Thursday, 14 March 2024 ------------------------ In the eleventh chapter, we look into the implications of the theory of constructed emotions in the justice system. Again, I’m not going to discuss much of the contents in the chapter but rather use it as inspiration for what I’d like to write about. In the last chapter, I mentioned that I was tired of what I felt was incompetent authority. I deliberately used the word felt to acknowledge that I was basing this opinion from a narrow perspective, with only the information I could see from my point of view. The reason I find it important to emphasise this is because it’s natural to underestimate the complexity of why things are as they are when you haven’t seen the full picture. From my experience with managing both moderators and players on Minecraft servers, I have personally experienced how messy and difficult cases can be, how resource intensive they can be, and how people not involved or only participate from one angle are blind to all the forces at play, yet have strong conviction of the conclusions they make. I’ve had people, after becoming moderator, tell me how naive their understanding of previous cases where as a player after they themselves become the person they once called incompetent, corrupt or evil. But even with that role of moderating players, they still don’t understand the forces at play that comes with moderating moderators. (who moderates the moderator of moderators?) This is one of the reasons moderation can be incredibly draining emotionally. You realise it’s not a pretty role, you endure endless abuse, but due to forces at play, many times you can’t defend your judgement without putting others at risk of abuse or the safety of all. How idealistic ideas fall flat in the face of reality, where it’s either painful and unsatisfying compromises or burning it all to the ground. I’m not saying this to defend authority, only remind that it’s easy to complain and believe there’s easy solutions when you don’t have all the information. We faced great difficulty with this in the context of a Minecraft server, a small, controlled environment, imagine how complex it can become for institutions in our society. Instead of only looking at parts of a society, I think we must look at it as one system, part of a larger system, a society of many societies in the world. You can’t think of one society in isolation. You must also distinguish between the actors and the driving forces that influence their decisions. An issue in our society may only be a symptom of a long term systemic issue. We may cause irreparable damage by treating the symptom instead of the cause. We may enjoy temporary relief until new symptoms surface, including side effects from our previous treatments. We may fight over which symptom to treat, which treatment has minimal side effects, all while the underlying issue spreads like a cancer, becoming a terminal issue. If god is a construction of social reality, then I propose that GDP is our god today. You may question your faith in this god, but collectively as a society, our faith cannot be questioned. On judgement day, at the end of the quarter, all stand accountable to god. We must submit ourselves to god, the future of humanity to god’s will. I’m not trying to make any serious statement about GDP with this, I just thought it was a funny example of how difficult it is to change society when a measurement becomes so important that it’s a crisis if we don’t reach the target in perpetuity, unable to question if it’s still serving us (see goodhart’s law for more about how measurements go bad). Even as a powerful business leader or politician, how do you go against it? You’ll systematically be forced out of any power you hold. No one is safe to go against GDP, including nation states. At all levels of society, think of how the importance we give to GDP is shaping our world. What we produce, what we consume. How can any meaningful change happen with such forces at play? All praise to GDP.