Er, I’m not sure why I would need a stronger statement, since the essay is describing civilization, which includes very coercive systems.
(There’s an interesting sort of rhyme here with, like. It seems to me that your first comment implies a goal of entertainingness, when the essay was not written to be entertaining (so much as informative/hopefully enlightening; entertainment helps to achieve that but isn’t the primary thing to optimize for). And similarly, these later comments seem to imply a goal of describing how to achieve a good civilization, when the essay is simply trying to describe what civilization is, in practice (with the idea being that once you know what it’s made of, perhaps you’ll be more able to make it good). Your comments seem to me to want to dock points for missing targets that aren’t being aimed for in the first place.)
Yeah. To me your post first read like it was making a historical claim—about gradual voluntary self-disarmament. But maybe I misread and you only intended to make the smaller point about “getting epsilon more from participation”, in that case yeah, my criticism is off target and sorry.
It inspired me to add a line near the end, which I think should’ve been there in the original (so thank you):
There were two full chapters on slavery and conscription and indentured servitude, castes and patriarchy and institutional bigotry—all the various ways in which societies incorporate people into their machinery without respecting their dealbreakers, keeping them captive in roles they would not freely choose.
Er, I’m not sure why I would need a stronger statement, since the essay is describing civilization, which includes very coercive systems.
(There’s an interesting sort of rhyme here with, like. It seems to me that your first comment implies a goal of entertainingness, when the essay was not written to be entertaining (so much as informative/hopefully enlightening; entertainment helps to achieve that but isn’t the primary thing to optimize for). And similarly, these later comments seem to imply a goal of describing how to achieve a good civilization, when the essay is simply trying to describe what civilization is, in practice (with the idea being that once you know what it’s made of, perhaps you’ll be more able to make it good). Your comments seem to me to want to dock points for missing targets that aren’t being aimed for in the first place.)
Yeah. To me your post first read like it was making a historical claim—about gradual voluntary self-disarmament. But maybe I misread and you only intended to make the smaller point about “getting epsilon more from participation”, in that case yeah, my criticism is off target and sorry.
It inspired me to add a line near the end, which I think should’ve been there in the original (so thank you):