That's a very good question!
That's a very good question!
110 comments
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Almost everything is pretend though, unless we're talking about the basic laws of science (and even those change with context).
Language is "pretend". Words don't mean anything unless we all agree they mean something.
Valuing family is "pretend". We all agree to give family importance, but plenty of animals don't.
All laws are pretend. Country borders are pretend. Gender roles are pretend. Social position is pretend. Even my job is only my job because everyone agrees to give me responsibility in this role. Pretty much everything in society only works because of tacit agreement.
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You should check out the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Humans have this amazing ability to make up all sorts of crazy shit, but it has huge advantages in our ability to organize.
One on one, a chimp would easily beat up a human. Ten on ten, the chimps still have an advantage. But 200 on 200, humans would win no contest. Our ability to make shit up allows us to coordinate with huge numbers people that we don't even know, which is extraordinarily rare.
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What differentiates humans from all animals including apes is our ability to cooperate & coordinate. Cooperation is what has allowed humans to dominate the world. I'm quite optimistic about the future simply because our innate sense of cooperation is all the good we have ever needed to conquer any and all evil the world has managed to create at any point in history all the way to now, and will continue to hold true forever.
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Couldn't have said it better myself.
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Not everything is "pretend" but what you have identified is that all societal rules are participatory algorithms, and that includes money and laws. Money, or really wealth and value, are effectively resource allocation and prioritization algorithms. It's why the very idea of individuals, or even organizational entities largely decouple from societal benefit, having comparable allocative power to actual societal management structures is batshit absurd.
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One could argue that since we are but merely very complicated, slow burning chemical reactions, that the very concept of "pretend" is pretend.
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tokes* duuuuuuuuude
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Come with me, and you’ll be, in a wooooorld of pure imagination!
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Living there you'll be free, if you truly wish to be.
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Valuing family is “pretend”.
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See the problem with this though, is that if everything's just pretend and made up, then I can't get mad about Elon Musk's "Nazi Salute". And yet, there are abundant red flags showing a rise in fascism, that if ignored, may very well permanently alter the world order and our standard of living. In the past 48 hours there was a significant chance the supply of coffee that drives most of my economic output could be disrupted or tariffed.
And, that's because a lot of this comes back to the connotation of the word, "pretend". Replace it with the word, "Idea", and you get sort of the same concept, but suddenly the non-existent thing sounds much more powerful.
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No one is saying you can’t get mad except for the people trying to avoid consequences for their shitty actions. We may have made up the thing which represents another but we did so for a very real reason. Everyone who says “it’s just a word” in regards to very intentionally calling someone a slur has a laundry list of “made up”(and literally made up because Conservatives are dumb as shit and fall for fake news constantly) things that they get extremely pissy about. I mean, borders anyone?
So get mad, a Nazi salute is a fucking threat at its core and that’s plenty real. Dehumanizing language is intended to put people in very real danger. Someone taking your money removes you from our very real system of cooperation and safety. These people do not get to dodge consequences because they have an F- level understanding of the most basic concepts of philosophy that they can’t even apply consistently.
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Agree with the sentiment, but things being pretend or made up doesn't mean that you have to ignore them or that they are trivial. It's probably good to recognize that Nazism doesn't exist in the vacuum of the cold universe, but is a uniquely human endeavor that does not need to exist because we are the ones that spoke it into existence. We have the power to shape reality for the best
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Why can't you get mad? I can get mad at characters in books and video games. Those are certainly not real.
I can even get mad at a strawman that I debate against while I shower. And that is literally pretend.
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When you believe that money isn't real, you are reduced to naive and tautological solutions to the problems money creates.
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You keep saying that word... I don't think it means what you think it does.
Pretend, something that isn't what it is being represented to be. E.g. imaginary.
Just because people collectively agree on things doesn't make it pretend.
Money doesn't have value because we pretend it does, but rather because we believe it does. Because we trust that it does.
And yes, there is a difference.
On a more real note, it also has value because everyone else trusts that it does. All those other countries. And no, they are not countries because we pretend that they are. They're countries because we recognize their authority over their territory, and their citizens recognize the authority of their government.
So why do we recognize authority? Because of means to enforce it.
There's no pretend going on. The consequences will be very real.
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Also why would a child ever ask if money is pretend? It's not something they've only heard about in a storybook and never laid eyes on themselves.
Whole post is bullshit, lol.
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I disagree with this statement. My kid, age five, has not asked this about money; but they have asked about, for example, characters on a screen. If you're asserting that they wouldn't ask because it's something they've physically touched, I see your point, but my kid has (when much younger) asked similar things about, for example, figurines they've held.
I will say, for my kid in particular, that it's more likely they would ask questions like "what does a dollar mean" or "does someone make decisions about the money" or even "what is money," but the "real or pretend" question is plausible IMHO.
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It's real if you don't have enough, but pretend if you have too much.
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easy: Pretend.
But it becomes real if everyone pretends.
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"Both"
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Technically aren't a lot of things just societal concepts if you think hard enough about them?
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Countries, slut shaming, office hours, time zones, dress codes...
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I strongly recommend Sapiens: a short story of humanity by Yuval Harari if you'd like to think about this a bit more, particulary his concept of 'myths'.
I'd guess that you'd find a summary of that chapter online without buying the whole book.
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Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely have to check it out sometime. :D
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Sort of. Theres maybe something to things that naturally exist, whether we name them or not. We didnt create beavers in the same way we did money.
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Well... that's why I didn't say everything. :p
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Idk, I've lectured my kids on monetary and economic policy enough that they know better than to ask that question.
The oldest is 10, but he just had to know why I dislike Trump, and you can't really get into why tariffs are bad without first explaining the fundamentals of supply and demand, as well as central banks managing monetary policy. They might not even be that far off if you ask them when the last fed rate hike was.
I wish I was joking, but I'm already in too deep with my conviction that I'll answer any question they have.
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I'm in this boat with my kiddo, and like you I intend to give serious and honest answers for any questions (although occasionally I do say "I don't think you're quite ready for that topic yet", or I'll keep the details light and inform her of why).
It's been working out great, similar age to yours. She trusts me to give her real info no matter the topic (this is invaluable), she accepts when I tell her that she's probably not quite ready for XYZ, and the auxiliary benefit is that I'm forcing myself to get a bit more efficient even when I'm in
--verbosemode.ETA: we're also careful to tell her that we expect her to make her own opinions about everything and not just accept ours. That includes things like religious beliefs and politics when she decides to engage with those topics.
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Awesome, you rock.
And yeah, I try to scope things down to their age level. If my kiddo is asking why I don't like a given politician, they don't need the whole rundown of their platform, just one or two bullet points to take back to their friends in a "but my dad said..." type argument. The same goes with sciency stuff, they usually don't care, they just want to win some argument (e.g. my older kids love telling my youngest that the sun is going to explode).
And yeah, when there are multiple sides, I'll try to explain them as best I can. If the issue isn't settled, I'll explain the various sides as best I can and tell them why I arrived at the conclusion I did, as well as how much I trust the evidence from each side. We haven't discussed it, but if we talk about global warming/climate change, I'll try to explain why one group says we need immediate change and the other wants a more measured approach, what impact it could have on the economy, etc, but in terms appropriate for their age level. If it seems they're at an impasse about something w/ a friend, I'll ask them to try to explain things from the other kid's perspective. And then we'll explore why they might feel that way, and why that's different from how my kid feels. That's usually enough for them to find some kind of compromise.
Hopefully that approach helps them understand that considering other points of view is valuable, but at the end of the day, they should follow the direction the facts lead them.
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you can’t really get into why tariffs are bad without first explaining the fundamentals of supply and demand
Tariffs mean the government charges you extra when you buy something from another country. Do you like paying more for things?
Sure, like everything else, you can make it more and more complicated, but the fundamentals are pretty simple and don't require an understanding of supply and demand.
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Why don't we just buy it from another country? Or just make it ourselves?
It turns out some countries produce a lot and other countries don't produce as much, so you can't just switch production to somewhere else overnight. That's where supply and demand comes in.
But yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, and I definitely initially explain things according to their age level. Obviously 5yo doesn't need a full lecture on economics, but the 10yo can grasp a bit more.
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My kids are too young to ask questions, but I intend to do my best to give them good thorough answers, including doing my best to find out when I don't really know the answer.
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I feel sorry for that 10 year old. If they just had to know, its because their life is surrounded by it. A normal 10 year old wouldn't give a shit. I would project less politics into the household for the kids sake.
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I avoid politics at home, this was a question that came up from school. It's election season, and kids are curious.
I kept it about issues though, not partisan nonsense. My kids get allowance so they understand sales tax, and I told them tariffs are like an extra sales tax that you don't see, but only for certain things, so I'm worried it'll increase prices too much.
I think they discussed the election in class or something, hence the discussion. I never bring it up, but I'm willing to answer any question they have. They asked who I voted for, so I told them Chase Oliver because our state is going to Trump regardless, so I don't have to worry about my vote changing anything and prefer to give a third party some visibility. That's as far as I've discussed things with them, because I'd like them to form their own opinions.
As for the rate hike bit, that was largely a joke. But I do follow monetary policy fairly closely and my kids have seen me reading those news articles. I tend to read them a bit more lately due to high inflation.
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I personally suspect that the belief that money is real is problematic, psychologically.
There are all sorts of experiments that show we treat money in our minds differently from most other things.
A famous example is that many people would think nothing of taking a ten cent pen from work, but would be abhorred at the idea of taking money, even ten cents, from petty cash and just keeping it.
An experiment has shown that, if you give people the chance to cheat for money, or to cheat for tokens that can be immediately exchanged for money after the experiment, they will cheat more for tokens, despite the fact that at that point, the tokens are technically a type of money.
So, this sort of thing makes me suspect that beliefs about money also influence our ethics and our mental proclivities. So maybe people who believe money is more real are more likely to hoard it or to have gambling problems.
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If I steal a cheap pen, it's because I wanted a cheap pen. There's no deeper meaning to it. I'm not going to fence it for a fifteenth of a baguette at the bakery.
If I steal ten cents though, I break a much deeper taboo because money is by definition fungible. Why do I need the money, what am I going to use it for, and why didn't I empty the cash register while I was at it? These are all worryingly open questions.
Furthermore I reject the premise that stealing 10 cents is functionally equivalent to stealing a pen worth 10 cents; if anything, the premise that these are equivalent depends on a very debatable modern consumerist idea that commodities are perfectly interchangeable for money and/or the belief in a "rational actor" that has never existed outside of economics classes. Sure that may have been be valid if I was in charge of doing a bulk purchase of pens (and even then people aren't as rational as economists would like but I digress). These economics concepts are all too theoretical to apply to individual actors in everyday life.
That pen is "worthless" to my employer (at least in my mind) and simultaneously worth a lot to me; I wouldn't part with it for 10 cents or even 1 euro because that wouldn't be worth the inconvenience of not having a pen, or simply because the idea of someone wanting to buy something I own and didn't intend to sell is offensive to me.I do agree with the basic premise that we treat money as special, but to me that's a natural and rational consequence of its fungible and abstract nature. It's much weirder to consider physical objects to be fungible IMO (even if it makes sense on an abstract level for commodities), and that's why the sentence "you'll own nothing and be happy" induces so much existential dread despite being based on theoretically sound economic principles. I don't care if it's actually cheaper or more resource efficient, I'm not buying a subscription to my woodworking tools or selling my house. I like the psychological safety of owning things.
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That part about rationality is huge. Far too many people believe that something costs an amount because it is worth that amount, and far too many people believe that something “is worth what someone will pay for it” while neglecting concepts like advertising and propoganda. So many things in this world cost far more than they should and wages are getting, relatively speaking, lower each year while those aforementioned costs rise and where’s the rationality in that? And all while people use that same belief to justify to themselves why a billionaire has “earned” their hoard.
It’s our biggest flaw, economically speaking and in my opinion, that we judge someone based on the money they have and not how they may have gained or lost it. A parasite with millions “must be pretty smart” and a hard worker out of a job “must just be lazy”.
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From the movie 'The Magic Christian.'
Billionaire puts a swimming pool full of manure, blood, and other offal in the middle of the London financial district.
See what happens.
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Yes.
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If we agree that something is real then it's real. Proof is in the reward for agreeing and the punishment for disagreeing.
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Just like the Constitution!
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The right likes the Constitution. They just like picking and closing what parts apply on any given day.
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It's pretend, but everyone is forced to get in on it
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It's pretend, but the people pretending are the ones who can arrest you if you don't declare income and pay taxes in their made-up currency.
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I accept green pieces of paper for my not so hard work. It's real as long as we all pretend its real.
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No it's not, but if you don't have any it will destroy your life.
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People existed before money, and they can exist after it.
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Depending on how you define "people"...
And depending on how abstract you accept "money" to be, no reasonable definition of "people" will suffice.
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Its little more than a symbol of capitalist oppression. In a sense its all fake, the entire monetary system is entirely designed to pretend that a small group of elites who do not work create value.
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It's as real as everyone is willing to pretend.
The original network effect, bitches.
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Money isn't real but the idea everyone agrees on subconsciously is it is a medium of exchange.
You have a goat and I have 50 apples. You want my apples but I don't want your goat. OK. Bye bye, good luck finding the next customer.
Or
Sell the goat for the value of 50 apples, and then I can turn that into the new lamp I wanted instead.
Not everyone wants a goat but if you can float the value of something as an IOU (cash) then it's useful.
Same reason why people like crypto, it's the idea of cash but with math securing it's scarcity vs guns and vaults of gold.
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You have a goat and I have 50 apples. You want my apples but I don’t want your goat. OK. Bye bye, good luck finding the next customer.
In the real world:
Ok, I'll let you have my apples, but you owe me.
Or
You want some apples? Sure, have some!
The world operated on debt and gifts for a long time before monetary systems were common. Debt was sometimes formal, sometimes informal. Gifts were sometimes pure acts of generosity, sometimes they were rituals.
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Maybe that worked when you knew everyone in town or that they'd be where you can find them again, but not in a global economy. You can't lend Joe Random 3 goats and he will pay you back if he simply is in another country doing business or is in town for the weekend. Try getting in your car and telling a random shop you don't have cash but you'll pay them back. This logic goes out the window as soon as you involve strangers.
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If money isn't real, then nothing is real, because money can buy you anything. Maybe not a good lesson for a 4 year old but that doesn't make it untrue.
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Fiat currency is as real as the law (and all the baggage and corruption that entails).
Crypto is "Trust me, bro! I keep a spreadsheet in the cloud!"
We'll all be using bottle caps soon enough.
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Yes, even though "as real as the law" is a pretty complicated issue.
Actual money is real in the sense that it's what people use to pay taxes, and if you don't pay taxes the government has the right and the power to put you in prison. It's also what the government is willing to offer people to do things like serve in the military, build highways, etc. That means there's a vast and stable supply and demand for it.
Cryptocurrency is "real" in the sense that sometimes it's the only way to pay a ransomware ransom. But, the people receiving that ransom are almost certainly going to change it into real money, because they're probably not paying off ransomware ransoms, and so they don't really have any use for cryptocurrency.
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It’s as real as a word is.
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The only reason we pretend that money is real is because of the Chinese having a big brain idea that it's more convenient to trade conceptual values, than having to exchange literal five chickens for one cow; one and a half cow for a table; and a table for a room in an inn for one night.
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We also pretend it's real because that's simpler that treating it as a useful fantasy or whatever.
That's a danger of too much pretending.
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Boff
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"Yes."
110 comments