As someone who notices a lot of things, I was talking recently with someone who notices almost nothing. When I spoke about my desire to seek out the truth, they simply replied, "I just want to live a happy life."
There’s a perception that those who seek knowledge and truth are somehow less happy. Ignorance, and the willingness to take the path of least resistance, can be seen as an advantage for those who would rather not look too closely. Fundamentally, perhaps the difference comes down to red pill versus blue pill, and the illusions we’re willing to accept.
A lot of knowledge and truth can be quite disappointing. I do think shielding oneself from truths and knowledge probably would make someone more happy. Think about it - do you think you would be more happy knowing the darkest thoughts and actions of those around you? Of those close to you? What if your spouse was having thoughts of leaving you? Would that make you more happy or less happy? I suppose you could say that if you were privy to their thoughts, you might discover that they love you and think about you more than you imagined, so that may be a net benefit, but I think we humans have a tendency to focus on the negative, and so an abundance of information leads us to focus on the negative things within the information, which makes us less happy.
There's nothing wrong with being a curious or attentive person who likes to notice things.
What I often see, especially in the social media era, is people who are selectively curious and like to notice negative things. So they'll share lots of articles with titles like "The Amazon Tax", which I agree was interesting and informative, but they're not at all interested in e.g. "How Amazon Is Bringing Fast Delivery to Rural America" (https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/how-amazon-is-bringin...). That's more of a problem, and I think it's what drives the idea that truth-seekers are less happy.
Enjoy your steak, Mr Reagan.
Except that this holds true for everything. For example, I only just today found out about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yo7_Inikg&t=1157s, ie, Oracle's apparent complicity in genocide. Now that I know this, I now have to rethink things: what am I using that depends on Oracle that I need to migrate away from? This wasn't something I was concerned about just 24 hours ago. This is not to say it's not a valid concern: we should divest from companies and organisations complicit in genocide, but this is demonstrably a case where I have given myself more work, more worry, from gaining knowledge.
Conscientiousness is incompatible with monotonicity of capability. That is:
1. We tend to believe "more power/knowledge/choices" is universally a good thing; that we are rational creatures in some sort of game theoretic landscape where we are free to optimize for our own outcomes, and extra options or information can only be to our optimization benefit.
2. We tend to believe that as moral agents, we have obligations to Good. More specifically, knowingly choosing against Good should in proportion produce Guilt.
The bind that results from (1)+(2) is distinctly Christian to me, obsessed as Christianity is with the notion of shame as a moral whip. It is an exercise in religionmaking how to structure one's psychological incentives so that solipsism is avoided while not sacrificing (1).
You’re aware IBM was not just complicit but essentially made the Holocaust possible with their counting machines? Had technicians permanently staffed in the fucking camps? The the numbers on people’s arms corresponded to IBM punch cards?
Are you aware of the world you live in?
I wasn't aware of that, no. I can say that it wasn't a feature of our history lessons in school, nor in various Holocaust documentaries I have watched, nor something that came up in conversation with friends and colleagues, nor have I personally seen it when it's been posted to HackerNews (if this is anything to go by: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=IBM%20holocaust&sort=byDate&ty...). I only learned about Oracle's complicity because it has resurfaced in coverage regarding the current ongoing genocide. But you are proving my point: what do I do now with this information?
> But you are proving my point: what do I do now with this information?
I would use it to question the premise
> we should divest from companies and organisations complicit in genocide
which in reality I decided was obviously wrong the first time I heard it, many years ago. In fact, I don't think this concept of "complicity" is morally valid at all.
Continuing the red/blue pill metaphor from earlier, what you're describing is not dissimilar to Cypher's betrayal to be plugged back in.
Mass genocide happened plenty of times before the advent of computers, so I take issue with your assertion that IBM made the holocaust possible.
They were, and still are - multiple times a year. But THE german holocaust was the most effective by orders of magnitude. And they have technology to thank for that. Computing machines (primitive as they were) made it possible to track the status of each Jew. Railways made it possible to move them. Chemical plants produced the gas in the needed quantities. Industrial incinerators made it possible to dispose of the remains. They didn't just go down to Home Depot and buy a bottle of poison gas. They had a system end-to-end as efficient as any factory.
> Are you aware of the world you live in?
Certainly this world comprises many other things than the Holocaust and IBM's support of it. Perhaps your awareness is lacking if you think that is the main thing to be aware of in this world.
> Perhaps your awareness is lacking if you think that is the main thing to be aware of in this world.
I don't think that's what GP was saying at all.
Maybe say what you think they were saying? What is it with these maximally ambiguous comments?
To me "Are you aware of the world you live in?" suggests "If you don't even know this, you don't know anything. This is the first thing anyone should know". I'm willing to learng if they meant something else, but I guess that's asking a lot.
The point is that Oracle's actions are unremarkable in the context of the existing state of the world, and that corporations are generally not concerned with the morality of their customers.
This was, to my thinking, such a straightforward interpretation that it didn't bear making explicit; and your interpretation genuinely didn't even occur to me.
It doesn't surprise me that corporations [whose primary, if not sole concern is the profit motive] don't care about the morality of their customers. What I don't understand is why you're objecting to me voting with my wallet, something that's been a popular retort against progressive and humanitarian movements for at least the past two decades.
> What I don't understand is why you're objecting to me voting with my wallet
I did nothing of the sort.
I simply said that I disagree with your stated motivations for your vote.
The way that you discuss your plan makes it sound as if you consider it morally incumbent upon others to follow suit. I do object to that.
> I simply said that I disagree with your stated motivations for your vote.
That's a semantic distinction without a difference.
> The way that you discuss your plan makes it sound as if you consider it morally incumbent upon others to follow suit. I do object to that.
That's more or less true: I do believe that people should BDS corporations that knowingly and willingly harm humanity (eg: aid and abet genocide); that it's not within our interests to let such things slide. And while I am biased, this doesn't feel like a particularly controversial take: it feels like I'm just spelling out basic civics. But.. this is also just like my opinion, man. You do you.