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United States3988 Posts
Responsibility is the ability to respond to one's environment. It's the fundamental requirement for survival. If you can't respond you die.
As such, abdicating responsibility is equivalent to trusting someone else to ensure your survival. Sometimes this is required, for example, in society we have a group responsibility which causes us to organize and perform different functions. For example, for your body to function, each organ has a specific responsibility and relies on other organs to each perform their responsibilities. The result is a body which as a whole can adapt to it's environment, but any individual part can't do so in isolation.
Issues arise when all of the responsibility is concentrated to just a select group of people while others enjoy no responsibility. This is an unstable social situation. The group will not survive if it continues for too long.
Responding to one's environment means taking in all stimuli (information) and forming a rational response. Throughout much of history, this was a pretty simple task. Farms needed to be worked, children needed to be reared, and criminals needed to be dealt with. Survival was dependent on material needs, and it was obvious if someone was shirking their responsibility to provide for themselves and their family.
Today, in the 21st century, our environment has radically changed. We have big machines to grow our food, cheap products, and construction materials and tools to make cheap housing as well. The vast majority of the population doesn't need to struggle for basic needs. Our biggest problem is avoiding excessive consumption which creates artificial scarcity.
How do we then distribute responsibility evenly to ensure social stability and group survival? What does non-material-based responsibility even look like?
The answer is that today's environment is now primarily one of knowledge, information, and truth. It is now both the most dangerous and most beneficial substance. It is the basis of our technology to keep us fed, as well as ideologies which cause us to go to war. Instead of working the farm, the new form of responsibility is reading books, articles, papers, history, everything. Only a few of us are out there working the fields in the 21st century (reading/thinking), while the vast majority are letting others do that for them. It's just that we can't as easily see them sitting in the shade anymore.
In the 21st century, the new commodity is certainty. The masses are certain -- it's easy on the intellect, emotions, low stress, and irresponsible. Scientists, philosophers, rulers, and "conspiracy theorists" are bearing all the uncertainty. They are taking all the responsibility for discovering and vetting the truth, choosing the course for the future, and staying awake at night with neurons firing away, trying to solve the world's problems.
This is an unstable situation, because the masses are highly polarized and violent, for the certainty in their conflicting beliefs will only tear the world apart. In order for us to survive, the burden of uncertainty must not fall on the shoulders of the few, but rather be equally distributed among everyone. Everyone must come to their own conclusions about things. Everyone must think critically. Everyone must ask questions. Everyone will need to get to the point to where they admit that they truly don't know and must find the answers for themselves. No longer can we afford to simply let some "smarter person" make all our decisions for us. Everyone must be diligent in the search for truth. There are too many net consumers of certainty and too few net producers of certainty. (Net certainty is produced by trying to eradicate one's personal uncertainty.)
This is what personal responsibility looks like in the 21st century. We'll need to each start contributing if we wish to survive for another million years as we have in the past survived by physically hunting and farming.
 
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On February 28 2013 15:50 fight_or_flight wrote:
Responding to one's environment means taking in all stimuli (information) and forming a rational response. Throughout much of history, this was a pretty simple task.
What do you mean by rational? I think you might be begging an important question here.
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United States3988 Posts
On February 28 2013 16:02 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 28 2013 15:50 fight_or_flight wrote:
Responding to one's environment means taking in all stimuli (information) and forming a rational response. Throughout much of history, this was a pretty simple task. What do you mean by rational? I think you might be begging an important question here.
Rational behavior is whatever behavior is most likely to ensure survival when considering all stimuli (information). It's based on end results mainly.
If you are looking for a fallacy in this, look at it from two perspectives: in one case if the OP is true and in the other if it's not.
If the OP is true and there is an unfair concentration of uncertainty, it is ok to post this because I am neither making an absolute claim nor do I expect the reader to blindly or uncritically read this and accept it all. It's just a thought to bounce around in other peoples' restless brains.
If the OP is false, then it's lack of references and hardened precision will make it inconsequential anyway.
We will likely only know if it's true or not at some point far in the future when we look at empirical results.
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Responsibility is the ability to respond to one's environment.
By this do you mean respondability? You are mixing the two and it makes my orderliness hurt.
From the rest I would guess you are saying survival is dependent on everyone taking responsibility for keeping themselves informed, and that they are not. I think that's a simplification of the world, because the truth of things may not be so important to an individual. Whenever I hear talk of the masses being complacent and permitting bad things to happen through their own ignorance, I think of the dude. The dude represents an individual that does not care about things that do not concern him, but has in his own way found an existence that is stable enough for him to subsist on. All the other people in the movie have an agenda that they try to push (except for donnie), but in the end, I think it's safe to say that none of it actually ended up mattering in the first place. Complaining about how everyone is ignorant besides yourself is not very openminded, in my opinion.
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please stop this pseudo intellectual bullshit the blogs section is as asinine to read as it is
the whole problem with ur sort of thinking is that you assume that the people in charge are actually competent, coordinated, and unified enough to come up with this sort of plan
also this part
There are too many net consumers of certainty and too few net producers of certainty. (Net certainty is produced by trying to eradicate one's personal uncertainty.)
what the fuck does that even mean
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lol our environment rapidly changed in the 20th century. As an avid macroeconomist, I think that the 21st century will see the rise of global trade between developed and developing countries and interdependence between everyone
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United States3988 Posts
On February 28 2013 22:03 32 wrote:By this do you mean respondability? You are mixing the two and it makes my orderliness hurt.
I don't think that's a word. I think my definition is functionally ok; moral, legal, and other responsibilities are perhaps complex, but they are all environmental in nature.
From the rest I would guess you are saying survival is dependent on everyone taking responsibility for keeping themselves informed, and that they are not. I think that's a simplification of the world, because the truth of things may not be so important to an individual. Whenever I hear talk of the masses being complacent and permitting bad things to happen through their own ignorance, I think of the dude. The dude represents an individual that does not care about things that do not concern him, but has in his own way found an existence that is stable enough for him to subsist on. All the other people in the movie have an agenda that they try to push (except for donnie), but in the end, I think it's safe to say that none of it actually ended up mattering in the first place. Complaining about how everyone is ignorant besides yourself is not very openminded, in my opinion.
I agree that it's not possible to not be ignorant in general, and many times it's inconsequential. But actually what I'm discussing is spreading uncertainty rather than knowledge.
So basically the guy you are talking about remains mostly ignorant (as we all do), but he is aware of it. He doesn't assert that he knows things (he doesn't assert certainty).
For example, I saw a thread recently about how someone was saying Islam is a demonic religion. People were coming down pretty hard on either side of the issue. I had many impulse biases myself. But ultimately I had to conclude that I really didn't know enough about it to say it was or wasn't.
Regarding your last sentence, ignorance, open-mindedness, and certainty are all different and have non-trivial relationships with each other. I'm pretty sure I'm quite ignorant. Open-minded, that one is hard to know objectively. Certainty kind of is too...but I think I can say I'm pretty uncertain since I can't even say if I am for sure or not.
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United States3988 Posts
On February 28 2013 23:51 Caller wrote:
the whole problem with ur sort of thinking is that you assume that the people in charge are actually competent, coordinated, and unified enough to come up with this sort of plan
Could you elaborate? I don't think there are any 3rd parties involved here except society at large.
also this part Show nested quote +There are too many net consumers of certainty and too few net producers of certainty. (Net certainty is produced by trying to eradicate one's personal uncertainty.) what the fuck does that even mean
I'm saying that certainty isn't a yes or no thing, rather it's a continuum, almost like a commodity.
For example, lets say that you're a structural engineer, and you just designed a bridge. Well, all your colleagues are really confident in your abilities, and they just basically end up rubber-stamping all your calculations and analyses.
They are consuming certainty by believing in your abilities and falsely reporting it as their own (even if you turn out to be correct). You are producing certainty by actually going over everything line-by-line, bolt-by-bolt, cable-by-cable. Your paranoia (uncertainty) about the bridge is producing net certainty with regards to the overall project.
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EPT
