Gyroscopic Investing

Attention is something few people give any thought to but which is vitally important.  Our whole society is designed to distract us and keep us distracted.  The more TV we watch, the more internet we consume, and the more caffeine/stimulants we  consume, the more distracted we are (and likely the worse our lives are).

There are antidotes: certain kinds of meditation, spending time in nature, and doing anything that doesn't involve words e.g. listening to music without words, etc.

There are also two kinds of attention:

1.  if someone screams at you "PAY ATTENTION, PAY ATTENTION".  in which you can increase your focus for short periods of time.  Certain kinds of drugs can also temporarily increase this.

2.  The more relaxed generally being aware.  David Allen (GTD) talks about a frog sitting on a rock in relaxed pose, waiting in awareness for e.g. a fly. 

Perhaps this is part of the reason for the disintegration of public community life and the withdrawal into our houses and private affairs: the public community has become overwhelming in its demands for our attention and money. In the private comfort of our own homes, it's quieter and more private, and we don't have to be paying attention to as many things. There, we do it to ourselves with TV, movies, the news, and the internet!

Who needs machine gambling when the whole internet is one large addiction machine?  Why be concerned about addiction to mobile gaming apps when every 10 year old boy has whatever electronic game station is this years fashion.

He has another agenda.

"And by the way, Vegas is no longer controlled by the mob. It’s gone corporate."
and I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

I think it's important to distinguish between moral and political versions of this kind of judgment. The two are frequently equated: if you are in favor of keeping gambling legal, then you must be okay with some number of poor people becoming gambling addicts. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While it may be true that legal gambling allows more opportunities for unscrupulous capitalists to prey on the weak, making it illegal exposes people to consequences that we view as even worse: having your life destroyed by the state in the name of protecting you from yourself.

The moral argument of temperance needs to be made toward the people themselves. Just because gambling might be legal, that doesn't mean you should destructively indulge in it to excess, same as with alcohol, or pornography, or MMA, or manicures, or all kinds of other legal vices. There is plenty of room for these kinds of moral messages without concluding that the only way to protect people from their own self-destructive tendencies is to remove all possible sources of temptation. In my mind, this produces morally stunted people who are dependent on the powers that be maintaining their temptation-free environment. They will revert to hedonism and self-destuction when the environment changes rather than possessing the moral fiber to resist temptation and act prudently.

TennPaGa wrote:

Benko wrote: Who needs machine gambling when the whole internet is one large addiction machine?  Why be concerned about addiction to mobile gaming apps when every 10 year old boy has whatever electronic game station is this years fashion.

My reading of the interview (I've not read the book yet) is that he would agree with this.  That is, he wasn't calling out gambling in particular, but just that it is symptomatic of the downside of the current xulture.

He has another agenda.

He certainly has a point of view, and he reveals some of it in the interview.

But "agenda"? What do you mean?

Also, what is it?  And how do you know?

I was wrong because a short passage (above) fitted with my bias of what I thought you'd be likely to post (leftist, anticorporate). 


There are what I would argue are some super valid points

"She stresses that to see the world clearly is a rare moral accomplishment, because it requires getting free of the self-absorbed fantasies that we routinely project out onto the world"
and

which is what is talked about in much of the spirituality I've read, but another topic from what interests you i suspect.

I feel like if this Matthew Crawford fellow and David Brin ever entered the same room, that both would be instantly destroyed, like matter and anti-matter. What a debate those two could have.

Just read the whole interview; fascinating. I sort of don't know what to do with the information, though. It's certainly food for thought, and I must admit does nothing to dissuade me from my developing belief in technocracy.

I read the whole profile of Marc Andreessen during the forum downtime as well as Rod Dreher's reaction to it in The American Conservative.

It's so hard for me to see the anything sinister, let alone evil, about Andreessen or this window into venture capital in general. It's not my world, and it does seem strange and abrasive and exhaustingly fast, but let's not lose sight of what's going on here: vast amounts of money are being dispensed--purely privately, with no taxes or coercion required--to fund people who want to build products and services that they think help people better than anything currently available does. Some of the ideas may be silly or unsustainable, but evil? I mean, he's rich, and powerful, and weird, and socially awkward, but who is he hurting? Andreessen explains his own vision:

"Posit a world in which all material needs are provided free, by robots and material synthesizers. . . . Imagine six, or 10, billion people doing nothing but arts and sciences, culture and exploring and learning. What a world that would be," particularly as "technological progress is precisely what makes a strong, rigorous social safety net affordable."

Does that really sound so evil? If Andreessen succeeds but his utopianism about human nature is wrong and a lot of those people wind up mostly smoking pot and playing video games and watching TV and masturbating to VR fantasies... well, how awful a world is that, really? What are the people who would do that doing today that's so different, except with more poverty attached and more make-work or grifting or crime necessary to support the lifestyle?

I really want to believe in the Shop Class as Soulcraft world, but it seems like we're beyond that point in our near-term history, and we can't go back. And in any event, doesn't it seem like Andreessen's paradise offers more opportunity for small craftspeople than ever before? Freed from the need to work to survive, anyone who wanted to devote themselves to craftsmanship could easily do so.

I think it's telling that conservatives are the ones most frightened by this world. Liberals and Libertarians are actually both pretty happy about this constant change and progress thing. Conservatives hate both, so that makes sense, but I think a deeper reason is because they don't want to acknowledge the concept of economically useless people. They have so much faith in this idea of the fundamental dignity of work that the implication of someone incapable of doing work that's useful to others is that there can be people who are cut off from a source of dignity. Liberals acknowledge this possibility. They'll deny it because it sounds so cold, but welfare is basically what Fred (On Everything) calls a custodial care system for people with nothing of value to offer. Libertarians acknowledge it too, but just call for welfare to be provided privately (charity). Andreessen the libertarian envisions a welfare system of his own: robots provide all the food, housing, medical care... it's basically private welfare instead of public welfare. But conservatives hate welfare. They find it dehumanizing and demoralizing. They want to believe that every one of those people could go out and get jobs and produce economic value. They want to believe that even the meekest among us has something that other people will be willing to buy. But I think they're wrong. Economic value creation is not equally distributed. However, personal value is not the same, and I think they overlook that in a world where the urgency for everyone to produce economic value is gone, there is more room than ever before for those with only personal value to shine.

TennPaGa wrote: I would guess that many here would disagree with Crawford.

I don't.  I grok what he is saying.  Benign paternalism in accordance with behavioral neurobiology is far better than a return to the monarchy.  But what is "machine gambling"?  The only problem with conservatives like this guy is they want to impose their value judgements upon others, under guise of saving people (how is that any different than a religion?).  But being born with free will is learning that you create your own reality, including your own addictions.  They must save themselves or die trying.  Why must we glorify absolutely everything all in the name of preserving/saving life, conditions be damned???  Give it a rest.

TennPaGa wrote: I agree that personal value is not the same as economic value, and it is a good distinction to make.  But what I think conservatives fear -- well, at least the ones I read, and also the conservative part of me -- is the inability of the culture at large to make this distinction.

FWIW, I share the opinion that welfare is dehumanizing and demoralizing, especially in the long term.  It seems this would be particularly so when it is provided by a faceless entity, like government, or an Andreesen-Horowitz robot. 

I suppose, at its core, sentiments like this are the exact problem.  Because, if the Andreesen future comes to pass, we're *all* going to be on "welfare".

Why is what the culture at large does your problem so long as the losses aren't socialized?

Maybe you need to view welfare as freedom-enhancing rather than "dehumanizing and demoralizing" which is mostly ideology (i.e. supportive facts are lacking).  Welfare frees you from having to always provide a "value" (real or bullshit) that others must find useful in order for you to earn money to live.  How is that nothing but slavery?  How is it any different than digging ditches only to fill them back up again?  How well did the other extreme of guaranteed jobs work under Communism?

I have more important things to do with my limited time than be enslaved to do make-work to provide nebulous "value".  If conservatives cannot understand that, then what a crying shame.  The world will simply move on without them.  So perhaps what they really fear is their own coming irrelevance.

Yeah, that's the thing. What if we're exiting the era of having to or even being able to provide for our own sustenance? As eventually the production of true innovation will become ever more specialized (space travel, quantum chemistry, AI software, etc) I would expect that more and more of the population--including people who today we consider very smart--will have difficulty producing this kind of hyper-specialized value. Instead, all of those people, possibly those like ourselves included, would have to basically fake it via make-work, which if I really think about it, is basically corporate-originated welfare. All those middle-managers and secretaries  could easily be automated out of existence, yet they haven't because destroying the middle class by making everyone not a standard deviation above average in the intelligence department would cripple society in its present state of political and economic development.

Not that any of that will happen soon. But it's hard to deny that it's the direction we're heading in.

MachineGhost wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: I would guess that many here would disagree with Crawford.

I don't.  I grok what he is saying.  Benign paternalism in accordance with behavioral neurobiology is far better than a return to the monarchy.  But what is "machine gambling"?  The only problem with conservatives like this guy is they want to impose their value judgements upon others, under guise of saving people (how is that any different than a religion?).  But being born with free will is learning that you create your own reality, including your own addictions.  They must save themselves or die trying.  Why must we glorify absolutely everything all in the name of preserving/saving life, conditions be damned???  Give it a rest.

Maybe this would include "machine gambling"?

(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1837 ... das-plague)
The Midas Plague
by Frederik Pohl, Barry N. Malzberg (Foreword)
3.64 of 5 stars
3.64  ·  rating details  ·  39 ratings  ·  4 reviews
Although the three part serial beginning in the June 1952 issue in collaboration with Cyril Kornbluth had established Frederik Pohl as a formidable contributor, this novelette in the April 1954 issue was his first solo contribution and marked him as an important addition to the growing roster of social satirists enlisted by Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine. The audacious and patchwork concept underlying this story (the richer you are the less you are forced to consume; the greatest poverty is involved with the aggregation of goods) was Horace Gold’s and according to Pohl he had offered it to almost all of his regular contributors, asking for a story centered on the idea. The idea lacks all credibility, everyone (including Pohl) told him and everyone refused to write something so patently unbelievable until, according to Pohl, Horace browbeat him into an attempt and Pohl decided that it was less trouble to deliver something than continue to resist. To his utter shock, the story was received by Gold and his readership with great glee, was among the most popular GALAXY ever published (or Pohl) and one of the most anthologized. Whether this demonstrated the audacity and scope of Gold’s unreason or whether it confirmed Gold’s genius (or both) Pohl was utterly unable to decide. The sculpted consumer-obsessed society was used again by Pohl a few years later in the novelette THE MAN WHO ATE THE WORLD which was far more credible (consumption-obsession as a kind of personal tyranny) and, perhaps for that very reason, much less successful, barely remembered. (less)

I guess I'm still a libertarian about "machine gambling".  It effects only a small minority of gamblers, just as other addictions do.  So I don't see why we should make it boring it for the 95% because the 5% have a predispensity.  Even though I don't gamble and I think gambling is stupid as fuck.  But yes I realize that is going in the wrong direction nowadays...  even at conflict with other values I hold (ex: animal rights).  Interesting.

Whatever version of capitalism we have nowadays, it definitely relies on manipulation and sometimes exploitation moreso than voluntary agreement.  Can you truly be said to have come to a meeting of the minds when a system is manipulating your mind (or environment) without you knowing or with you knowingly all just to get a fix?  It reminds me of the Fifteen Million Merits episode from Black Mirror.  That was absolutely horrifying on a number of different levels.  I won't spoil it, but it's well worth watching.

TennPaGa wrote:

MachineGhost wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: I agree that personal value is not the same as economic value, and it is a good distinction to make.  But what I think conservatives fear -- well, at least the ones I read, and also the conservative part of me -- is the inability of the culture at large to make this distinction.

FWIW, I share the opinion that welfare is dehumanizing and demoralizing, especially in the long term.  It seems this would be particularly so when it is provided by a faceless entity, like government, or an Andreesen-Horowitz robot. 

I suppose, at its core, sentiments like this are the exact problem.  Because, if the Andreesen future comes to pass, we're *all* going to be on "welfare".

Why is what the culture at large does your problem so long as the losses aren't socialized?

Because I (actually, all of us) have to live in it.  And if the culture equates value solely with economic value, especially in an age of abundance when "value" is simply squeezing out smaller and smaller fractions of inefficiency, I fear we could be headed to a dark place.

Just to be clear, I don't see any problem at all with monetary "debt" that comes from such distributions.  It's all in our heads anyway!

Maybe you need to view welfare as freedom-enhancing rather than "dehumanizing and demoralizing" which is mostly ideology (i.e. supportive facts are lacking). 

This is my point.  I agree that this is how it would need to be viewed by the culture at large.  I'm simply not very optimistic that this can happen.  That said, I'm totally on board the Citizen's Dividend bandwagon, because such a program has the potential to change attitudes.

Welfare frees you from having to always provide a "value" (real or bullshit) that others must find useful in order for you to earn money to live.  How is that nothing but slavery?  How is it any different than digging ditches only to fill them back up again? 

I have more important things to do with my limited time than be enslaved to do make-work to provide nebulous "value". 

+1

Yes, I should get everything I want without having to work for it! Luckily everything I want will be produced by someone else!
Repeat after me: Work is slavery! Work is slavery!
(Note:  )

Libertarian666 wrote: Yes, I should get everything I want without having to work for it! Luckily everything I want will be produced by someone else!
Repeat after me: Work is slavery! Work is slavery!
(Note:  )

Why should anyone work for subsistence like a toiling beast of labor when robots will do it?  Fuck the Puritan work ethnic.  It's another ideological trap.

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: Yes, I should get everything I want without having to work for it! Luckily everything I want will be produced by someone else!
Repeat after me: Work is slavery! Work is slavery!
(Note:  )

Why should anyone work for subsistence like a toiling beast of labor when robots will do it?  Fuck the Puritan work ethnic.  It's another ideological trap.

Absolutely. And fortunately no one has to build or maintain those robots, which by the way don't yet exist, and may never exist, right?

Let me know when you rejoin reality.