Finally got round to reading your sequence and it looks like we disagree a lot less than I thought, since your first three causes are exactly what I was arguing for in my reply,
This is probably the crux. I don’t think we tend to go to higher simulacra levels now, compared to decades ago. I think it’s always been quite prevalent, and has been roughly constant through history. While signalling explanations definitely tell us a lot about particular failings, they can’t explain the reason things are worse now in certain ways, compared to before. The difference isn’t because of the perennial problem of pervasive signalling. It has more to do with economic stagnation and not enough state capacity. These flaws mean useful action gets replaced by useless action, and allow more room for wasteful signalling.
As one point in favour of this model, I think it’s worth noting that the historical comparisons aren’t ever to us actually succeeding at dealing with pandemics in the past, but to things like “WWII-style” efforts—i.e. thinking that if we could just do x as well as we once did y then things would have been a lot better.
This implies that if you made an institution analogous to e.g. the weapons researchers of WW2 and the governments that funded them, or NASA in the 1960s, without copy-pasting 1940s/1960s society wholesale, the outcome would have been better. To me that suggests it’s institution design that’s the culprit, not this more ethereal value drift or increase in overall simulacra levels.
I think you’d agree with most of that, except that you see a much more significant causal role for the cultural factors like increased fragility and social atomisation. There is pretty solid evidence for both being real problems, Jon Haidt presents the best case to take these seriously, although it’s not as definitive as you make out (E.g. Suicide rates are basically a random walk), and your explanation for how they lead to institutional problems is reasonable, but I wonder if they are even needed as explanations when your first three causes are so strong and obvious,
Essentially I see your big list like this:
Main Drivers:
Cause 1: More Real Need For Large Organizations (includes decreasing low hanging fruit)
Cause 2: Laws and Regulations Favor Large Organizations
Cause 3: Less Disruption of Existing Organizations
Cause 5: Rent Seeking is More Widespread and Seen as Legitimate
Real but more minor:
Cause 4: Increased Demand for Illusion of Safety and Security
Cause 8: Atomization and the Delegitimization of Human Social Needs
Cause 7: Ignorance
Cause 9: Educational System
Cause 10: Vicious Cycle
No idea but should look into:
Cause 6: Big Data, Machine Learning and Internet Economics
Essentially my view is that if you directly addressed the main drivers with large legal or institutional changes the other causes of mazedom wouldn’t fight back.
I believe that the ‘obvious legible institutional risks first’ view is in line with what others who’ve written on this problem like Tyler Cowen or Sam Bowman think, but it’s a fairly minor disagreement since most of your proposed fixes are on the institutional side of things anyway.
Also, the preface is very important—these are some of the only trends that seem to be going the wrong way consistently in developed countries for a while now, and they’re exactly the forces you’d expect to be hardest to resist.
The world is better for people than it was back then. There are many things that have improved. This is not one of them.
Finally got round to reading your sequence and it looks like we disagree a lot less than I thought, since your first three causes are exactly what I was arguing for in my reply,
I think you’d agree with most of that, except that you see a much more significant causal role for the cultural factors like increased fragility and social atomisation. There is pretty solid evidence for both being real problems, Jon Haidt presents the best case to take these seriously, although it’s not as definitive as you make out (E.g. Suicide rates are basically a random walk), and your explanation for how they lead to institutional problems is reasonable, but I wonder if they are even needed as explanations when your first three causes are so strong and obvious,
Essentially I see your big list like this:
Main Drivers:
Cause 1: More Real Need For Large Organizations (includes decreasing low hanging fruit) Cause 2: Laws and Regulations Favor Large Organizations Cause 3: Less Disruption of Existing Organizations Cause 5: Rent Seeking is More Widespread and Seen as Legitimate
Real but more minor:
Cause 4: Increased Demand for Illusion of Safety and Security Cause 8: Atomization and the Delegitimization of Human Social Needs Cause 7: Ignorance Cause 9: Educational System Cause 10: Vicious Cycle
No idea but should look into:
Cause 6: Big Data, Machine Learning and Internet Economics
Essentially my view is that if you directly addressed the main drivers with large legal or institutional changes the other causes of mazedom wouldn’t fight back.
I believe that the ‘obvious legible institutional risks first’ view is in line with what others who’ve written on this problem like Tyler Cowen or Sam Bowman think, but it’s a fairly minor disagreement since most of your proposed fixes are on the institutional side of things anyway.
Also, the preface is very important—these are some of the only trends that seem to be going the wrong way consistently in developed countries for a while now, and they’re exactly the forces you’d expect to be hardest to resist.