A: Damn, <list unfairness or suffering under a specific system>, this system is so broken. My <Japanese/German/Dutch etc.> friend says in their country, <list everything that's better>. Why can't we have that?
B: Well, to have that, you'd have to piss off <winners of the current system>. They (the government/the people in charge) would never allow it.
or, even less usefully,
B: You're too naive. Spend a few more years in the real world and you'll know why we can't have that.
Stage 1: Notice a problem without having a solution yourself
I first started actually noticing systemic issues by myself in middle school in China. My Chinese teacher read my weekly essays discussing these issues, and encouraged me to leave China. Implicitly she had two reasons:
The political climate in China did/does not encourage dissent.
The cultural climate in China dislikes complaining without solutions.
If you've also noticed problems or felt uncomfortable with the status quo without a solution: noticing problems is not unproductive or pessimistic. It is, in fact, the first step to improving matters. [1]
Stage 2a: Realize there's no perfect, equilibrial alternative
Say, you hate seeing people go bankrupt over medical bills (US-specific example). You look at all the currently better healthcare systems in the world that deliver better results on average, and realize their costs in terms of taxpayer dollars are all significant and increasing, and they can't indefinitely sustain themselves under their currently-better system.
Say, you hate the race dynamics between AI labs. You wish they would just shake hands and establish some sort of slow-down framework, but also realize the inherent fragility of such framework. You call it a coordination problem. You realize even the non-proliferation treaty of nuclear weapons -- widely considered a success or narrow escape from huge disutility -- did not delete all the stress and deaths associated with its enforcement in the future.
Say, you notice significant inefficiencies in your government. You wish the government can just reorganize itself into what another country has. You then realize that better country has not stood on that system for more than a hundred years, or that system has historically failed after a couple of centuries, and there might already be other tradeoffs.
Happy systems that are also provably equilibriums are impossibly rare. You can't count on them existing. Even if you design the system with self-correction mechanisms, e.g. democracy, some parts of it will still eventually go south in an unintended way. When the system truly affects many individual agents, the results are almost chaotic.
Stage 2b: Realize there's no painless transition to a better alternative
Now, it just sank in that you can't count on happy, provably equilibrial systems existing, but you still want to improve matters in the medium term. You're at the next hurdle.
How can we transition from state X (current, bad) to state Y (alternative, better)? Even if Y won't be perfect forever, and we will need to transition to Z at some point in the future, you're still interested in Y. Y can be anything: a city with bike lanes, less pollution, more social mobility, an education system that doesn't let disadvantaged kids slip through the cracks.
If the current state X has been like this for quite some time, it must have produced winners and losers. To drive a change to state Y is to piss off current winners and maybe some more. A lot of winning parties are powerful and can squash grassroots attempts at trading their benefits for other people's.
Stage 3: LARP omniscient system designer god
Suppose you've collected all the information you think you need to drive a change. You've done your homework, and believe you now have a great strategy. For example, you will get into the right position to know the right people, garner the right support, then you will present a meticulously rigorous plan, which will sway everyone, because as part of your plan, you calculated who will win and lose from the change, and the numbers look promising.
Then, upon putting this plan in motion, you get a surprise punch in the face at every turn. Actors whose utility functions aren't transparent to you and thus appear irrational and unpredictable. New parties showing up that you didn't even know existed. Resource assumptions thathave been true for years but the rug gets pulled from under you. Interpersonal drama. Mistakes that set you back more than fairly.
You realize you do not, in fact, have The Perfect Action Plan™️.
Stage 4: Fall back to iterative approach (knowing it's theoretically suboptimal)
Ugh, the journey has been tortuous and I'm just craving some validation. A little pat on the back that I've improved matters by a small margin, after all the work I've put in.
Gradient descent, a concept familiar to those who come from machine learning, introduces us to the basic truth that optimizing by small iterations from current states will often land us in a local optimum, preventing us from realizing there is a better global optimum, much less reach it.
Real life is the same, theoretically. If you have a bad dynamic with your mother, doing small actions of kindness might land you in the same dynamic just with slightly improved mood when she's around. Sometimes, you need to put your foot down about your boundaries, risk making it worse, in order for it to have a chance to become significantly better.
If your system is currently dysfunctional, performing small acts of goodwill will alleviate some pain, but not fundamentally fix the system -- the dynamics that causes pain overall. A nontrivial possibility is, you've become a small painkiller that locally suppresses pain signals towards bigger problems, towards the patient going to the hospital and getting surgery.
Maybe you personally picked up the litter you repeatedly see in your local park. Maybe you sponsored a child to go to college. Maybe you even got a law passed, though the law is hard to enforce, so it only has suggestive values. These are alleviations, and they improve matters locally. They might also become "token solutions" that hide the need for real overhauls.
Stage 5: Dedicate yourself to the cause, not a specific solution
You've tried orchestrating the whole change. You've tried making personally tangible contributions directly. You might have done some good, but the world still isn't where you want it to be. The cynics are getting under your skin.
B: You're too naive. Spend a few more years in the real world and you'll know why we can't have that.
In a world where you can achieve many things, it might be frustrating to see yourself fail to get society exactly where you want it to be, even if a lot of people already share that same desire. Especially if a lot of people already share that same desire.
But as long as the issue still exists, as long as the issue still matters to you, as long as state X still bugs you, there is value in trying.
Just because you didn't roll the Perfect Action Plan™️ the first time doesn't mean you won't contribute to its eventual (possible) conception. Take a breath and keep doing what you can, share your failures with allies. Iterate on your strategy, not on the current system. Accept that you might not personally win in a way that rewards you with all the credit; and then remind yourself, what you wanted was matters improved, not to be the person who is credited for the improvement. Dedicate yourself to the cause, not a specific solution.
However, if you find yourself in a hostile discourse where your mere noticing and voicing backfires on your social viability, consider a more moderated approach or changing your audience.
Have you ever experienced this exchange:
or, even less usefully,
Stage 1: Notice a problem without having a solution yourself
I first started actually noticing systemic issues by myself in middle school in China. My Chinese teacher read my weekly essays discussing these issues, and encouraged me to leave China. Implicitly she had two reasons:
If you've also noticed problems or felt uncomfortable with the status quo without a solution: noticing problems is not unproductive or pessimistic. It is, in fact, the first step to improving matters. [1]
Stage 2a: Realize there's no perfect, equilibrial alternative
Say, you hate seeing people go bankrupt over medical bills (US-specific example). You look at all the currently better healthcare systems in the world that deliver better results on average, and realize their costs in terms of taxpayer dollars are all significant and increasing, and they can't indefinitely sustain themselves under their currently-better system.
Say, you hate the race dynamics between AI labs. You wish they would just shake hands and establish some sort of slow-down framework, but also realize the inherent fragility of such framework. You call it a coordination problem. You realize even the non-proliferation treaty of nuclear weapons -- widely considered a success or narrow escape from huge disutility -- did not delete all the stress and deaths associated with its enforcement in the future.
Say, you notice significant inefficiencies in your government. You wish the government can just reorganize itself into what another country has. You then realize that better country has not stood on that system for more than a hundred years, or that system has historically failed after a couple of centuries, and there might already be other tradeoffs.
Happy systems that are also provably equilibriums are impossibly rare. You can't count on them existing. Even if you design the system with self-correction mechanisms, e.g. democracy, some parts of it will still eventually go south in an unintended way. When the system truly affects many individual agents, the results are almost chaotic.
Stage 2b: Realize there's no painless transition to a better alternative
Now, it just sank in that you can't count on happy, provably equilibrial systems existing, but you still want to improve matters in the medium term. You're at the next hurdle.
How can we transition from state X (current, bad) to state Y (alternative, better)? Even if Y won't be perfect forever, and we will need to transition to Z at some point in the future, you're still interested in Y. Y can be anything: a city with bike lanes, less pollution, more social mobility, an education system that doesn't let disadvantaged kids slip through the cracks.
If the current state X has been like this for quite some time, it must have produced winners and losers. To drive a change to state Y is to piss off current winners and maybe some more. A lot of winning parties are powerful and can squash grassroots attempts at trading their benefits for other people's.
Stage 3: LARP omniscient system designer god
Suppose you've collected all the information you think you need to drive a change. You've done your homework, and believe you now have a great strategy. For example, you will get into the right position to know the right people, garner the right support, then you will present a meticulously rigorous plan, which will sway everyone, because as part of your plan, you calculated who will win and lose from the change, and the numbers look promising.
Then, upon putting this plan in motion, you get a surprise punch in the face at every turn. Actors whose utility functions aren't transparent to you and thus appear irrational and unpredictable. New parties showing up that you didn't even know existed. Resource assumptions thathave been true for years but the rug gets pulled from under you. Interpersonal drama. Mistakes that set you back more than fairly.
You realize you do not, in fact, have The Perfect Action Plan™️.
Stage 4: Fall back to iterative approach (knowing it's theoretically suboptimal)
Ugh, the journey has been tortuous and I'm just craving some validation. A little pat on the back that I've improved matters by a small margin, after all the work I've put in.
Gradient descent, a concept familiar to those who come from machine learning, introduces us to the basic truth that optimizing by small iterations from current states will often land us in a local optimum, preventing us from realizing there is a better global optimum, much less reach it.
Real life is the same, theoretically. If you have a bad dynamic with your mother, doing small actions of kindness might land you in the same dynamic just with slightly improved mood when she's around. Sometimes, you need to put your foot down about your boundaries, risk making it worse, in order for it to have a chance to become significantly better.
If your system is currently dysfunctional, performing small acts of goodwill will alleviate some pain, but not fundamentally fix the system -- the dynamics that causes pain overall. A nontrivial possibility is, you've become a small painkiller that locally suppresses pain signals towards bigger problems, towards the patient going to the hospital and getting surgery.
Maybe you personally picked up the litter you repeatedly see in your local park. Maybe you sponsored a child to go to college. Maybe you even got a law passed, though the law is hard to enforce, so it only has suggestive values. These are alleviations, and they improve matters locally. They might also become "token solutions" that hide the need for real overhauls.
Stage 5: Dedicate yourself to the cause, not a specific solution
You've tried orchestrating the whole change. You've tried making personally tangible contributions directly. You might have done some good, but the world still isn't where you want it to be. The cynics are getting under your skin.
In a world where you can achieve many things, it might be frustrating to see yourself fail to get society exactly where you want it to be, even if a lot of people already share that same desire. Especially if a lot of people already share that same desire.
But as long as the issue still exists, as long as the issue still matters to you, as long as state X still bugs you, there is value in trying.
Just because you didn't roll the Perfect Action Plan™️ the first time doesn't mean you won't contribute to its eventual (possible) conception. Take a breath and keep doing what you can, share your failures with allies. Iterate on your strategy, not on the current system. Accept that you might not personally win in a way that rewards you with all the credit; and then remind yourself, what you wanted was matters improved, not to be the person who is credited for the improvement. Dedicate yourself to the cause, not a specific solution.
However, if you find yourself in a hostile discourse where your mere noticing and voicing backfires on your social viability, consider a more moderated approach or changing your audience.