The unhelpful comment: unwanted environmental effects have been going on for a long time, starting (possibly) with the Sahara Desert. People generally don't effectively combat problems unless they affect them personally in a scary way.
Examples: we combatted the 'hole in the ozone' problem, but probably only because skin cancer is scary. We sort of made hunting whales illegal, but some countries still do it. Despite efforts to protect western black rhinos starting in the 1930's, they still went extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_black_rhinoceros#Popul...
In economics, you can examine the information people to use to make decisions: signalling. A classic example is a species of antelope that leaps into the air to (possibly) signal its health to predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting
An important problem in human societies, which become complex enough to examine 'memes' as elements of culture (in the original, Dawkins sense, not just the 'familiar pictures with text' sense), is that people learn 'signals' without verifying their accuracy.
Making business more honest is about getting society to use more accurate signals, which comes from, basically, work, but also awareness of the necessity of doing that work.
Defining where, exactly, the boundary between honest and dishonest is can be difficult. Is it dishonest to sell a pair of shoes that costs $2 to make for $200?
The way that more accurate signalling can fix this is that people would not assume that the $200 pair of shoes is better. Or they would not assume that someone who owns the $200 pair of shoes has some beneficial quality that they would currently associate with it.
Will not get into how to improve signal accuracy, as there's no chance my explanation would lead to the solution being used.
"Most economists are not paid for knowing about the economy. They are paid for telling stories that justify giving more money to rich people."
Or another, more famous quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Is that the case for economists? I can't say for sure. If people don't care whether economists actually try to fix problems, though, then it's more likely that they will not. That's what this question (not precisely a poll, but meant to be) was for.
>If your solution is protectionism or luxury tax or devaluation or similar
It's a way of getting people to work less. Relevant details about why it works 'mechanically' (as opposed to psychologically) include that rich people spend a lower percentage of their income than poor people; rich people tend to buy higher-profit or expensive items, meaning their spending goes to other rich people; limited possibilities for targeted pricing when income inequality is high mean that e.g. there are many homeless people at the same time as many homes are unoccupied; and possibly other things I'm forgetting.
Just like superstring theory offers many possible solutions to any theoretical question?
If you think whether certain people knew of the linked idea is relevant or important, then you should focus on the most likely answer, not enumerate all possible ones.
>If you turn it on, you'll see all the stories and comments that have been killed by software, moderators, or user flags.
Responding to you,
>The problem is that it didn’t make sense to most of the people on here.
>For example, if you’re not familiar with impedance matching, that previous analogy would be a mistake on my part.
I can think of vague things about reflection of signals and gold-plated electrical connectors.
That particular argument deliberately gave only the barest minimum of explanation. To quote it,
The reason this works is that some people want to work more than 24 hours per week, so people would not be able to agree on how much a normal person should work.
Most people would not understand how this lack of agreement would be beneficial. In short, it was an argument where people could say that if they shared it, this action was implying that they were smart. An argument that includes many pages of explanation does not imply that someone who shared it was smart, only that they don't give up easily.
It's the style, especially in social media, to share something that implies you understand something complex. Just look at 'memes' or even 'hashtags'.
Like when the engineer and statistician W. Edwards Deming suggested improvements in manufacturing, but US manufacturers ignored him.
>Why were Deming's views on quality control initially ignored in the United States?
>Following World War II, Deming was largely ignored in the productivity-crazed United States. ... The message Deming made to the United States was that productivity without quality was a dead end. He attempted to teach engineers his philosophy, but the companies they worked for were focused on other things.
>in which a nation improving its economic conditions makes its medium run economic output worse
It doesn't say that economic output would decrease, only that luxury goods sales would decrease. I will take this misunderstanding into future consideration. It is also a misunderstanding to assume that "the other countries all copy it better": the implication is that when the first country uses the system, it buys fewer luxury goods from other countries as well. However, people would be more divided on the benefit of a country BUYING fewer luxury goods. If people want expensive German cars and they can afford them, let them, right? But everyone in Germany presumably wants Germany to SELL more luxury cars.
Also, in regards to whether an unused system could be beneficial, it's worth pointing out that the overtime system was basically invented in the 1930's, during the Great Depression. Companies suggested it as an alternative to further mandated decreases in working hours.
2) Find a way to accept bad design, so it doesn't affect your emotions.
The real solution is to fix the world so it has less bad design. This is about both making people act more intelligently in the present, and ensuring that at the very least, people do not become stupider in the far future (and, hopefully, become at least a little smarter).
This solution involves significant changes to the entire world.
I don't even know if Hacker News provides a way to see people who reply to you or the chances of this conversation continuing. I'm a little confused. I can see two main claims in the argument:
1) If people did a certain thing, it would fix most problems.
2) Certain people knew of this solution but did not share it.
Which of these is the "very big claim"?
I may also be misinterpreting this:
>clear causal connection
Are you saying that if there was evidence that the listed individuals did know of it, that you would share it?
If one of them that's still alive told everyone about that idea, then you would see it as a reason to use that idea?
As for the "doing this would fix most problems", how much explanation would convince you to fix it? If it was (arbitrary units) 3 pages of text, that all made sense, would you share it? What if it was 15 pages of text, that you found to be consistent and logical after reading through it? Would you share it, and expect other people to share it?
It's unlikely you read the first line of that document and no further.
As for whether they knew of it, it's impossible to prove without asking them, or maybe talking to their attorneys. There is only circumstantial evidence, some of it having to do with timing of events that there is no point in getting in to, since I know it won't make you share that idea. But consider these questions, which you probably have not asked or did not learn enough about those events to ask:
Why did Adam Lanza completely destroy his hard drive? He had a printed poster that had his "body counts and weapons used by mass shooting perpetrators" stuff, so it wasn't to hide that. I think he also had or used another computer, that he didn't bother to destroy. What would someone who expected to kill a bunch of children want to hide? And why did he kill himself despite having plenty of ammunition left?
Think of what you know of James Holmes. He shot up a movie theater, right? Why didn't he shoot some people he encountered as he was walking out (he answered this to a psychologist: it would be kind of personal to shoot someone you could see). How do any theories about why he shot up the theater fit with him rigging his apartment with various explosive and inflammatory substances, set to go off if someone opened the door in response to loud music, but not set to go off from a timer despite he reportedly even had a remote-control trigger as well and obviously was competent enough to be able to set a timer-based initiation?
At the start of the trial for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, his most famous lawyer, a female, said that, not exact quote, "We know he did it. So why the trial? Because we want to know why." Did we learn why? If so, what was the reason? Does Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Twitter account provide any reasons why?
If you think that people use drugs like fentanyl because they are unhappy, rather than because they are not working, then this would fix it: https://pastebin.com/4ukwRxDG
