KEEN1.EXE

[Boreas249]

This is a very interesting and enlightening conversation about Keen1.exe

[Levellass]

Think about it less as 'lying' and more as 'inflation'. If money (i.e. something that has value, such as offense) were free, then people would just print more and more of it until it doesn't really have value anymore.

Well now this depends; if the cost of producing something is less than the value obtained in producing it, there is an incentive for people to produce more of it until the supply vs demand curve shifts to make the two values equal. For money this is obvious, more is made until its value becomes less than what it is printed on. (Of course other factors can force this balance, pennies are worth more as scrap than money, the inertia of the American people is something that forces the supply of more pennies at cost.)

But when something is immaterial things get more complicated, especially when human perception comes in. A light you see as twice as bright as another is in fact 10 times brighter. The full moon can be a million times duller than the sun. The perception of offense is something similar.

Offense is also inverse, the more of it, the more demand for it. (That is, if someone is offended by everything other people will have a demand to be offended too, and increase the total amount of offense.)

However offense is one of those rare goods that suppresses its own manufacture; Offense is normally held in check by the fact that others will become offended if that offense is considered ill-placed. There's also the fact that you only have a fixed ability to be offended (or love, or care, or willpower.) which means that only a certain maximum amount of offense can ever exist, dependent on the population. (This is why something big and offensive can overcome the petty differences between people and unite them in a shared cause.)

The end result is that the amount of offense can be surprisingly constant. (We have the best lives of anyone on the planet in history, we live better than kings and emperors did, yet we do not spend our lives in unending bliss and often tend towards the same level of general offendedness.)

[KeenEmpire]

if the cost of producing something is less than the value obtained in producing it, there is an incentive for people to produce more of it until the supply vs demand curve shifts to make the two values equal.

Sorry, but this is nonsense.

However offense is one of those rare goods that suppresses its own manufacture; Offense is normally held in check by the fact that others will become offended if that offense is considered ill-placed.

This doesn't necessarily reduce the production of offense (and didn't in this case), as some people are unable to take a hint. Note also that it's only a rare case in which the public actually decide to backlash against an injustice.

The end result is that the amount of offense can be surprisingly constant.

Hell no. None of what you've said remotely indicates this, and when it comes to it, our improved communication has increased the inflation of offense, by 1) demonstrating its effectiveness to people who might not have otherwise employed it, 2) saturating the mindshare, devaluing it in larger areas and requiring for yet even more levels of offense by newcomers trying to capture their own mindshare.

[Levellass]

Sorry, but this is nonsense.

Interesting, how so? And if so, what really goes on?

I thought this was one of the more basic truths of economics; you only do something if you get some sort of benefit from it. And supply and demand means that the more of something there is, the less demand and the lower price people are willing to pay.

I am VERY interested in your argument here.

This doesn't necessarily reduce the production of offense (and didn't in this case), as some people are unable to take a hint. Note also that it's only a rare case in which the public actually decide to backlash against an injustice.

Well that depends, if being offended by something (Say a black man as president) itself causes offense, people as a whole will tend to be less offended by it than if it does not cause offense. On many issues it is not 'right' to be offended and so people check themselves. In the same way while the fact that nudity causes offense does not eliminate it from society, it does reduce its prevalence vs places where it is not offensive.

Hell no. None of what you've said remotely indicates this, and when it comes to it, our improved communication has increased the inflation of offense, by 1) demonstrating its effectiveness to people who might not have otherwise employed it, 2) saturating the mindshare, devaluing it in larger areas and requiring for yet even more levels of offense by newcomers trying to capture their own mindshare.

But is that TRUE? Are people living in a tribal society in Africa for example less offended in general than we are? It's easy to think that our lives are filled with petty offenses and that these multitudes of small offenses must surely outweigh a few larger ones, but historically people have had much larger issues to get quite stirred up over. Hell, people stone those that offend them to this day, how do we weigh up the 'volume' of offense? Just look at how touchy Muslims were about a single cartoon.

The issue is difficult to determine, but a number of social studies have shown remarkable constancy in human emotion across varying cultures today. The classic example is happiness: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopher ... untries-2/ ; and we know things like winning the lottery tend to only temporarily increase happiness, likewise stress correlates with relative conditions (It rises when the economy tanks, even if those people are living a better, far better life than those in other countries who have a stable-ish ecconomy http://stress.lovetoknow.com/Countries_ ... ess_Levels )

This ability of humans of course extends to physical stimulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclimatization#Humans http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g ... uation.htm While as far as I can tell at present there have been no specific studies into 'offense levels' across societies (A lot of WEIRD studies, but none on the scale required.) it would stretch credibility to say 'Offense is not like happiness or temperature, or most other things humans respond to, it's special!'