

Ask HN: How to unfuck the world? - rblion

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s farfetched to say that the social, economic, and ecologic problems of our time are threatening civilization&#x27;s foundations.<p>Some questions on my mind: What can we do as hackers to help fix these systems? Or what are you already doing to fix them? Can they be fixed at this point? Am I asking the wrong questions?<p>I just want to know of the possibilities, maybe I&#x27;ve missed out something big that the media hasn&#x27;t covered. I want to have a complete perspective. I&#x27;m an optimist by default but the world has me feeling pretty uneasy lately.
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karmicthreat
My simplistic answer is that software needs to do to political problems what
it did to economic and social problems, remove middle men. A more direct
democracy would help distribute power and help diffuse the cash going into
politics. For a first step having a binding instant referendum system might
work. With an eventual eye to replacing the US House.

People will say that the ordinary person is to stupid or selfish for this to
work. They may be right but I think we need to work through this problem at
the same time. Pulling people up rather than separating them from the system
is a far more enlightened way to improve society.

~~~
dllthomas
I'm not sure this really _does_ diffuse the cash that much. You still pay for
eyeballs to convince people to vote the way you want them to.

~~~
karmicthreat
True but I see it as having eliminated actual corruption. I think it would be
much harder to swing things against the interest of people on a continuous
basis. Fool some of the people some of the time... etc. I think paying for
advertising eyeballs is fine in any case. If someone is dumping 100's of
millions on issue voting then you should probably be paying attention to the
issue. Whether for or against.

~~~
dllthomas
Quite possible, and it also reduces the odd intersection of massive money with
coalition politics. People wanting issue X will be promoting issue X, not
issues Y and Z which happen to be pushed by the same party.

------
chipsy
My main caution about how you framed the challenge is with the constraint of
familiarity(hackers fix systems), which can take us nowhere in a hurry. Often,
it's pushing a philosophical angle that can drive technical work into the
supporting role of a big, positive change.

Here is a relevant selection of general wisdom quotes I've collected/made for
myself and keep in a notes file:

    
    
      Competition is the source of complexity in society; cooperation, in individuals.
      Sources of power exist by consent; anarchic elements are checks on system stability.
      Cycles exist everywhere and are bigger than we can observe.
      When you understand yourself better, you're also better to other people.
      Creative works should be based on selfishness and tempered by principle.
    

Putting some of those things into practice, I see myself existing in a period
that is increasingly communitarian, in backlash against the individualism of
previous years; but where the role of the community is also far more
distributed and ephemeral than in the past, with the consequence being that
our relationships are individually complex, rather than being centered around
formal institutions that antagonize each other. It's not that the complexity
will go away, it just moves around and catalyzes societal changes.

As such, I also believe that progressing further towards the communitarian
mode will unravel other problems currently faced by Western society.
Redistributing the burden of our systems enables us to change our approach and
implement policies that wouldn't fly previously.

Of course, to put this thought into action leads me towards those last quotes:
You have to know, very deeply, that the thing you're going to create is
something you want to exist, and then inform it against the external concerns.
Doing that well means that you can't lie to yourself.

~~~
rblion
I will reread this post many times as I stay on this path, especially the last
sentence. Thank you.

------
karanbhangui
Even just 30 years ago, if you were idealistic and wanted to change the world,
you went into politics. Today, I believe the best way to change the world is
through information technology. It has the ability to empower people to do the
"right thing" far more than any centralized authority ever did. I see it as
decentralized data-driven vs centralized ideology-driven decision making.

Take banking for example. The general public is up in arms with the industry
as their actions are the supposed causes of the global financial crisis. Most
of the rhetoric has been around two sides arguing for more or less government
regulation around banking as a fix. Well I've spent the past several years
deeply researching how the banking industry works, and let me tell you, it
doesn't matter which side is right. Regardless of the regulatory climate, most
banks are flying blind. They don't have the technology to see basic ratios
about their balance sheet in a reasonable timeframe, let alone the specific
risks of complex structured products. They have to manually calculate trivial
stuff like deposit decay models in unwieldy spreadsheets or use some very
kludgy narrow use-case tool built by a consultant while shuffling data out
from one system to another via spreadsheets. By the time any useful
information about the bank makes its way to the top for review/action by
management, the data is already several months stale and been summarized in a
powerpoint. No ability to iterate on hypothesis, no ability to do further
analysis.

Many banks still think in this old brick-and-mortar mentality. The number of
branches and ATMs aren't a competitive advantage anymore. Products they offer
have become commoditized, and regulations like Dodd-Frank have begun to
squeeze their main source of revenue, interest margin.

But there is hope. Banks today are fundamentally data companies. Most just
haven't realized it yet, or the ones that do, don't know how to effectively
build technology. The consulting, vendor, and in-house IT team models are
broken mostly due to ineffective tech management (compare to a top priority
project at Google or Facebook for example). Instead of building a company that
is yet another enterprise vendor trying to replace some 3 letter acronym
system, I think there's an opportunity to work with forward thinking banks who
are ambitious but are limited by their infrastructure. Pairing expertise from
within the industry with top technology talent typical in consumer tech, to
rebuild their entire technology stack from bottom to top. Better technology
can enable faster decision making, more precise measurement of risk and risk
hedging, ability to underwrite and manage very custom loans and other products
for customers, and allow smaller banks to compete with the big few.

I believe this is the case with every single industry, not just banking.
Construction, manufacturing, logistics, hospitals, pharmaceuticals,
agriculture, etc. I believe once these major industries that form the backbone
of our society are running 100x more efficiently, with proper competition from
the small guys, we will have a lot of improvement in society and it will begin
to "unfuck" itself via market forces. Or at least, we'll free up a lot of
resources to be able to focus on it.

~~~
rblion
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing all that information.

I'm going to do some more thorough research, all I know about banking right
now comes from Netflix documentaries. :)

------
a3n
Come join Humanity and change the way we do Civilization. :)

Well, kind of a joke in response to a heartfelt question, but not really.

If you're just a human, as opposed to some sort of world leader, the best
thing you can do is to be out in the world, pointing out that bad things are
bad and we shouldn't do them, and do good things. Don't give leaders and
people a pass when they do bad things, or promote bad things, or when they
don't speak out against bad things.

The most powerful thing we have is our voice, and propaganda works both ways.
In your daily life, be a propagandist for good, both to people around you and
to your leaders. Hold people accountable, but have a sense of scale. Be
forceful and angry when necessary with leaders, but gentle and helpful with
people around you. Don't be a dick. We're all leaders with those around us,
but that kind of leadership is best accomplished by example and encouragement,
not anger and force.

As for technology:

1\. Technology is just a tool, and most tools are good. If you're working in
technology, you're already helping civilization.

2\. Don't work on specifically bad things. It's good to be a network engineer.
It's bad to build or operate systems specifically meant to spy on people and
violate the Constitution, for example. [Are you listening, NSA spy?]

3\. If you want to be more pro-active with technology, then sure, help build
secure systems, don't build or use or promote insecure systems. Show people
when they're unnecessarily exposing themselves technologically (there's that
voice again). Help people use technology more safely.

4\. If your career and interests allow, get involved with the security
improvements to standards that are just now getting underway.

Technology is just a tool. It's good to use those tools in defense of liberty,
and to make it harder to violate liberty with them. But a more fundamental
problem is the people who are using technology and other tools to do bad.

We as people need to control our governments and institutions more actively.
We need to be the oversight that we want to see. It's the people that we allow
to govern us that's the problem, much more so than the tools they happen to
use. We've allowed them to wallow and profit from laziness and greed.

We can choose a better government. We did it here in the US in our revolution,
and we've more or less chosen to continue and grow it by peaceful means, not
counting the occasional civil war and other unrest. It's being hijacked now,
and it would be best to bring it back under control peacefully before it's
destroyed by another revolution or dissolved by apathy.

Use your voice.

~~~
rblion
:)

Thanks for the solid advice. I agree with you on having social tact but still
holding people accountable.

Technology is a neutral force depending on who is using and what for. I agree
that making useful things and getting them into people's hands is the best
career choice for my world outlook. Sci/tech has improved quality of life for
centuries and deepened our understanding of everything. The value of science
is incalculable.

Governments of today have so much power and money coupled with apathetic and
distracted populations. That's what it looks like to me at least. I totally
agree with you that we need to exercise our rights as free citizens to shape
the course of our home country.

------
rblion
Is there a reason why this isn't on front page of 'Ask'?

------
skidoo
Fight Capitalism tooth and nail.

~~~
rblion
What could replace capitalism? Serious question.

~~~
quadrangle
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy)

------
dreamdu5t
How about first deciding on a problem?

~~~
rblion
They are all interconnected and my gut tells me that our window of opportunity
to act is this decade, maybe a little longer if we're lucky. Our society has a
need for constant growth (economy) and that is destroying the planet
(ecology). You can't confront one without the other.

------
bowerbird
you have definitely asked the right question.

all my thoughts boil the answer down around three problem areas:

1\. violence -- the willingness to hurt (or even kill) other humans and
animals, up to and including poisoning the planet

2\. greed -- the desire for "more", no matter how much you have

3\. competitiveness -- the desire to have "more" than others, even when that
means you might have less than otherwise

these three are interconnected, of course, and i don't know if it would even
be possible to separate them into a single "root cause", nor would i think
that would be wise anyway, because they'll undoubtedly need to be treated as a
_whole._

as for how to do that, i do have some ideas, but i'm not sure that "some
ideas" will be enough. so my main suggestion is to
_increase_human_creativity_, because that's the only way that we will ever
solve the overall problem, in my humble opinion.

and yes, in many ways, our creativity is the thing that got us into this
pickle in the first place. but i just can't think of anything else with even
the faintest chance of getting us out.

i might add that time is running short.

most large mammals will be extinct in 10-20 years.

and you know that us humans are "a large mammal", right?

-bowerbird

~~~
rblion
Solid answer.

Most large mammals will be extinct in 10-20 years?! Enlighten me. I am aware
of cetaceans and big cats facing major problems, but mammals as a whole is
another thing altogether.

~~~
bowerbird
that's my prediction. 10-20 years.

so yes, i'm saying that almost everyone, including even "experts in the
field", has drastically underestimated both problem severity and shortness of
the time-frame.

and extinction is just part of the problem. because the extinction of apex
predators means that other species in the food-chain get overpopulated,
causing more problems, then undergoing crash/boom cycles, thereby upsetting
the delicate balanced ecosystem on which we depend so much.

(not that it was "delicate" before, it wasn't, but once we've thrown it so far
out of whack, it'll be very hard to achieve the delicate touch needed to
restore balance, especially as we'll lack time, desire, and frame of mind.
we'll just wildly swing, from one to the other extreme.)

and that's just out with the big-enough-to-see animals. dynamics in the virus-
world, with the now-acknowledged looming uselessness of antibiotics, will be
even worse. and that will impact human life much more squarely than an
extinction of the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

this crap will happen sooner than we believed, and will snowball much more
rapidly than we thought, plus there will be all kinds of ugly "surprises" in
store for us.

for instance, how long do you think the bees will last? and when they're gone,
what happens to our food supplies? how long will we remain civilized when food
grows short? and just how long do you think we can live with no food?

i was being conservative when i said "10-20 years", since people would think i
am nuts if i said "7-11 years", but \-- once the shit starts to hit the fan --
the time-frame will not be best measured by _decades_, but by _months_.

mark my words.

i hope i'm wrong. i really really really hope i'm wrong.

but that's my prediction.

-bowerbird

~~~
bowerbird
here's some chilling evidence: > [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-
review/the-year-the...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-
year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html)

we've only known about this migration spot since 1975, but even in that
evolutionarily-brief time, we saw as many as an estimated _billion_
butterflies yearly, every november.

but the number has been falling.

last year had the lowest total we've known -- 60 million.

this year? 3 million. even toward the end of the month.

it's almost impossible to pretend that's not significant.

the insects we cannot see so readily, or track so easily, are probably
suffering the same kinds of collapses, but we just don't know. we just plain
do not know. it's sad.

-bowerbird

