Trump's Cabinet

ashurbanipal · Jan 20, 2017

code1211 said:
I would argue that what has changed is the introduction of the most valuable thing to ever be introduced into societies and that is the use and exploitation of Fossil Fuels.

Yep--essentially, that's correct, though I would point out that people had reasonably good lives in the 17th century, before coal became a significant fuel source. However, fossil fuels definitely changed the picture.

code1211 said:
You seem to be arguing that because a person lives in a society that the society then is completely responsible for the creations of that individual. This is rubbish.

Not completely, but (roughly) 90% of them. I'm making the assumption that your Picasso argument is meant to show that my claim is rubbish--in which case, see below. If not, may I assume that an argument to support your assertion is forthcoming?

code1211 said:
Picasso painted Guernica and when asked by a Nazi if he created that work, Picasso famously replied that the Nazi asking the question had done so. Picasso watched the horrible carnage of man and beast and building and created the master piece. He would not have been inspired to do so without the bombings, but the bombings did not apply the paint to canvas nor did the bombings create the Cubist view of the world with a single view point moving through time and space. Picasso and other cubists did this.

Alright, this is an interesting example, because it's probably about the best one that can be made for your case. I will therefore respond in detail.

Recall that my claim is that, (1) when it comes to the accumulation of wealth, societies are largely responsible, and the contribution of individuals miniscule in comparison. By extension, I said also that (2) even great geniuses such as Einstein don't do as much under their own steam, so to speak, as is commonly thought. Those are my two claims, and I've put numbers in front of each one to try to be helpful.

So now, Picasso painted Guernica, Les Demoiselles, The Old Guitarist, and other famous paintings, and I certainly agree that the composition of each of his painting was entirely his own--he didn't steal anyone's work or anything. But now, he could not have made any of those paintings without a canvas, and brushes, and pigments, and so on, and these were all made and invented by other people. He certainly could not have painted without a studio, and a dwelling that took care of his need for shelter. He needed to rely on others to get his food, water, medicine, and other such. Had he been required to, say, capture or grow all his food, he might never have painted a single thing. It was only by being embedded within a society that Picasso could become a painter. And it is only through the products of society that his paintings can be considered any kind of wealth--it is unlikely that a subsistence society that is barely scraping by and whose members spend all their available time just surviving would have any interest in Picasso at all.

Now Picasso, and artists in general, are an unusual case in they do more to effect pure creation than do most other members of society. Bill Gates (to return to his example) created far less than Picasso ever did, and the wealth Gates accumulated is due even less to his own genius than is Picasso's.

I just don't see how any of these points can be denied, and they, combined with the Bill Gates example I gave in my earlier post, seem more than sufficient to establish the truth of claim 1.

ashurbanipal · Jan 20, 2017

Though I do not know a great deal about Picasso's life, I imagine he received some kind of education, which was the product of his society, and without that education he wouldn't have been able to develop his talent. His involvement within society surely supplied him a host of images with which to work--the specific materials that he shaped in imagination. More importantly, his art could only be perceived as both new and exciting on the one hand, and beautiful on the other, precisely because it was embedded in a history of art, and was in conversation with other great artists, who themselves could only develop their own art through their emplacement within a society.

Had it not been for Michelangelo looking to the Northern Artists--Breugel, Grunewald, and Bosch--for the inspiration for mannerism, it is unlikely that cubism would have developed. And the same can be said for the realism of Courbet, the pre-impressionism of Manet, the complete revisioning of art by the impressionists, and the post impressionists such as Van Gogh or Matisse. And each of these artists were the product of a time and a place, which is another way of saying that they were manifestations of social forces. They added their own contributions, to be sure, but it's not as if they went naked into the wilderness of their own souls and found their art, unconnected to anything else. We can analyze and understand Picasso's art through the lens that is ground by all the other important artists to come before him, and Picasso himself learned to see in his own peculiar way through that very lens. The tendencies to see that way were already present within the history of art. We can trace cubism's component parts to other artists or cultural phenomena (such as the advent of film), and then those artists' work and other cultural phenomena can be traced to still other artists and cultural phenomena, all the way back to the founding of civilization.

The same holds for other kinds of geniuses. Do we credit Turing with creating the modern computer? Not so fast: he got many of his ideas from Kurt Goedel and Alonzo Church, who were inspired by Leibniz, who was inspired by Pascal and Abelard, who were inspired by Aristotle, who was inspired by Plato, who was inspired by...you get the picture. This is not to say that any of these guys didn't contribute something. But their contribution is more like adding a few paragraphs to an ongoing book, rather than having written the entire book themselves.

These points seem sufficient to establish claim 2.

code1211 said:
No man is an island. As such, we all exist as a part of the whole, but within that whole, there are those that rise above. Tom Brady is the best Quarterback, Clemson won the national Championship, Trump won the election, Cleveland is the NBA champ this year and on it goes...these are the big fish in this pond. I won a race once, but as I advanced, I found that winning races at the higher levels was not possible for me. No problem. There were other people who were faster.

The point of that is that there are people who are faster, smarter, more ruthless, more likable and so forth. Gates famously lied, cheated and stole his way to fame and fortune. JP Morgan and Carnegie both believed they had swindled the other as US Steel was created.

In all pursuits, there are actual best in category winners. Sometimes, the only defining factor to be best is to be first. Other times, it's the "killer app" type of thing. Point is, you can't say simply that the society owns the achievement any more than the land or the planet owns the achievement. The achievement is a thing of value that gains respect of others.

I don't find much to disagree with in any of that...some of it I would state a little differently, but it would be quibbling. However, my main criticism is that it misses the point. Some are faster than others. Some are more talented than others. And some do contribute more to society than others. But the question is to try to figure out how much more, and I think there is a kind of mythologizing of "great" individuals in our society that simultaneously plays down societal inputs into their work. The point of the thought experiment I posted is to show that social inputs are far greater than most people imagine, and thus we have to readjust our thinking.

code1211 said:
Am I entitled to half of Gates' fortune because I happened to be around when he was working? Am I as responsible for the creation of Microsoft as was Gates? According to what you wrote, it seems that you think this to be the case.

No, that is not my position. Society is, however, entitled to half--probably more than half, actually. But I also think Bill Gates should have more than average, in recognition of the fact that he did contribute more than most people. Does he deserve 3,000 times as much as his lowest-paid employee? No, I think it's pretty clear he doesn't.

code1211 · Jan 21, 2017

ashurbanipal said:
Sure. And folks on the right were rejoicing when he did, while folks on the left were rather less ammused. Clinton is portrayed by those on the, er, righter end of the right-side spectrum as being a leftist. He was much more a centrist, and did quite a lot that was in line with conservative doctrine. Deregulation was something that began under Reagan, and continued for the next three administrations.

Not one party, exactly--one political orientation. Deregulation is primarily a goal of the right, regulation primarily a goal of the left. My point is that most of what led to the 2008 meltdown was that conservatives more or less got their wish, at least with respect to the financial industry, and the result is a matter of history. Now, I do acknowledge that one liberal goal is to increase home ownership (though that is also a conservative goal), so that was a contributing factor. So it's not as if literally all of the blame lies with conservatives. But more goes to their side in this case (lest you think I believe conservatives are mainly to blame for all the evils of the world, I think liberals ruined education, which is a huge issue).

I agree, but I'm not sure I see how it's a problem for me.

I understood that. Nothing I wrote about how the analogy needed to be fixed is in conflict with the fact that money is not identical to wealth. However, I would suggest that calling money the "measure that describes wealth" is not adequate. Wealth can be traded for money, and vice versa. And that, I think, is the problem with the analogy. Say that being able to field extra team members is wealth (for example), while the score is money. Since I can trade money for wealth, the team ought to be able to spend points to field extra team members, and doing so would allow them to score more points faster than the other team.

To generalize this point, the accumulation of money allows a person to change the conditions of the game so as to allow that person to accumulate money faster, and make it more difficult for others to accumulate money as fast. And since money can still be exchanged for wealth, that means that one who accumulates money at a faster rate can also accumulate wealth more quickly.

It's pretty easy to see that, at any time in history, were a society to be completely disbanded, its members would have had far less wealth than they otherwise would have had. Ergo, societies are more responsible for the creation of wealth than are individuals. To determine how much more, it's merely necessary to run the thought experiment I suggested with just any individual. If I think about how much wealth I could have accumulated starting from when I was 16 until now, assuming I started with literally nothing, and assuming I could trade neither goods nor knowledge with anyone...well, the picture ain't pretty. I'm smarter and tougher than most people, but I might by now have a wood shack, some animal pelts, and maybe a few stone tools. My life would be very difficult, and it's doubtful I would actually have lived to be as old as I am.

Instead, I have a nice three-story house, a decent car, a huge library, lots of electronic gew-gaws, and so on. I can only have accumulated those things by virtue of my being embedded in a society.

The exploitation and greedy use of the easy money mortgage lending practices were taken advantage of by EVERYONE in our society that made any transaction that took advantage of any of the increased paper wealth realized from the real estate transactions. That includes every man, woman and child in the USA. Nobody was untouched and nobody escapes complicity.

How is that a problem for you? Total Global Losses From Financial Crisis: $15 Trillion - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Being a part of a society or being a backwoods hermit is not the choice that I was hoping to present. Society is there as soon as two people interact. It will grow or die from there. If the "society" formed is one in which a cannibal meets his meal, that small society will likely end quickly and violently. The result could be a good meal or a dandy burial depending on the outcome of the interaction.

The last 200 years were the time in which the creation of wealth was exponentially accelerated. The choice I was trying to present was of being a part of a society before the use of Fossil Fuels and being a part of a society after the use of Fossil Fuels.

The analogy of the sports contest you present assumes no rules currently used in any sport that I know of.

It sounds like you have a lovely home. I love libraries. I find that the convenience of the internet that has, in effect, "obsoleted" books to be very useful, but I, too, have a bunch of books in my house. I suppose it's like keeping ticket stubs.

code1211 · Jan 21, 2017

ashurbanipal said:
Yep--essentially, that's correct, though I would point out that people had reasonably good lives in the 17th century, before coal became a significant fuel source. However, fossil fuels definitely changed the picture.

Not completely, but (roughly) 90% of them. I'm making the assumption that your Picasso argument is meant to show that my claim is rubbish--in which case, see below. If not, may I assume that an argument to support your assertion is forthcoming?

Recall that my claim is that, (1) when it comes to the accumulation of wealth, societies are largely responsible, and the contribution of individuals miniscule in comparison. By extension, I said also that (2) even great geniuses such as Einstein don't do as much under their own steam, so to speak, as is commonly thought. Those are my two claims, and I've put numbers in front of each one to try to be helpful.

So now, Picasso painted Guernica, Les Demoiselles, The Old Guitarist, and other famous paintings, and I certainly agree that the composition of each of his painting was entirely his own--he didn't steal anyone's work or anything. But now, he could not have made any of those paintings without a canvas, and brushes, and pigments, and so on, and these were all made and invented by other people. He certainly could not have painted without a studio, and a dwelling that took care of his need for shelter. He needed to rely on others to get his food, water, medicine, and other such. Had he been required to, say, capture or grow all his food, he might never have painted a single thing. It was only by being embedded within a society that Picasso could become a painter. And it is only through the products of society that his paintings can be considered any kind of wealth--it is unlikely that a subsistence society that is barely scraping by and whose members spend all their available time just surviving would have any interest in Picasso at all.

Now Picasso, and artists in general, are an unusual case in they do more to effect pure creation than do most other members of society. Bill Gates (to return to his example) created far less than Picasso ever did, and the wealth Gates accumulated is due even less to his own genius than is Picasso's.

(edited for length-sorry)

In your editing of the post, you omitted the statement that no man is an island.

Your argument seems to present a binary choice: either a man is alone with no other men or any other cooperation at all VS a man who functions as a part of a society.

That is not the choice I was presenting.

I was arguing that within any society, there are those that are higher achievers and those that are lower achievers. Those that contribute more to the society and those that contribute less. Some that are revered by others and some that are reviled.

The individual is the key component of the society like the brick is the key component of the brick wall. In the case of most bricks, remove it and the wall stands. In the cases of a very few bricks, remove it and the wall falls.

Einstein's work was foundational even though it was not unique. This is true of Edison, Ford, Firestone and all the rest of the industrial giants. Gates' genius had little to do with the technological pieces of the Computer revolution puzzle. His genius was in the organizational, corporate side of things. Same with Sam Walton and Henry Ford. It was not what they did. It was how they did it.

Their contributions were neither needed nor possible absent society.

The combination of all of the work and commitment of the greatest individuals in the right form of society is what creates the greatest achievements of any society. The great societal advances cannot be made absent a society. The advances cannot be made without the effort of the individuals. As a result, the genius of Edison can be combined with the genius of Tesla under the direction of the genius of Westinghouse to create the electronic grid and, in turn the ease of life we all enjoy.

No man is an island.

The right individuals in the right society create the Honda Accord.

The wrong society using the same technology creates the Lada.

The combination of the great individuals in the great societies produces a symbiotic critical mass that builds on itself.

Sometimes it's the brick. Other times it's the location of the brick in the wall. Still other times, it's the choice of which brick to put in which location by the brick layer.

I'm just glad that I happen to be in the current created by the geniuses who have driven our society. At almost any other time of history in almost any other place in the world, I would currently be cold and hungry and wishing there was a world like the one in which I currently live.

I'm a pretty lucky guy!

Soviet Cars | History of Russia

code1211 · Jan 21, 2017

ashurbanipal said:
Though I do not know a great deal about Picasso's life, I imagine he received some kind of education, which was the product of his society, and without that education he wouldn't have been able to develop his talent. His involvement within society surely supplied him a host of images with which to work--the specific materials that he shaped in imagination. More importantly, his art could only be perceived as both new and exciting on the one hand, and beautiful on the other, precisely because it was embedded in a history of art, and was in conversation with other great artists, who themselves could only develop their own art through their emplacement within a society.

Had it not been for Michelangelo looking to the Northern Artists--Breugel, Grunewald, and Bosch--for the inspiration for mannerism, it is unlikely that cubism would have developed. And the same can be said for the realism of Courbet, the pre-impressionism of Manet, the complete revisioning of art by the impressionists, and the post impressionists such as Van Gogh or Matisse. And each of these artists were the product of a time and a place, which is another way of saying that they were manifestations of social forces. They added their own contributions, to be sure, but it's not as if they went naked into the wilderness of their own souls and found their art, unconnected to anything else. We can analyze and understand Picasso's art through the lens that is ground by all the other important artists to come before him, and Picasso himself learned to see in his own peculiar way through that very lens. The tendencies to see that way were already present within the history of art. We can trace cubism's component parts to other artists or cultural phenomena (such as the advent of film), and then those artists' work and other cultural phenomena can be traced to still other artists and cultural phenomena, all the way back to the founding of civilization.

The same holds for other kinds of geniuses. Do we credit Turing with creating the modern computer? Not so fast: he got many of his ideas from Kurt Goedel and Alonzo Church, who were inspired by Leibniz, who was inspired by Pascal and Abelard, who were inspired by Aristotle, who was inspired by Plato, who was inspired by...you get the picture. This is not to say that any of these guys didn't contribute something. But their contribution is more like adding a few paragraphs to an ongoing book, rather than having written the entire book themselves.

These points seem sufficient to establish claim 2.

I don't find much to disagree with in any of that...some of it I would state a little differently, but it would be quibbling. However, my main criticism is that it misses the point. Some are faster than others. Some are more talented than others. And some do contribute more to society than others. But the question is to try to figure out how much more, and I think there is a kind of mythologizing of "great" individuals in our society that simultaneously plays down societal inputs into their work. The point of the thought experiment I posted is to show that social inputs are far greater than most people imagine, and thus we have to readjust our thinking.

No, that is not my position. Society is, however, entitled to half--probably more than half, actually. But I also think Bill Gates should have more than average, in recognition of the fact that he did contribute more than most people. Does he deserve 3,000 times as much as his lowest-paid employee? No, I think it's pretty clear he doesn't.

That last point is not clear to me at all.

The point is, without Gates when he was working, his lowest paid employee earned nothing as a Gates employee. Do we demand, then, that Gates deserves less than what people ask to pay for his products?

Again, no man is an island. That we live in a society is assumed. The choice is not binary. The choices are of degrees. Are the everyday shlubs afforded a better life by the work and energy of the great individuals? I feel it is undeniably so.

The work of Gates and his corporation have affected and enhanced the life experience of people worldwide. Even those who don't even know what a computer is. Do we begrudge him the fortune he earned? Why would we? His work powered the economic boom of the 90's.

His work has enhanced the efficiency of energy, product distribution, agriculture, design, medicine, research, manufacturing and anything else you care to name. Even the life of "his lowest-paid employee".