for me it feels like i have to go back and relearn all the things i had learned before. the second time around you learn some new piece of the puzzle. rinse and repeat and experience is what drives your knowledge. so you might be asking a better question; how to avoid all the bullshit?
well my dear girl, you can't. when you're in a shit slinging war [which is what we're having] you can dodge and weave all the shit you want, but eventually you're going to get hit with some shit. and you'll probably throw some shit...
might be getting to the point that we're all covered in shit. at which time we might ask ourselves... do we really need a shit war? some people will just be happy with all the shit flinging. others will try to escape it. eventually, some will find cover from the shit storm. it will be a haven. much like hacker news. others will want to join the sweet cover and protection from the shit storm. a tipi to a fortress. a tribe to a village. eventually we will have to isolate the shit throwers from the non shit throwers. that will be a place that deals with problems like intellectual property and competition based policies.
until then... just gonna have to learn as much as you can. look for the path of least resistance. sometimes it will just be easier to go along with the bullshit, and you should go along with that. recognizing that and learning how to identify it is how you deal with it. don't take the red pill. don't take the blue pill. take the purple pill... prince is waiting
one last thing to remember: the meek shall inherit the earth, but not her mineral rights.
1. Terrance Malik did a pretty good job of capturing the boolean of this article in knight of cups. the rich, despite this study, still have the same existential crises as us plebs. also, there's something inherent about trying to find purpose in life that even escapes the niceties of privilege.
2. those 'niceties' are currently being accounted for through policies made over 25 years ago [0]. they have been, essentially, mistaken as our prime purpose for life. when in reality, it's more that they are a sort of short cut for being 'allowed' to pursue what you perceive as your purpose [one day, collectively, we will realize that we can only provide this to x number of people for y quality of access to that pursuit]. essentially what i'm saying is that the policies were created to allow the entire system to inflate and eventually crash, while letting the rich create a nice puffy cushion for themselves to land on when it does crash. rather than say, the same thing happening but without the cushion.
this is rather just typical human behaviour at scale. ray dalio has been talking about it. we're reaching the end of a 300 year cycle. no one alive has experienced it before, but it happens regularly in human history. i think it is a natural phenomenon. inheritance is more to blame than any other element. we die and our bodies go to the same place, but our capital does not. we do know that capital allows us more opportunity to pursue more 'life', and i imagine that even people who only get that chance through inheritance sometimes believe they worked for it/deserve it whatever... but we shouldn't mistake the idea that wealth is the end game. it is, in many senses, just the beginning. but it is not the only. an example of this would be having kids. or finding love etc. wealth is just tylenol. temporary alleviation of symptoms. sometimes it allows us to do more art, or have more kids, or find more lovers, but its no guarantee. what we're all seeking is a common understanding that money is a tool; for each of us to pursue life as we see it. not the perverted way we've used it [and we live in a democracy so must take responsibility for its misuse]. the attitude in this article, to me, is less about wealth, and more about ego. it's egotistical people who can't understand the poor. and we get seduced by their confidence. ayn rand is a good example of this. the preacher who ended up on welfare.
when the bandaid comes off, just remember that it's not your fault, it's not society's fault, but it's our fault. fix the bugs, account for fault tolerance, and act accordingly. all that said, burning down the buildings, destroying the statues, raiding the halls of congress, is not the answer. but tampering the egos just may be. i think the only way we can do that is to not allow power or wealth to concentrate. that's the lesson to be learned. to an extent we must let it, but that's the thing. finding that sweet spot. understanding that is how the rich can understand the poor, how we can understand each other, and how we will eventually understand the greatness of that sweet spot.
it's definitely about balance, i don't think it should be as hard as it seems though. what does seem difficult [and is extremely sad in my view] is that Occam's razor type edge, acting like a filter between achieving that balance or not. you said this, i agree.
the sad part is something like this thread; where half [majority? like before Reddit hit critical mass] the people can/do understand what the difference is between, say, trolling and a dialectic or stoic whatchamacallit, and those that don't/can't.
as i think this thread seems to generally agree, those that can't then resort to this rhetoric you're talking about. you can see the same echoes in things like socialism and fascism. general bigotry. the backhand of misunderstanding.
where it really gets messy is when you have University graduates who can't understand these 'tropes'/dynamics/straight up logic getting opportunities ahead of an uneducated person that CAN understand those things, simply because they have that degree. it comes from the same place where racism and sexism are valid. where it's invalid you get this blame game. it's the hammer and the nail. those who can, do. those who can't, say... the Germans must have a word for this? man i wish i was more articulate cause i think we've all [as in hacker news minded type people?] got the words for this on the tips of our tongues. so much so that even out most basic know it's coming [the civil war chatter].
money is power. or, capital is power. social capital seems to be our driving force these days. money is cheap, followers are harder to come by [en masse].
socialism becomes this monolithic vacuum which eventually devours it's participants. mostly for the reasons you're pointing out; prestige, or the pursuit of power.
as you point out, even a high level of financial and social capital is not enough. we've created a vacuum of unrealistic perception.
i think this is where media comes into play... the opiate for the masses. your 15 minutes of prestige is not even near good enough to compete with the monolithic personas we've allowed to vacuum up all the power. gates, jobs, Trump, rockefellers, even the house of windsor [how do you even complete with the outside of a monarchy?].
power corrupts. absolute power corrupts absolutely. chasing prestige is very quickly becoming a pipe dream. a race to the bottom if you will. eventually, the only way to gain prestige will be to topple these monoliths. else we wait/fight/plot/etc for the next monolith.
... which will be a space miner ceo, ai breakthrough ceo, fusion power ceo, or quantum programmer ceo.
the internet has gone critical mass, and when that happens, things go to shit. think pop music.
also, the media and other corporations are to blame. information is basically free. so how do you make your information valuable? you flood the sources with shitty information. ex; Ramit Sethi: "i give 98% of my content away for free and i charge a lot for that 2%" [not picking on him, it's just the business model adopted by the internet.]
also, go check out the super cuts of media outlets. compilations of the exact, basically word for word, reporting coming out of these places. talk about gigantically redundant production budgets...
social media is definitely a bore. since when did we ever want to hear the inner thoughts of billions of people? can't help but feel sorry for Professor Xavier.
the gems though... DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT HACKER NEWS!
tldr: education
for me it feels like i have to go back and relearn all the things i had learned before. the second time around you learn some new piece of the puzzle. rinse and repeat and experience is what drives your knowledge. so you might be asking a better question; how to avoid all the bullshit? well my dear girl, you can't. when you're in a shit slinging war [which is what we're having] you can dodge and weave all the shit you want, but eventually you're going to get hit with some shit. and you'll probably throw some shit...
might be getting to the point that we're all covered in shit. at which time we might ask ourselves... do we really need a shit war? some people will just be happy with all the shit flinging. others will try to escape it. eventually, some will find cover from the shit storm. it will be a haven. much like hacker news. others will want to join the sweet cover and protection from the shit storm. a tipi to a fortress. a tribe to a village. eventually we will have to isolate the shit throwers from the non shit throwers. that will be a place that deals with problems like intellectual property and competition based policies.
until then... just gonna have to learn as much as you can. look for the path of least resistance. sometimes it will just be easier to go along with the bullshit, and you should go along with that. recognizing that and learning how to identify it is how you deal with it. don't take the red pill. don't take the blue pill. take the purple pill... prince is waiting
one last thing to remember: the meek shall inherit the earth, but not her mineral rights.