As I was reading about the Research Priorities Lawsuit in loose connection with my current work at Code for America, I got sidetracked thinking about how a guaranteed minimum income would perhaps offload a substantial portion of the burdens - strictly the financial portion, and more so, all areas that financial burdens pour over into (relationships, healthcare, education, etc.) - surrounding behavioral and occupational changes, even in the face of nostalgia toward upholding historical values and pastimes. In the face of mounting efficiencies accruing elsewhere throughout the larger national or international systems that comprise humanity (pesticides use in agriculture in this case), the larger population is often clearly and implicitly in favor of such transitions, and yet the dialogue surrounding the process of actually transitioning all too frequently focuses on the large, non-monetary costs associated with the change (historical value preservation, culture change, reeducation, etc.), while ignoring the financial costs, which may be greater still! Assuming that this discourse is largely an unconscious societal byproduct of our emotional nature, how would guaranteed minimum income affect the situation? What important changes would come to the occupational transition process? Would monetary aspects enter into the conversation to a greater or lesser degree than they do currently? How would the conversation be changed in general?
In this case, I was thinking specifically about a minimum income aspect of any hypothetical standardized income distribution scheme, and I was thinking about the context of the history of CAFF and the Research Priorities Lawsuit specifically. In a larger thought experiment, I might try applying the theme of "How would standardized income distribution have impacted that?" to other historical contexts.
Maybe some other time I'll write my own answers to the questions I posed above; however, given the historical precedent of my de-prioritization of blog-posting (most/all posts are either unpublished, incomplete or nonsensical - intrapersonal), that seems unlikely :)
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Cap and Trade on Human Life
While attending the HPMOR Wrap party outside the Valley Life Sciences Building this past weekend, CFAR Executive Director and Cofounder Anna Salamon, encouraged a group of UC-Berkeley students and others (myself included) to write more under the premise that anything you convert into a physical artifact provides a natural extension of your memory and is therefore beneficial. So, despite the tradeoffs inherent in recording my thoughts and experiences - particularly for all to see, an aspect which Anna wasn't necessarily considering in her comments - here I am.
Rather than discuss the fun and revelry of the HPMOR gathering though, I'm here to inscribe some thoughts I've had regarding human population management policies dating back originally to sometime in college, between 2006 and 2010, though I think mostly originating in early 2007. The original idea, as I recall, comes from ideating remedies to human overpopulation of Earth while also reading about cap and trade regimes as an effort to regulate carbon emissions. The natural juxtaposition of these concepts led to a policy conception of a cap and trade system on human life, which remains to this day my favorite systemic mechanism for directly addressing the root cause of overpopulation. Please keep in mind, there are many other policies for which I would advocate first or under the most dire circumstances, in addition to human population caps, which would attempt to manage population growth.
For now, I'm going to ignore the various benefits and downsides of having an active human population management policy and simply focus on my preferred the designed proposal for human population management, its benefits and its drawbacks. Perhaps in a later post I'll return to comment on other policies and on why a human population management policy is or is not beneficial to have in the first place. Let's begin with a brief description of why I'm choosing to discuss population management in the first place: because as humans have come to control the evolution of their own species from sociological, technological and, likely soon to be, biological standpoints, population size with respect to our environment and with respect to our goals for own evolution are impacted in a large way by the size of our population. This one aspect of humanity is perhaps the simplest and most direct way to control our own evolution as a species.
As such, the root of any human population management strategy should be to facilitate the desired evolution of humanity while maintaining and advancing the quality of life for the species as a whole and for the individuals thereof. Rather than propose goals for humanity or its evolution, I will focus on the impacts of population on quality of life while trying to avoid assumptions about which futures of our species are most or least desirable. The discussion can be broken up along several spectra, of which we will examine effects on individuals and effects on the whole population and on severity of the effects.
Work in progress (which is also true of the above, just a bit less so)...
First, let's look at the effects of population size on the quality of life provided to an individual. If you have too few people, you likely end up with a relatively less fulfilling life in the sense that one would expect a lower average quality of relationship fulfillment. This is predominately due to the relative lack of other humans with whom to interact, which restricts your choices and lowers the expected quality of interaction that results.
Next, let's look at the effects of population size on the species as a whole. If you have too few people, you face in the extreme, the existential risk of an extinction vortex, and in general, you face reduced robustness due to external pressures. If you have too many people, you face in the extreme, risk of societal collapse due to resource mismanagement.
Having a greater number of people with whom to interact will presumably increase one's quality of life to some point, and it will require the resources of the system to be split among more individuals, requiring each individual to have a smaller allocation of resources available to oneself. So presumably, there is some optimal number of people that should exist in any system with finite resources (e.g. Earth). Since the optimal number is dependent on a myriad, perhaps infinite number of variables, I'll refrain from trying to come up with a specific target or upper bound. As a lower bound, let's say that humans don't want humans to go extinct (I know that some individual humans argue for human extinction, but this is not a commonly held belief) and therefore, we need enough genetic variation in our population to prevent an extinction vortex.
Rather than discuss the fun and revelry of the HPMOR gathering though, I'm here to inscribe some thoughts I've had regarding human population management policies dating back originally to sometime in college, between 2006 and 2010, though I think mostly originating in early 2007. The original idea, as I recall, comes from ideating remedies to human overpopulation of Earth while also reading about cap and trade regimes as an effort to regulate carbon emissions. The natural juxtaposition of these concepts led to a policy conception of a cap and trade system on human life, which remains to this day my favorite systemic mechanism for directly addressing the root cause of overpopulation. Please keep in mind, there are many other policies for which I would advocate first or under the most dire circumstances, in addition to human population caps, which would attempt to manage population growth.
For now, I'm going to ignore the various benefits and downsides of having an active human population management policy and simply focus on my preferred the designed proposal for human population management, its benefits and its drawbacks. Perhaps in a later post I'll return to comment on other policies and on why a human population management policy is or is not beneficial to have in the first place. Let's begin with a brief description of why I'm choosing to discuss population management in the first place: because as humans have come to control the evolution of their own species from sociological, technological and, likely soon to be, biological standpoints, population size with respect to our environment and with respect to our goals for own evolution are impacted in a large way by the size of our population. This one aspect of humanity is perhaps the simplest and most direct way to control our own evolution as a species.
As such, the root of any human population management strategy should be to facilitate the desired evolution of humanity while maintaining and advancing the quality of life for the species as a whole and for the individuals thereof. Rather than propose goals for humanity or its evolution, I will focus on the impacts of population on quality of life while trying to avoid assumptions about which futures of our species are most or least desirable. The discussion can be broken up along several spectra, of which we will examine effects on individuals and effects on the whole population and on severity of the effects.
Work in progress (which is also true of the above, just a bit less so)...
First, let's look at the effects of population size on the quality of life provided to an individual. If you have too few people, you likely end up with a relatively less fulfilling life in the sense that one would expect a lower average quality of relationship fulfillment. This is predominately due to the relative lack of other humans with whom to interact, which restricts your choices and lowers the expected quality of interaction that results.
Next, let's look at the effects of population size on the species as a whole. If you have too few people, you face in the extreme, the existential risk of an extinction vortex, and in general, you face reduced robustness due to external pressures. If you have too many people, you face in the extreme, risk of societal collapse due to resource mismanagement.
Having a greater number of people with whom to interact will presumably increase one's quality of life to some point, and it will require the resources of the system to be split among more individuals, requiring each individual to have a smaller allocation of resources available to oneself. So presumably, there is some optimal number of people that should exist in any system with finite resources (e.g. Earth). Since the optimal number is dependent on a myriad, perhaps infinite number of variables, I'll refrain from trying to come up with a specific target or upper bound. As a lower bound, let's say that humans don't want humans to go extinct (I know that some individual humans argue for human extinction, but this is not a commonly held belief) and therefore, we need enough genetic variation in our population to prevent an extinction vortex.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Complaining in a Positive Tone
I just attempted to write a blog entry in third person, complaining about how feminist and gender queer blog entries sometimes become very dark. Generalizing the bleak, derogatory abyss of <insert links to unnecessarily negative blogs here>, you find articles ranging from mild, that cast blame for how people feel when they're exposed to adversity, to vile articles, that blame others for existing as they are (Or, if we try to look at them more positively: as in their very existence makes me feel bad about myself by comparison, not because they are bad to exist, but because the world is unfair). They range from mopey yet fairly compassionate to people of various identities () to predominately hateful and loathing (). The latter make me feel, perhaps unsurprisingly, hate-filled and loathsome. Here was the start to that blog entry, and I really wanted to keep going, but it was just so hard. It's much easier to rant than it is to write a constructive commentary on the nature of a discussion.
"Reading a number of feminist and LGBT centric blog posts over the past several years, most of them have the right idea, focusing on awareness and empowerment of groups that have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented. The spirt of the movement seems to be about empowering individuals to live life as they feel compelled to live. Certainly, we all want the freedom to experience the world and interact with others in constructive, mutually beneficial ways, and some groups have been historically, systematically excluded from flowing through society in that way. Emphasizing that fact is important, and should definitely continue to take center stage until it becomes a reality. And, that's where it could end.
"Sometimes it does end there. Occasionally, though, it continues into shall we say, darker realms, where negativity creeps in and people are encouraged to feel that, simply because they are lucky, they are somehow inherently wrong or bad or evil. Recognizably, usually, the intent of these darker facets is to further the awareness of less well-know societal aspects by prompting the readers to self-examine and analyze how they personally affect and are affected by groups with whom they may otherwise have considered only briefly. This is reasonable, and it can be done in a more positive way. For example, it works to to tell stories where the reader identifies with the primary actor and in which the primary actor goes through a transformative experience in relation to the subject matter. Alternatively, direct questions and answers based on personal experience are a good way to provide perspective. Do you know anyone who is homosexual? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be physically intimate with someone in order to share a human experience, even if that person is different from you in ways of which you have little understanding? Have you ever tried or even considered being someone you just met and who compulsively repulses you because of who they are? Are you repulsed because that's who you are, or are you repulsed because you have yet to fathom who they are?"
"Reading a number of feminist and LGBT centric blog posts over the past several years, most of them have the right idea, focusing on awareness and empowerment of groups that have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented. The spirt of the movement seems to be about empowering individuals to live life as they feel compelled to live. Certainly, we all want the freedom to experience the world and interact with others in constructive, mutually beneficial ways, and some groups have been historically, systematically excluded from flowing through society in that way. Emphasizing that fact is important, and should definitely continue to take center stage until it becomes a reality. And, that's where it could end.
"Sometimes it does end there. Occasionally, though, it continues into shall we say, darker realms, where negativity creeps in and people are encouraged to feel that, simply because they are lucky, they are somehow inherently wrong or bad or evil. Recognizably, usually, the intent of these darker facets is to further the awareness of less well-know societal aspects by prompting the readers to self-examine and analyze how they personally affect and are affected by groups with whom they may otherwise have considered only briefly. This is reasonable, and it can be done in a more positive way. For example, it works to to tell stories where the reader identifies with the primary actor and in which the primary actor goes through a transformative experience in relation to the subject matter. Alternatively, direct questions and answers based on personal experience are a good way to provide perspective. Do you know anyone who is homosexual? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be physically intimate with someone in order to share a human experience, even if that person is different from you in ways of which you have little understanding? Have you ever tried or even considered being someone you just met and who compulsively repulses you because of who they are? Are you repulsed because that's who you are, or are you repulsed because you have yet to fathom who they are?"
Empower Yourself
Reading a number of feminist and LGBT centric blog posts over the past several years, most of them have the right idea, focusing on awareness and empowerment of groups that have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented. The spirt of the movement seems to be about empowering individuals to live life as they feel compelled to live. Certainly, we all want the freedom to experience the world and interact with others in constructive, mutually beneficial ways, and some groups have been historically, systematically excluded from flowing through society in that way. Emphasizing that fact is important, and should definitely continue to take center stage until it becomes a reality. And, that's where it could end.
Sometimes it does end there. Occasionally, though, it continues into shall we say, darker realms, where negativity creeps in and people are encouraged to feel that, simply because they are lucky, they are somehow inherently wrong or bad or evil. Recognizably, usually, the intent of these darker facets is to further the awareness of less well-know societal aspects by prompting the readers to self-examine and analyze how they personally affect and are affected by groups with whom they may otherwise have considered only briefly. This is reasonable, and it can be done in a more positive way. For example, it works to to tell stories where the reader identifies with the primary actor and in which the primary actor goes through a transformative experience in relation to the subject matter. Alternatively, direct questions and answers based on personal experience are a good way to provide perspective. Do you know anyone who is homosexual? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be physically intimate with someone in order to share a human experience, even if that person is different from you in ways of which you have little understanding? Have you ever tried or even considered being someone you just met and who compulsively repulses you because of who they are? Are you repulsed because that's who you are, or are you repulsed because you have yet to fathom who they are?
Sometimes it does end there. Occasionally, though, it continues into shall we say, darker realms, where negativity creeps in and people are encouraged to feel that, simply because they are lucky, they are somehow inherently wrong or bad or evil. Recognizably, usually, the intent of these darker facets is to further the awareness of less well-know societal aspects by prompting the readers to self-examine and analyze how they personally affect and are affected by groups with whom they may otherwise have considered only briefly. This is reasonable, and it can be done in a more positive way. For example, it works to to tell stories where the reader identifies with the primary actor and in which the primary actor goes through a transformative experience in relation to the subject matter. Alternatively, direct questions and answers based on personal experience are a good way to provide perspective. Do you know anyone who is homosexual? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be physically intimate with someone in order to share a human experience, even if that person is different from you in ways of which you have little understanding? Have you ever tried or even considered being someone you just met and who compulsively repulses you because of who they are? Are you repulsed because that's who you are, or are you repulsed because you have yet to fathom who they are?
Friday, September 19, 2014
Gushing
2014-09-19. This is a public diary.
And still, we are so different that any union is sure to be rife with compromises. Big important compromises: children, career, friendships, hobbies, etc. So why is it that one still wants something so fundamentally problematic. Is it timing, luck, fate or fortune? Is it biology, physiology or psychology? Is it romance, magic or something else?
I think for me it's balance. Being able to respect and identify with another competent, rational, intelligent human being and share our observations, thoughts and interpretations having them be different, even mutually exclusive, and yet still valid to each individual separately. Having the divergence be so close to the core, the most desirable, passionate relationships are inherently the most problematic. Hopefully I'm just too young and have yet to discover true love, something similar yet simpler.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Notes to Self
I'm making this into a public diary. It is not a blog. It is for me. It's public, perhaps selfishly, for me as well. Because I want to live without secrets, it is for me, my freedom.
The below content was written a few months ago and is unrelated to the above decision.
Passion for understanding others' ideas, community, equality and global human development motivates me far more than money, influence, power and at times even more than relationships. At TEDx Madison 2014, I want to learn about and to try to understand other people's motivations, ideas and experiences and how they relate to my own passions and motivations. If requested, I would happily want to put together a talk on observations regarding current trends in the development of global human culture and society (diplomacy/international law, economic and financial trends, language/housing/clothing/food, technology, health, education, etc.; basically an overview of - as a species - where we've come from, where we are, and perhaps touching briefly on some places we might yet go); I would want to present it if I thought it was good enough and if others validated that opinion.
Friday, December 6, 2013
When the US or the EU Finally Defaults on Their Debt
Basically two things can happen when one of the leading super powers finally goes so far as to simply not pay back our debts in an agreeable manner. War and forgiveness. For the sake of understanding how the citizens of the lender nations feel in this circumstance, let's pretend that the US is actually a lender nation, and that the EU is actually a debtor nation that owes the US trillions of dollars and is about to default on it's debt and working on renegotiating that debt with the US. The president is working with Congress to decide
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