Comments by "Brent Jacobs" (@br3nto) on "Big Think" channel.

2:40 that’s such an American way of thinking… “we either have voice or violence”. There’s actually a lot more option of you get rid of trying to partition everything into one of two buckets. I hope this talk gets better from here.
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Even just this idea that there is one truth… and those that don’t see it are wrong… is just crazy. There are multiple aspects to everything. Multiple ways of doing things. Multiple goals, some in full alignment, some completely unaligned, some unrelated, and every mix of those things.
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2:59 humans living longer doesn’t automatically mean retiring at 60 won’t work. We are many orders of magnitude more productive than we have been in the past. So in theory, we should all be able to retire much earlier and still have the same level of productivity as a society. But that’s not what’s happening. We work harder, work longer, and output more. To what end?? Are we just ants that should be forced to work for as long as we are capable? Is work all there is to life??? Maybe to a capitalist. I want to work as little as possible.
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0:58 “to think you are good enough to rule a country”. I guess that what happens when you have a system that is basically a representational monarchy.
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10:57 the only problem with using tech to brand generated stuff as fake, is that the same could be applied to real info too. It can only ever be a trust based system.
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@bryanhenry5560 ⁠ my comment was actually on the of dichotomy of voice vs violence. Another commenter, re-expressed what I said well by using the term, false dichotomy. It is a false dichotomy for many reasons. One of which because voice can be violent. You hit on a point that I think is relevant. Misunderstanding. It relates very much to what I said about people living in communication bubbles only watching the convo from one side via proxies. People in a bubble of course will misunderstand people outside their bubble (in other bubbles). There needs to be mechanisms to help people see their bubbles and to look outside and understand things outside their bubbles. There are more ways to achieve that than more communication, or with violence. Just helping people to intermingle will help. Another is giving people a different shared focus other than focus on the disagreements. Another is doing a things that will deescalate tense situations. These things come before communication. They are action/process. It’s a little more abstract and lower level than communication. A bit more primal maybe. Do you understand what I’m saying now?
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Geez I don’t want to be an unsuspecting pawn in some billionaire’s feud to which I have no stake. I’d rather be an unsuspecting pawn in a state’s feud who I at least had some token participation in based on where I live and financial stake based on my taxes and employment opportunities.
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@lupin7559 so he’s trying to improve things? Doesn’t sound unreasonable. Annoying as you describe it maybe, but not unreasonable.
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4:16 there’s an awesome sci-fi book called Blindsight, by Peter Watts, that tackles these two questions. It’s well worth the read for anyone that likes hard sci-fi
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4:54 I wonder if this is because of “fresh eyes” and “no ties”. Not being tied down to established learnings and not being tied to specific projects. The people who always seem to do the best are the ones that move around a lot.
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I’m pretty sure most “flat earthers” are just taking the piss. But jus in case… the simplest proof is to look at the skyline and notice that the clouds extend all the way down to the “ground” or that the sun or moon dip below the “ground”.
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@trendynow1369 dude… because of perspective, if the Earth was flat, there would always be an observable gap between the ground and the clouds.
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@trendynow1369 hmmm… I don’t think you do…
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@jace-j5d Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing (FSNP) strategies for starters.
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@jace-j5d it’s more foundational. You don’t need voice or even agreement per se to start working well with others. That’s just one example and maybe not entirely the best fit, or well developed enough to work at society scale. However, I feel society is segmenting into isolated thought bubbles. The solution isn’t more communication, because I feel that’s half the trouble… there are proxies doing the communication at the extremities of the thought bubbles, and most people don’t seem to actually partake in the conversation, they just passively view the conversation from their side of the bubble. So, what is needed is activities and processes that encourage people from the different societal bubbles to mingle and work together on something. You see it play out in kids movies all the time… two rival groups, need to start working together, there’s lots of drama, but shared effort leads to mutual respect, and everyone ends up happy and heard. I honestly think we don’t have a societal level framework to fix it right now… but I suspect, it’s a long those lines…. It’s not one solution, but many…. It’ll also require removing or diminishing the things that encourage the social segregation.
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@bryanhenry5560 read above you’re two comments
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@bryanhenry5560 it’s such a common thread in US discourse it’s really hard to ignore. I get the sense that the people speaking and listening don’t actually realise how pervasive it is. It’s like the only thought process… it has to be one or the other… and you’re either on the right side or wrong side. There’s nuance in everything.
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@ yes, exactly
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@ I’m a software engineer, so the best analogy I can come up with is…. Information flows through predefined architectures/processes. In this sense, it’s the architecture/process that needs to change, not the information.
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@ lol go figure! Yeah you’re probably right.
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6:00 I’d hope philosophers have advanced and moved much farther beyond ideas from 1640 years ago.
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Ummm… who are we working for? I don’t know about you, but I want to work as little as possible. And I think that’s probably true of everyone. But we also want nice things, so we have to work. I want choice in how I work and who I work for (if anyone), whilst acknowledging that work is never done in pure isolation; we rely on and benefit from each others output. So do we all need to work to 70? Probably not. But do most of need to work til 70 or later to boost the coffers of capitalists? Probably. Will capitalists pay most people less so they have no choice but to work til 70 or later? Probably. Is that necessary? Probably not.
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What’s he saying that he’s not aware of?
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Something seems off with this statistical explanation. E.g is an Olympian just lucky? Or did they do all the right things to get to the games??? The same statistics still applies to skill levels of all athletes vs all Olympians vs all gold medalists, but the route to get there was a lot of good choices rather than luck. You might argue that these people were in the right nurturing family and school, and had access to the right coach, etc, but it’s still good choices that lead them to success. A different person in that same situation could have made poor choices and never got successful, which creates a normal distribution of how luck might affect the outcome. I hope it’s obvious that I’m not saying that billionaires are geniuses.
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