? One person wouldn't want to encourage the aggressor to kill themselves, because it's ineffective. The aggressor is desired by some in some form or another anyway, so it can't completely be killed. The other drivers will have to update their own models (by sharing training data) to see how this "aggressor" (that some aspire to) affects everyone. What's left is collective action, in this extreme case manifesting as punishment as spite, where they want to teach it a lesson and maybe serve as an example. It doesn't have to always be as extreme as encouraging others to kill themselves, as there are other axes like the one you point out (and I agree with your insight about popular support for Ghandi): we can individually tailor the punishment to the crime, and not always be acting on the life/death axis. As the stories point out, it's not the monster that should decide how the next world goes.

It's a bit confusing how they need special tech-glasses to figure out the spike-wheeled tank will be unhealthy for the road, but I think I can mostly follow this.

Also, I can't see what the link is with V for vendetta or serenity's operative. -If anyone is the one upending a social order here, it's the tank guy.

>Now, the aggressor driver, equipped with the same glasses as everyone else, can see in the future horizon what potholes he is creating (since he's always looking ahead and not behind).

I thought the idea was to give everyone (society/the people) the ability to see who was doing what damage, so they could inform/warn/admonish/penalise/punish/destroy (spectrum) the person doing damage.

I don't see how in this analogy it is helpful to rely on the 'fuck you' spiked-wheels-guy's sense of civic duty or whatever, or why it's necessary to get his buy-in.

>As other drivers inch up to him and encourage him to kill himself, he is then hopefully lead to update his training data for the predictive pothole software and make a connection with their demands, and can finally realize that he has other choices other than digging in his heels to "just keep rolling, haters gonna hate":

>[examples]

>Of course, if he "just keeps going" and doesn't self-reflect, then the ultimate expression of "kill yourself" could happen (war/murder/torture) as individuals incrementally contribute to continue adding to retributive justice, but this external reflection is always within the context of the balance, because now the aggressor of the aggressor become the new aggressor and are under more scrutiny than usual (for hypocrisy, etc). Again, everyone just wants to drive the roads in peace, minding their own business.

I don't think egregious determined wrongdoers like this guy (more analogous to a fraudulent businessman who knows his scheme will poison the river than an average non or anti environmentalist) give a shit. Why would they care what other people think if they don't care when they damage thousands? It's folly to reason with such an openly committed and determined wrongdoer. The average non/anti environmentalist is not going way above and beyond the norm of society to damage things like in this case, but as far as the analogy goes, lets not bend over too far backwards to get tank guy's buy-in.

>The equilibrium of this game is when no one has an incentive to encourage someone to kill themselves, and no one wants to kill their own selves.

Such an equilibrium occurs when don't feel their position is under threat, hence that they have to bark and bray to ward off enemies/predators.

>No, by all means if you think it can help! As you've already seen from my history, I've spent many attempts trying to find a clear way to phrase this. I've just tried an analogy-of-an-analogy with my traffic example, but abstractions break down in the concrete, so if it's turtles all the way down to make my points clearer and clearer, then I'll follow.

I definitely think when developing ideas to distant heights it is helpful to follow the stack of turtles as far back down to earth as possible.

>Yes, I agree that empathy can't be forced, but what they do respect is life and death: some people don't 'listen' and need to touch the hot stove to learn the lesson. Should they disregard empathy and morality and ethics, they drop down to the lowest level of the life/death axis, and what my mirror and balance dynamics is trying to show is that even in this lowest level, with selfishness and greed as the prime motivator, an incentive to balance life can still exist, when empathy fails. This is not disregarding empathy though, as most people do listen to suffering and the well-being of others; it's just the special "aggressor" cases that need more "nudging" to consider the (future) consequences of our actions. Again, tailoring the punishment to the crime.

It's obvious (at least to me) that the prospect of concrete consequences can cause people to be more thoughtful, the problem is that this is not something that can be harnessed, because people allow this to happen only either

1. When the consequences are natural. If someone sticks a fire where you finger happens to lie, the reaction is not "whoops, better not put it there, now I know, thanks world", it's delirious rage.

2. when 'submitting'/'folding' in the face of imminent threats/danger.

>This is not disregarding empathy though, as most people do listen to suffering and the well-being of others; it's just the special "aggressor" cases that need more "nudging" to consider the (future) consequences of our actions. Again, tailoring the punishment to the crime.

Why try to get blood from a stone? If we have genuine wrongdoers, e.g. lets sy the bankers not just negligently but conspiratorially responsible for the banking crisis, identified and caught, why worry about reform?

>Yes, I agree that starting a dialogue is going to be tough, and I agree my language wasn't clear here: it wasn't the end-result leader that I was referring to, but someone at the initial stages who attempts to power-grab for everyone's own good.

>Another way to think of this is that I'm trying to solve at least two problems: risk assessment and human self-centeredness. People can assess and react to a lion about to pounce them, but not global-warming-mumbo-jumbo, and people firstly care about themselves and what they have. I was tipped off to Adventures in Flatland - Part II just last week which provides the clearest exposition that I've seen so far of these two issues, but hopefully these two TL;DRs are intuitive enough that you don't have to read it.

>People will do anything to take care of the people they care about (human self-centeredness) but have trouble knowing what they need to react to. With the right to die, they now have a way to measure what they have to react to

right to die doesn't provide any technical new way to process information. What it mechanically seems to do is ideally contribute a little removal to a preexisting empathy block, ..or if it's done in a foolish (calculated, goal oriented, conspiratiroal) way, doubles and empowers that empathy block and what it represents.

>Will they have the food/clothing/shelter in the future? Well, break it down e.g. their homes might get run over by migrant caravans, so they might want to kill themselves before they get raped/murdered/looted... so, what will we have to do to not have the future mass migrant caravan situation? Oh, we have to do X, so why aren't we doing X if we've been warned to do X? It could be that I like what not doing X does for me today. Et cetera, and the discussion continues and branches off and out in every direction, but always it seeks an equilibrium, where the future generations won't want to kill themselves.

This is already the case, and yet it doesn't prompt reforming the society to be more sustainable and stable. ~~Obviously~~ surely the problem lies elsewhere?

>This book is recent, but it uses the (probably old) term "slow violence" which is one instance of what I mean by indirect incentives to "encourage the others to kill themselves".

>O'Lear said one idea obscured by orthodox discussions about the environment is "slow violence," or structural harm to people caused by gradual environmental problems that are hard to pin on one cause.

>"We're talking about structural violence and ways that systems of society are violent when people are marginalized or left out - not a direct "I'm going to hurt you" kind of violence, but keeping people from health or benefits they could have, and harming them over time.

>This indirect 'death threat', because its slow, is hard for us to risk assess and so we kick the can down the road to future generations. When assessing the threat to the future generation's despair and potential suicide, they will have to consider everything when looking for the root cause, including this "slow violence".

I agree this sort of thing could be a way to make such concerns more real to people, if not handled in a ham-fisted manner, but I don't think the main problem is that the concerns aren't real, but distrust of left wing causes, in which case the solution should not be looked for in the "looks-suspicious-and-conspiratorial" space.

>Politically, first we try a considerate approach:

>We have to pursue environmentalism for future generations' sake
But if this is not enough, then we try others:

>The traditional livelihoods around the world will be at stake if we don't pursue environmentalism
And on and on it goes until we go down to the lowest life/death axes, with slogans like:

>If we don't pursue environmentalism or don't care about the world our ((great) grand) children will inherit, then we are fine with their despair, and so we should give them the right to die

Put like this, I agree it's strong rhetoric. (though I'm not quite the target audience. What will christians think?).

>Old slogans like "do it for the ((great) grand) children" becomes front and centre unlike never before. So, as well as make everyone cognizant of the life/death axis, it will compress timelines of a future generation's suicide unto today's consideration. In a way, you could categorize my argument as accelerationist, which I'm trying to argue ends optimistically, but you understandably have many reservations leading towards pessimism.

wait, how is this accelerationist?

If we talk about accelerationism, I think it is a noble impulse, but crazy to loose upon the world: the world doesn't just have a single evil oppressing it, which if destroyed will clear the way for a free and bright future. If it did, it would be worth sacrificing almost anything, even the lives of others, to achieve. But it just isn't.

c.f. my historical examples. The french revolution lasted ten years before reactionary empire building swept europe.like not seen in  hundreds of years. Mao starved millions. The 'moderate' russian revolutionaries gave way to lenin, who gave way to stalin. Not to mention that Hitler was an accelerationist: Things are coming to a head, germany will be relegated to a position of economic slavery and exploitation, so we have to act decisively and first

>Yes, there are levels and timelines that I am compressing and to play out in present time, will have to be decompressed. But, we don't have to jump to the most lowest base level right off the bat.

>This gradual sentiment is echoed everywhere, like for example I looked in the comments of the latest NYTimes piece on the "Insect Apocalypse" and found one

Well, the base version you first presented is in my view basically a declaration of war, and I can't see any point at which it would be appropriate, but the more recent ones don't seem too hostile. (again if not gone about in ham fisted way)

Also, sentiments being echoed among upper class opinion makers is not a good guide for what is a good idea for the masses. NYT writers are rich, they have no need to "model themselves as part of the game". If one place collapses, they can move.

In russia, marxism was very fasionable before the revolution as well.

>This gradual sentiment is echoed everywhere, like for example I looked in the comments of the latest NYTimes piece on the "Insect Apocalypse" and found one:

>to all commenters wistfully daydreaming of insects past, seen at "your property" up north, or on the coast, or wherever: are you listening to yourselves? you're kind of part of the problem.

>Emphasis mine. Many people are reflecting back on their childhoods, and this commenter is asking for even further self-reflection, and is asking first for individual change (I don't need to paste their proposals here, but in sum: "start thinking about how YOU will sacrifice to help nature succeed"), which is not yet escalating into external (violent) reflection. Totally within bounds and not too crazy, but just out of reach enough that it won't be easy, and (in my opinion) won't happen by choice without some extra "nudging", because, for example, people usually don't want to downgrade their standards of living when they've been working to increase it for themselves and their future generations (the 'intergenerational social mobility' game)

I'm sure among the 800 comments you can find many things echoed. What significance has that?

Anyway, this one is counterproductive in exactly the way I am warning against. *are you listening to yourselves?* is an either inexperienced/naive or more likely self indulgent outburst which positions oneself as an enemy whose goal is to lay blame on people as much or more than to.

"can you just stop being like this, it's really frustrating" is always a bad way to bridge a gap between people.

>My axis is not always necessary in most cases, if these suggestions can work: it will be up to those who think they are not in a glass house to call for someone guilty enough to kill themselves, because they will then be faced with the mirror and under scrutiny.

I suppose I can summarise much of my view here by saying that that part of not being in a glass house is being careful not to alienate those one means to convince. If I indulge hatred of meat eaters on wednesday, then I'm as much in a glass house to preach vegetarianism as if I eat a rib eye stake.

(n.b., I view this as a fact contingent on the division and mutual suspicious the modern political realm, I'm not saying it's fair.)

>So an example counter from the 'right wing' side is: "So, you want free stuff? What about the taxpayers? They'll be overworked and want to kill themselves, then no one will have anything." It's not top-down positioning by a leader, but fluid and dynamic bottom-up positioning of their mirror (which each individual has power over their own), that keeps the game going.

So it's when someone highlights the consequences/costs of something that they think others aren't thinking about? ..Something like that?

>The "nudging" will be escalated to extremes in some cases, but it should always be put into context and traced back to a simpler self-reflection, like the one in the Insect Armageddon article. And, the extremists will again, be faced with the mirror. People will be telling these hostile extremists, "Who hurt you? If you are so nihilistic/misanthropic/self-loathing, why don't you kill yourself?" (I hope you see the irony here). And again, my goal is to raise the question, "what kind of society would not encourage both sides to kill themselves?", whose emergent experimentation will more likely happen as the pressure and potential despair compresses from the future and decompresses in the present.

I'm not sure I'm following you, but I do think a society with more sincere moral arguments would be good one. There are definitely cheating/false/dishonest ways to win arguments, but it is easier to support a correct or moral position than a false or immaterial one. The problem is, political factions are so entrenched, and the media is so incentivised (controversy and conflict sell) to present the worst ones rather than the best, that it's hard to see how it can happen on a consensus/national level rather than a local one. Did you say something about ground up being the way to go earlier? If so I agree with that.


>"Deep down" is one way to phrase it, but I prefer the phrase "seeing eye to eye", since what one person knows "deep down" could be countered by another person's ideology known "deep down".

I don't mean in the sense of an emotional conviction ('I just feel that..'), but in the sense of knowledge buried beneath denial. But in any case people seeing eye to eye is important.

>Points valid. I don't have anything new to add other than I hope you now better see that the external reflection escalates and is necessary only when self-reflection fails, and the violence (collective action) is principled from reflections of the originating force, because people are pursuing the equilibrium.

I'm not sure if I do:

"external reflection" = other people's responses, informing-admonishing-warning-punishing-destroying spectrum?

"collective action principled from reflections of the originating force" = response is proportional and only slowly escalatory?

because people are pursuing the equilibrium = because people want order/justice/a good society where they can drive in peace?

>All levels, including the bottom-most life/death axis, should lead to at least consideration of the other, hopefully bouncing back up to compassion/wisdom as the religious and spiritual leaders of old have preached.

I agree "life/death axis" has its place in a proper social order.

>I hope my traffic analogy better illustrates this scaling.

at this point I'm not sure where I picked up which illustration. You can ask me as question if you want to check if I understand, or maybe the above doublechecks will dis/confirm whether I follow or not.

>Sorry, I did make more than a few leaps. Another aspect to consider is that the main thing that separates us from the animals is self-consciousness/self-awareness, but for the purposes of this argument, I've been calling it self-reflection. This is my model of the human condition: evolutionary instincts + self-reflection.

The mirror ~= self reflection? Or using a resemblance to try to get people to self reflect?

>The predator is expressive of our society/culture/morals/value systems/institutions/"operating system"/traditions/et cetera. However, these are inert taken by themselves and need people to bring it to life, so by extension, those who give it life by consuming and producing within the paradigm are like mitochondrial "power-houses" for the predator, which is basically almost everyone alive today, including me.

so like, humanity is the apex predator destroying the planet, and the gears of this engine should be harnessed to restrain it

>I think what you're predicting is what I call taming the beast. If the value systems are put on the life/death axis and the scales are shown to be way out of whack, then indeed something's got to give, and as long as the balance and mirror still exist, then the predator has to give. The predator is the sum of the value systems plus the persons supporting/embodying it, but of course, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by the balance or the mirror, but if I guess, I don't think they exist strongly in modern society. What makes you sure that if it comes to this 'the predator' is the thing that will give?

And even if you have comprehensive reasons, isn't that an awfully reckless-looking (hence politically impalatable) risk to propose?

>I did not know that there was a term for this and indeed it looks relevant! I'll have to read up on it more.

>So, aggressors like to employ the strategy of "min-max" (to borrow a term from RPGs). They might not necessarily be humane, but they do care about their PR and their image (see Donald Trump as an example - I've read he doesn't really believe what he says and tests his words for a positive reaction), and can be assumed to act selfishly. I'm going to take a company as an example:

I think modelling 'aggressors' as rational actors is totally wrong. Criminality/predation is a brand (or aesthetic, god, or path) which people give themselves to, not something people rationally decide or which doesn't change them. A selfish driver will be considerate to the other cars so they can be considerate in return (and so they can have positive self narrative too). An asshole driver has a seperate drive which pushes them to what they do. This is 100x more true as you move toward more extreme and more deliberate betrayals of the common good.

>To increase our PR, what should we do?
>To minimize that chance of people encouraging us to kill ourselves, what should we do?
>To minimize that chance of collective action against us now, what should we do?
>What is the minimum that we can do so that the punishment can be avoided, that is, the punishment that (the least fortunate) people won't be encouraged to kill themselves in the future?
>To maximize that chance of a minimal punishment, what minimal thing should we do?

Then how did the banking crisis happen? That was in no one's selfish interest, even those who made the most money, because they were already rich and exposing themselves to needless risk.


>A more ethical company won't be so cold and calculating as this so won't need the life/death axis, but they are frequently outcompeted by those who don't care about the life/death axis. Now, even the most selfish company will want to be in business and have good PR, and the life/death axis will help align their amoral and selfish incentives with everything else, hopefully to a more ethical one where they also don't need an external life/death axis to keep them in check and that they can check themselves (moving away from a culture of "compliance is a regrettable cost" (or however the saying goes)).

I agree consequences, including extreme ones, can be a good way to align incentives, and in fact the exception about people rebelling against deliberate impositions doesn't apply so much to corporate bodies, because they don't have the same psychology as humans, but I think this is a very rosy view of corporate and company nature. If companies were so rational and competent, well, why are they so *in*competent? Sorry, that's a dumb way to put that, but i totally disagree that companies tend to rationally maximise their self interest in accordance with the logic of game theory.

>Things like the mirror and the proverbial see-saw/scales of justice and biological predators and road traffic are already in popular culture, folklore, and vernacular, and I thought these were common enough that adding my own interpretation didn't mean plagiarism from the commons. Terms like "slow AI" or "operating system" as applied here are new though, and I do try to quote these.

I cannot recognise "the predator" or "the mirror" in popular folklore at all, and they are very different from the mere idea of "biological predators" or mirros, but in any case I am not talking about that but things like the start of this post https://www.reddit.com/r/TMBR/comments/9v0p3p/the_right_to_die_will_bootstrap_our_humanity_for/e9lg3eu/ where you simply are using someone else's words without quotation marks, which if it's not obvious I don't believe is plagiarism but simply disconcerting when you suddenly shift into a different voice.

>I do agree this is viable, but to get people up here needs people to reflect on the future consequences of today's actions.

I don't agree that this is the bottleneck. If right wingers thought climate change was destroying the planet, they would have a very different attitude. There is a disagreement on the facts, in particular the fact of how trustworthy climate scientists are.

>Current societal structure needs time and energy, so we 'elect' representatives to do it for us, but the political will is lacking to keep them accountable, while all the while, I'm not protesting enough because I need to contribute to being part of the problem to secure my place.

I'm very sorry that you find yourself in that situation. I don't believe in protesting, but everyone should be free to follow their conscience.

>I probably missed something and didn't answer things to your satisfaction, but thanks for your counter-points nevertheless. Now, how can I tl;dr THIS huge reply?

Not every thread can be chased to its end in a discussion of this length, but as it happens I don't think I have any cause for complaint on that score. I might not agree (or sometimes) some of your answers, but I don't feel like there was anything left unaddressed.