Oh sorry. I didn’t mean that “what’s going so wrong in society” is a single piece that can be understood given those two ingredients but is otherwise destined to remain confusing. I meant that what one finds on Less Wrong explains part of what’s going so wrong, and Austrian economics (if properly distilled) elucidates the other.
I should clarify though that Less Wrong certainly provides the bigger picture understanding of the situation, with the whole outdated hardware analysis etc., and thus it would be less like two symmetrical pieces being fit together, and more like a certain distilled form of Austrian economics being slotted into a missing section in the Less Wrong worldview.
I also didn’t mean to suggest that adding some insight from Less Wrong to some insight from the Austrian school would suddenly reveal the solution to civilization’s problems. Rather, what I’m suggesting would just be another step in the process to understanding the issues we face—perhaps even a very large step—and thus would simply put us in a better position to figure out what to do to make it significantly more likely that the future will go well.
Not two magic insights, but two very large collections of knowledge and information that would be very useful to synthesize and add together. Less Wrong has a lot of insights about outdated hardware, cognitive biases, how our minds work and where they’re likely to go systematically wrong, certain existential risks, AI, etc., and Austrian economics elucidates something much more controversial: the joke that is the current economic, political, and perhaps even social organization of every single nation on Earth.
As people from Less Wrong, what else should we expect but complete disaster? The current societal structure is the result of tribal political instincts gone awry in this new, evolutionarily discordant situation of having massive tribes of millions of people. Our hardware and factory presets were optimized for hunter-gatherer situations of at most a couple hundred people (?), but now the groups exceed millions. It would be an absolute miracle if societal organization at this point in history were not completely insane. Austrian economics details the insanity at length.
Oh sorry. I didn’t mean that “what’s going so wrong in society” is a single piece that can be understood given those two ingredients but is otherwise destined to remain confusing. I meant that what one finds on Less Wrong explains part of what’s going so wrong, and Austrian economics (if properly distilled) elucidates the other.
I should clarify though that Less Wrong certainly provides the bigger picture understanding of the situation, with the whole outdated hardware analysis etc., and thus it would be less like two symmetrical pieces being fit together, and more like a certain distilled form of Austrian economics being slotted into a missing section in the Less Wrong worldview.
I also didn’t mean to suggest that adding some insight from Less Wrong to some insight from the Austrian school would suddenly reveal the solution to civilization’s problems. Rather, what I’m suggesting would just be another step in the process to understanding the issues we face—perhaps even a very large step—and thus would simply put us in a better position to figure out what to do to make it significantly more likely that the future will go well.
Not two magic insights, but two very large collections of knowledge and information that would be very useful to synthesize and add together. Less Wrong has a lot of insights about outdated hardware, cognitive biases, how our minds work and where they’re likely to go systematically wrong, certain existential risks, AI, etc., and Austrian economics elucidates something much more controversial: the joke that is the current economic, political, and perhaps even social organization of every single nation on Earth.
As people from Less Wrong, what else should we expect but complete disaster? The current societal structure is the result of tribal political instincts gone awry in this new, evolutionarily discordant situation of having massive tribes of millions of people. Our hardware and factory presets were optimized for hunter-gatherer situations of at most a couple hundred people (?), but now the groups exceed millions. It would be an absolute miracle if societal organization at this point in history were not completely insane. Austrian economics details the insanity at length.