Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.
~ Albert Camus
One of my long themes is that people have a natural – and I believe unexamined – attraction to sustaining certain activities.
The CEO wants to keep his company from going bankrupt. The doctor wants to keep his patient from dying. The statesman wants to keep his polity from collapsing.
However, all companies go bankrupt. All patients die. All polities collapse.
Seeking to sustain these things as an end unto itself is absurd.
In contrast, I argue that life and everything in it is an extraction problem:
How can we take more?
How can we get more out of life?
How can we more fully seize the day?
Those three questions have different frames. The first greedy, the third idealistic. Yet, underneath it all is the same question. Time is short. Resources are limited.
How do we use the time we have, to make the resources we have, fit our vision of the best possible world?
We get wrapped up sometimes worrying whether we are signaling that our vision for the world is noble or that our vision is base. Are we doing it for the good of humanity or only for ourselves?
However, in all cases it is our vision. And, some of the worst atrocities in history were committed by people who at the time genuinely believed that they were making the world a better place.
Part of coming to the world honestly is to know that we are extracting. We are imposing. We are here to change what is into what we wish it to be. That’s the beginning and the end.
Then we can come back and more honestly ask, how do we extract in the best possible way. How do we do the best we can with what we have.
And, how would we know if we weren’t?
8 comments
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Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Mr. Violet (@EuropeanViolet)
Am I misunderstanding, or you’re basically restating Epicurus?
Anyway this caught my attention:
“In contrast, I argue that life and everything in it is an extraction problem”
is it life *really* a problem?
about the ending “And, how would we know if we weren’t?”
what about reformulating it like this:
“why do we all deeply feel that this is not already the best of the possible worlds?”, which brings to “why do we all deeply feel that there is at least one other possible worlds?”
I’m not necessarily thinking on a huge scale, just talking of a day by day basis, like when you feel that the harsh words that dude hammered on you shouldn’t have happened, that’s equivalent to imagine there should have been an alternative world were that shouldn’t have happened.
PS
I am still in favor of a vast adoption of the violet index by all States on earth.
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Curt Doolittle
NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!! Bad Economics!!! BAD ECONOMICS!!!
The CEO seeks to keep his opportunity cost lowest. He gets the highest return on status, and money at the lowest risk, with the greatest certainty in his current company. ( A CEO is a king. It’s a wonderful position to be in.)
A Doctor wants to keep his opportunity cost lowest. He is measured by his success. His only success is the cure. What else would he do? He would be forced to CHOOSE whether someone dies or not. So to avoid that cost, he chooses to work until epistemologically there is no longer any choice.
A Politician seeks to keep his opportunity cost the lowest. Relationships that can be exploited are the inventory of politicians. The cost of developing another network of relationships, it’s status, it’s rewards, and in particular the cost of learning something new, while competing against younger people with more energy and less in ‘system 1′ is too high and too uncertain.
THE PROBLEM IS NECESSARY PERVASIVE INESCAPABLE IGNORANCE. That is why we have a market, and money, and prices, and norms, and accounting to use as a ‘memory’. That’s why we have numbers, and narratives, and formulae, and rituals – to keep the cost of computation down.
And then we have a lot of people like you that are completely clueless about how hard it is to plan, and how marginal our returns are. Why don’t you focus on rent-seekers instead of ignoring the damage you’re willing to do to producers?
You’re an aggregate junkie. It’s you that has the silly metaphysics.
Sigh. Just when I think there is hope for you.
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Wonks Anonymous
Doctor’s are not measured by their success. If you read Robin Hanson, he frequently points out that doctor’s refused to wash their hands in the face of Semmelweiss and many decline to do so today (even if they accept germ theory). Medical care, on the margin, doesn’t seem to make people any healthier. People don’t choose hospitals based on non-public information about performance, but rather public information about its prestige.
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 9:04 pm
Mr. Violet (@EuropeanViolet)
@CurtDoolittle
Well, pervasive ignorance, ok, I am not sure if necessary and inescapable…
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Curt Doolittle
Lets flip this around?
If you’re right, then why do we care about the environment? Let’s just consume it?
There are a lot of men that would be a lot happier running around in pickup trucks, robbing, pillaging, raping and murdering. I mean, I doubt you’re one of them, but the world is full of them. It’s much more fun than manual labor in the heat. Why DON”T they do that?
You Karl, don’t make your living out of making plans. You make your living out of recommending how to conduct rent-seeking on a national scale, by interfering with people’s plans. Why don’t you do something else instead?
WHy aren’t you a CEO? Or a Doctor, or a Politician?
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Wonks Anonymous
Comparative advantage is one possibility.
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Becky Hargrove
I’ve been batting around various terms for this concept: Lego Capitalism, modular ownership, knowledge based communities.
Friday ~ January 13th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Axel
Again, I’m taken aback by how you can misinterpret some Authors. turning Camus into a simple Carpe Diem thinker, especially writing this as ‘life is an extraction problem’ looks as a betrayal of his thought (one important term in the quotation is ‘revolt’) – ok i’m not really a specialist, but let’s put it as being just a first impression.
“The CEO wants to keep his company from going bankrupt. The doctor wants to keep his patient from dying. The statesman wants to keep his polity from collapsing.
However, all companies go bankrupt. All patients die. All polities collapse.
”
OK, all people living wants to live the next day, yet all people die. Is that the deep meaning of your post ? May be, the Epricurus reference (‘Death is not our problem’) sums it up.
For the sake of complexity, I can assure you I know doctors that do not simply want to keep their patient alive and have a very important role in being able to manage the last days of their patients – managing doesn’t mean here euthanasia – and who do not try every medecine they know when they know it’s inefficient. Basically, no doctors are not simply lowering their opportunity costs or behaving like simple automate. They know that patients happen to die – and they even know it better than you and me.
I think the argument goes the same for politicians and CEO actually : the only point you make is why should we pursue a goal we know we can’t get ? But, most of the time, people are humble enough to know what they can get from reality and they don’t pursue absurd goals. Besides, standing by dying people is not simply – at least to me – arising from a life extraction problem.
“Seeking to sustain these things as an end unto itself is absurd.”
OK, so you still want a meaning of life as you reject some action because they are absurd.
“In contrast, I argue that life and everything in it is an extraction problem:
How can we take more?”
and taking more is the meaning you were looking for. You then have a reason to your action of the day, with yesterday as a reference.
Cool. But, you never really gave up on causality and you don’t have an answer on why extracting more? why more ? what is more ?
more is a non answer. Pb unsolved…
But I’m hopeful, as I know you can do better !