Might quantitative society end up the theme of the next High?

[nguyenivy]

Thanks to computing being imposed into many areas of life lately (even pre-COVID), this has a side-effect of the numbers running the show. Metrics in many categories that people use to measure how good or bad life is. COVID-19 may be accelerating what was already going on in the personal fitness device arena for a decade. People would wear these devices that capture more and more information with each new release then extrapolate to scores that people assume determine how healthy they are. Similar thing playing out with climate change: we need to stay below +2.0 ºC relative to pre-industrial times & how we get there is by consuming X units less energy per year by year Y. Later down the line (Awakening?), we all realise while we look good on paper, we really haven't got anywhere. Also: material needs easily met during the High but no sense of higher purpose in life, with this changing in the Awakening. How have Highs usually played out in prior saecula? Were there any in the past that didn't follow a war?

[David Horn]

(05-19-2021, 08:51 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Thanks to computing being imposed into many areas of life lately (even pre-COVID), this has a side-effect of the numbers running the show. Metrics in many categories that people use to measure how good or bad life is. COVID-19 may be accelerating what was already going on in the personal fitness device arena for a decade. People would wear these devices that capture more and more information with each new release then extrapolate to scores that people assume determine how healthy they are. Similar thing playing out with climate change: we need to stay below +2.0 ºC relative to pre-industrial times & how we get there is by consuming X units less energy per year by year Y. Later down the line (Awakening?), we all realise while we look good on paper, we really haven't got anywhere. Also: material needs easily met during the High but no sense of higher purpose in life, with this changing in the Awakening. How have Highs usually played out in prior saecula? Were there any in the past that didn't follow a war?

My background in engineering should make me a prime advocate for metrics, but I'm not a fan.  That's not to say that measuring and keeping track to things is bad. It's not.  What's bad is the unchallenged assumption that the numbers are truth, and should drive decision making.  As the old adage about business goes: some things should be on top and others merely on tap.  Metrics are noisy data aggregated to make them easier to digest.  Data are inputs, not outputs, and we should always remember that.  Analysis and judgement of what they mean is subjective, and are best handled that way.

[pbrower2a]

(05-19-2021, 08:51 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: Thanks to computing being imposed into many areas of life lately (even pre-COVID), this has a side-effect of the numbers running the show.

COVID-19 may be the focus of danger within the Crisis Era. It may have decided the 2020 Presidential election,
and many of us have colorful imaginations about what America would be like in a second act for Donald Trump. I can think of a secret police, torture chambers, and labor camps for dissidents, with prominent journalists having 'unfortunate accidents' such as getting a dose of Plutonium-210 in their beer. 

Numbers are more reliable than personal stories. Yes, I remember people saying that they smoked all their lives and nothing went wrong. They were simply lucky.  

Quote:Metrics in many categories that people use to measure how good or bad life is. COVID-19 may be accelerating what was already going on in the personal fitness device arena for a decade.

The problem was that fitness plans were over-sold, and people who got excited about them at some point were signed to a contract difficult to get out of. They were paying for a dead horse. Figure that if a gym membership (maybe complete with a swimming pool) is part of your health-insurance plan and your physician finds out about the level of your participation, then maybe you will use it. People who work out are less likely to have heart attacks and strokes... and it is good for mental health too.   

Quote:People would wear these devices that capture more and more information with each new release then extrapolate to scores that people assume determine how healthy they are.

My physician wants me in a health club and to get a dog. I'd be delighted with either or both. 

Quote:Similar thing playing out with climate change: we need to stay below +2.0 ºC relative to pre-industrial times & how we get there is by consuming X units less energy per year by year Y.

We may end up redesigning how we do things beginning with land use. The car-dependent suburb may have to go, and with that will be more efficient use of residential and commercial property. High-cost ways of doing things, like shopping malls, often are the first economic victims of a 4T when people must cut back on discretionary spending or wasteful use of time. Energy is a real cost, and solar panels and wind turbines may be more economical than distant power plants at some point. 

Do you want efficiency as a way of life? Then imagine living in a three-story building in which the first floor consists of commercial establishments and the upper two levels are housing. I've seen some convincing videos on Strong Towns that have efficient infrastructure and sustainable funding. A few hints:

Start here for suggestions on how to remake America into something more sustainable.   

Yes, the author suggests that suburban-style development in America is a version of a Ponzi scheme, and I can connect this to exaggerated versions such as the Texas real-estate boom and bust in the 1980's and the more pervasive one in the Double-Zero decade. But even without deliberate fraud, when the growth stops, the urban decline is precipitous.  (This is good for another provocative thread). Greater Detroit made an early commitment to suburbanization, and when growth came to an end in the auto industry in Greater Detroit, along came the disaster. Los Angeles got away with that a bit longer... but look where it is. Just look at Philadelphia, St. Louis,  and much of northeastern New Jersey. 

Atlanta... Dallas... Houston... Phoenix... Oklahoma City...  you are headed that way.   Costs look slight early but rise exponentially. Therein lies the problem.
 

Quote:Later down the line (Awakening?), we all realise while we look good on paper, we really haven't got anywhere. Also: material needs easily met during the High but no sense of higher purpose in life, with this changing in the Awakening. How have Highs usually played out in prior saecula? Were there any in the past that didn't follow a war?

A First Turning is spiritually dead or empty. Unlike in a 3T, when everything is a grim struggle for life or the attempt to deceive oneself of the nastiness of life in some debauch, a 1T achieves much economically while keeping life excessively simple. Habits that get people through a Crisis Era (Keep it Simple, Stupid) eventually lose their necessity.