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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2320 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 13, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This is probably the philosophical quandary I'm facing.

Probably if I had to summarize it in a sentence it would be this: Creativity comes from Freedom, and Freedom is the freedom to be stupid. Arguing merely that a rental economy is optimal in each individual case is not enough, because on a meta level we need variety, which can only be created by making sub-optimal decisions.

RE: HOAs and architectural standards for example. I would not want to live in most developments or towns with strict architectural uniformity, but I often enjoy visiting towns in New England that do have those kinds of standards. So I don't just want all freedom or all uniformity, I want varieties of different ways of running a town.

I also think there's a bit of quandry from the 'search problem' wherein it can be impossible to know if you've actually found the best accessible maxima when optimizing for [whatever you value] or if you're only on a local maxima but a couple miles over is a much better one, if only you could find it.

For instance, if you only ever see big grey suburbs, it might feel like the ideal living arrangement, until you randomly come across a neighborhood built on different architectural principles and displaying different aesthetics, and you find it MUCH more appealing!

But if most neighborhoods are 'forced' to have the same or similar standards, obviously you're much less likely to encounter the variants you might prefer.

So a level of freedom to 'explore' design-space, or whatever other space, even if most paths are dead ends, is kind of critical, and allowing individual ownership (and the attendant creative expression that we argue comes with it) you enable a much wider search for the best maxima, and one hopes this improves everyone's wellbeing.

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