In philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, naïve realism is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are. [Wikipedia]

In social psychology, naïve realism is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.[Wikipedia]

When it comes to social interactions, our sensory testimony can be especially unreliable, and we probably do not see social aspects of the world with clarity, validity, and reliability a good share of the time. There are numerous aspects of social interactions which are not readily observable; things like motivation, 300 different kinds of bias, conscious and not-conscious hopes and fears, and so forth. And that's true of ourselves observing ourselves. Sometimes it is not clear what our own motivation was (in say, quitting a good job) until quite some time later.

The hotness of water or the shape of a tree is more easily nailed down than what, exactly, is going on socially between people, or among a group of people. (Not always, of course; sometimes social interactions are as clear as boiling water.)

Since then Eustis does not allow men to see the world through his eyes, even in exchange for a lot of wine. — Olivier5

I'm not familiar with Eustis; but it's a good story (apropo). Thanks.

Yes, and indeed there are. It was a comment on this particular thread, and some of the gormless and jejune naive realism that's been on display here. — Wayfarer

Well, you're on your way to celebrate the holy day with family; Merry [or happy] Christmas.

But... "gormless" is a lovely word. I've only read it here.

adjective Chiefly British Informal.
lacking in vitality or intelligence; stupid, dull, or clumsy.

Mid 19th century, respelling of gaumless.

I have entertained the notion that the world as we experience may be, in truth, much different than we think it is. Perhaps we would be shocked to see it with sensory abilities we do not have. Perhaps the true perception of the world would show that it is phantasmagorical. [Something phantasmagoric features wild and shifting images, colorful patterns that are continually moving and changing. The Greek word phantasma, meaning "image," is the ancestor of phantasmagoric, a word you can use to describe anything so weird it doesn't seem real.]

The problem with that conclusion (for me, anyway) is that I still exist in the world I perceive and interact with. If the world is, in fact, quite unlike what we perceive, what difference can it make to me? If the solidity in the world I perceive is in truth fluid, well... it seems solid, and solid works.

Yeats' poem, The Second Coming, suggests what it would be like if the 'much different and true reality' should become perceptible:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

And if you don’t? — Olivier5

Then we have discussions like this one.

We reach a consensus. I have poor vision; what my senses tell me about the world as it is will not be the same as someone with excellent vision. We compare notes and we find that there is significant overlap. I rarely see brightly colored birds; they all appear pretty much dark gray or black to me, unless they were eating at a feeder near a window. I've seen pictures, and people very enthusiastically report seeing such and such bird with brightly colored feathers. I've seen many pigeons, crows, starlings, chickens, wild ducks, and geese--and what I see of them fits with what people say about bluejays, cardinals, bluebirds, redwing blackbirds, goldfinches, and so on. We reach a consensus.

We have to learn to see the world as it is. Rock layers don't tell a story until one learns something about rocks--sediment, metamorphosis, uplift, folding, erosion, and so on. Same with all the different parts of the world as it is.

I conclude that nobody can see the world as it is. — Daemon

The-world-as-it-is can only be a human concept, in the end based on experience. The-world-as-it-is might not be accessible if we had no reliable, repeatable, valid sensory experience of the world. Because we have reliable, repeatable, valid sensory experience of the world, we can say we see the world as it is. Were sensory experience highly variable (such that some people perceived water as dry, fire as cool, thunder as a sucking sensation, and so on), we couldn't say the world is as we see it.

Just as a finite number of letters could conceivably be used to create an infinite number of sentences — NOS4A2

Are we sure about that? It seems like a finite set of letters could only produce a finite set of rearrangements (words, sentences). The number might be astronomically large, but still finite.

My understanding is quite finite, so...

My point is it seems like there are an infinite number of possible thoughts to we can think of, and that's not possible, given materialism. — RogueAI

How important to you is materialism's rightness or wrongness? How important the number of possible thoughts?

We "hold stock" in various theologies, philosophies, theories, experiences, etc. Our "portfolio" is how we interpret the world.

Settle on what works best for you. From my own experience, "settling" can be a very fraught problem, loaded with conflicts, especially when there may not be a "final answer" possible.

if materialism is true, there are only a finite number of possible thoughts — RogueAI

I'm OK with there being a finite number of possible thoughts, given that the finite number of possible thoughts is really very hugely huge. Unless you can actually count all the grains of sand in the world (a very hugely huge finite number) or all the variations possible for snow flakes (no two are alike, supposedly) then the world is not impoverished by a finite number of sand grains or snow flakes. Or possible thoughts.

And it isn't enriched by an infinite number of possible thoughts, sand grains, or snow flakes. Just one of my extremely finite opinions, of course.

I don't know whether there are an infinite number of thoughts. I don't know where to begin thinking about an infinite number of thoughts.

The brain contains about 100 billion neurons. Connective tissue doesn't count. If a thought requires combinations of neurons, then there are more combinations possible among one's neurons than there are atoms in the universe. So I have heard, anyway. Since many of the thoughts that people have now and have had in the past are and were unexpressed or expressed and lost to time, it would appear that you have an excellent chance of producing and/or coming across thoughts which you have never encountered before. Ditto for everybody else.

Enjoy.

But the brain is a biological organ with cells that die and are replaced by new cells each day. — magritte

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but dead brain cells are generally not replaced. So, Magritte, if you drink yourself into oblivion tonight, you may lose a few thousand neurons to alcohol poisoning, They won't be back.

It's a miracle we remember anything — magritte

Well, our days are full of slop that isn't worth remembering anyway, so there's that. The upside of that is that since our brain neurons last a lifetime, the vast majority of them are on the job for life.

That said, there is also the fact of neuroplasticity. The operation of the brain changes over time from before birth to the grave. Learning requires physical changes in connections between neurons. If one part of the brain is destroyed by accident or disease, other parts of the brain MIGHT be able to pick up that function; not overnight, but in time. For instance, if you lose vision in both eyes, the visual cortex can acquire the task of interpreting Braille from your fingers. People have lost an entire hemisphere, and eventually the remaining hemisphere adapted.

There are pieces of the brain that must be intact for us to function, even live. Tiny areas in the brain stem control critical, essential functions like respiration, heart beat, and so on.

Henry Gustav Molaison is one of the most important and studied human research subjects of all time. He revolutionized what we know about memory today because of the amnesia he developed after a lobotomy in 1953 to treat the severe epilepsy he developed after a head injury sustained earlier in life.

Molaison lost the ability to transfer new short-term memories to long-term memory. New memories ceased after the surgery, but the pre-surgical memories remained intact. He couldn't live independently, but his personality and cognitive functions were pretty much intact. He worked with one researcher for 50 years, but each day she had to introduce herself to him as a new person.

He could hold instructions in short-term memory and carry out learning tasks, but none of that endured longer than a couple of hours or so.

I understand the stigma of mental illness; the situation is certainly better now than it was say 50, 60, 70, and more years back. Indeed, I think for some problems it has evaporated. "Depression", for instance, seems to have become a euphamism for loneliness, alienation, acute and chronic boredom, hurt, humiliation, anger, and so on. It seems harder for people to say "I'm lonely" than to say I'm depressed" (mentally ill). It's progress (sort of) for mental illness, but a disaster for the suffering which is caused by (what we can call) a deteriorating society.

From what I have read, there are two reasons why patients stop taking prescribed drugs (psychotropic and medical): The drugs don't work, so why continue taking them. The other reason is that they do work, the patient feels better, so stops taking them. It isn't just the deranged that do this. Lots of people stop taking prescriptions as soon as they feel better. For antibiotics, this can have lethal consequences (drug-resistant bacteria). But the same goes for other diseases. No gout for 3 months -- oh, I don't need to take this stuff anymore. Bang, gout is back.

Many people fail to fill prescriptions. They go to the doctor, get diagnosed, feel better now that they know what is the matter with them, and decide that they don't need the medication,

Maybe they don't. There is drug-over-prescription. At 74 I find myself on 6 medications -- 5 maintenance drugs for specific somatic problems which would once have been treated with surgery or not at all. I also take a maintenance anti-depressant. Except for the statin (about which I am unconvinced) I benefit from these meds. Some people, though, take more meds than they can keep track of, don't receive regular follow up, and have problems with drug reactions and interactions.

What is the entitlement of the poor to relief for rent and food and other basics? — tim wood

There is clearly way more than enough money in the United States to provide a fully adequate social service program. Unfortunately, most of the money--for all purposes--is in the hands of an indifferent oligarchy.

Still, even in an ideal situation, some people will become addicted to illicit drugs and their lives will deteriorate severely. Some people will develop paranoid disorders and elude care. Some people will end up without shelter for various reasons.

While acknowledging civil liberties, I see nothing civil about allowing people to literally live on the streets. Encampments of homeless people are an invitation to abuse by predatory groups like drug dealers, traffickers, other homeless people, and the like. No one's life is improved by homelessness.

I am leaning towards people being forced to accept care--but not a minimal raw kind of care akin to jailing them. Given adequate funding, decent housing and excellent social services can be welcoming, attractive, and effective. Yes, some people will not accept care willingly under any circumstances. I'm OK with involuntary hospitalization for people who are too mentally ill to care for themselves.

What do you mean by deinstitutionalization? — Enrique

If I may, @BitconnectCarlos, I can offer an explanation. Prior to the 1960s, and the availability of antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine, people with major mental illnesses (like manic-depression) were housed in residential custodial facilities--the big 'state hospitals'. The patients' health didn't improve much, therapy was either ineffective (psychoanalysis) or unavailable. Crude treatments like electroshock were standbys.

Along came the antipsychotics, and--finally--doctors had drugs that enabled people with many severe disorders to get along outside of the hospital. So... the old wards were emptied out. In time, the old buildings were torn down, and most of the state hospitals were closed permanently.

Once departed from the hospital, the patients were no longer anyone's concern. Many of the former patients were able to get their lives together, generally with the help of social services and family, and live pretty much normal lives. Compliant patients took their meds on time, kept doctors' appointments, and did a good job looking after themselves. Noncompliant patients started falling apart and ended up in a downward spirals that could end in immiseration, homelessness, or early death.

Without custodial institutions, social services, emergency rooms, and short-term psych wards supplied care. For these to be effective, adequate funding is required. Cut back funding, or over-burden the agencies, and once again patients with complex care needs end up in the worst possible situations.

Break-out psychosis is pretty traumatic for everyone concerned, especially the patient. Even now it can be difficult to quell psychosis, and some people do require padded cells, heavy medication, and locked wards until the chaos in their brains can be brought under control. When mentally ill patients are discharged without support, they will either be back in the hospital, be homeless, or be dead.

For the most part, it would seem that the main problem was the political risk-aversion of state and federal officials rather than the risk tolerance of the public that caused the most problems.

Granted, the stats do not tell a crystal clear story. Neither North nor South Dakota imposed many restrictions on their population. They Sturgis motorcycle rally in SD went on as planned, for instance -- pretty much a free for all. Not surprising, quite a few transmissions were traced to Sturgis. Nothing against motorcyclists. The NYT reported a big biomedical conference during the early stages of the pandemic may have resulted in 200,000 transmissions. Science types breathing on each other is about the same as motorcyclists breathing on each other.

Minnesota imposed state-wide restrictions over a long period of time, and Wisconsin didn't. The population of Minnesota and Wisconsin are pretty much the same demographic. Not much difference in outcomes. South Dakota imposed no state-wide restrictions and has managed to have higher rates per 100,000 than either Minnesota or Wisconsin, and that in a sparsely populated state covering a very large area. For some reason North Dakota got off with fewer cases.

South Dakota 74 cases per 100,000 (population 884,659)
North Dakota 48 cases per 100,000 (population 762,062)

Minnesota 57 cases per 100,000 (population 5.4 million)
Wisconsin 64 cases per 100,000 (population 5.8 million)

When states impose restrictions, positive Covid-19 tests, diagnosed cases, hospital admissions, and (eventually) deaths from Covid-19 all trend downward (not instantly of course).

I agree: without early and nationwide draconian measures, Covid-19 (an airborne disease) was bound to spread. But minimal measures in many states, and a late start everywhere, pretty much guaranteed a higher death toll and a higher percentage of the population becoming infected.

I have freeclimbed 250 foot chimneys (rock climbing narrow rock cracks without ropes), I have snowboarded in avalanche zones, and stood within petting distance of Wild grizzlies in rivers in Alaska. Most people will never see any of these things, let alone do them. I have driven at excess of 300kph. I ask not that others are mandated to do these things, but I have no interest in begin told I must stop because others are uncomfortable with them. — Book273

You have demonstrated a high level of "risk tolerance" and (apparently) have competently conducted high-risk activities and lived to tell about it. People vary in their capacity to tolerate potential harm from very risk-averse to very risk tolerant. I suspect this is less a learned attitude and more innate. It may be the case that neither the bold nor the cautious can claim personal credit for their approach.

I have a moderate level of risk tolerance; I do and have done some things that many other people would consider reckless. I don't consider myself irresponsible in the same way you do not (more or less--I don't know you, of course).

I do recognize that sometimes our risk tolerance is irrelevant. Public safety trumps risk tolerance, and I consider this acceptable because we can generally find venues to take risks where public safety is not compromised. You flirting with grizzlies doesn't harm public safety and a grizzly might enjoy devouring you, a win-win. Driving at very high speeds on an isolated road poses little public safety risk. Doing so on a heavily used freeway does pose a public safety risk.

Sometimes the risk to others isn't obvious. Should you deliberately ski in an avalanche zone, and it is known that you were in that area during an avalanche, you may put rescuers at risk--especially since responders don't have the option of saying "He took the risk, so let him die."

Public safety (or national purpose) trumps risk aversion too. I would guess most soldiers sent into battle would strongly prefer to be somewhere else. But public safety, or national purpose, trumps their personal cautiousness.

So, I think we need to balance our attitudes toward risk (tolerance or aversion) with the needs of the collective. What I mean is, find a way of enjoying risk that doesn't endanger others, and accept the consequences (like, if the grizzly overcomes its risk aversion and decides you would make a fine meal).

only very rare rulers in history — a Napoleon, a Stalin, a Reagan — were themselves the creators of the ideas they came up with — Rafaella Leon

What a bizarre claim!

Mills ... died in 1962 and did not have the opportunity to witness a phenomenon that he himself helped produce: the New Left itself became the power elite and lost all interest in “transparency.” — Rafaella Leon

The "New Left" would surely be shocked to discover that they were the power elite. Some members of the New Left may have occupied positions of power, but as a group, they surely are not the power elite.

"The Power Elite" -- the principal power elite members are drawn from the top ranks of wealth, business, the military, politics and academia. They make up the elite because they possess and they represent real, raw power. The rag tag New Left and its drive for civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms has never had a victory that overly inconvenienced the power elite. The 'old guard' of the elites might prefer things the way they were before civil right, gay rights, and so on extracted some gains from the powers that be, but nothing has changed so much that the old guard and the new guard can't live with it.

Ask her, or him or something else -- whatever gender the person claims. It's not my place to decide that for that individual. I readily acknowledge that people may have anomalies which make them outliers as far as "normal for the species" is defined. It's up to them to cope with their anomalies as best they can,

What I don't have to do, and don't want to do, is elevate an anomaly to some sort of 'rare norm'. I was born with visual anomalies which have been difficult to deal with. I'd prefer to have normal vision, but I don't. Tough luck. I cope as well as I can. Your example may wish to be unambiguously male or female, but is not -- tough luck. I wish the person well. But a rare sex-chromosome anomaly doesn't add up to any sort of third sex.

Humans aren't defined as having two legs, and so that's a false analogy. — Michael

The species Homo sapiens is bipedal; that's not the only defining characteristic, bipedalism is one of many defining characteristics. Species have distinct characteristics, whether they be Scutigera coleoptrata or Pongo abelii. That's how we tell them apart. Defects don't define species, but they don't negate species membership either.

[PANGLOSS]
Pray classify
Pigeons and camels

[MAXIMILLIAN]
Pigeons can fly!

[PAQUETTE]
Camels are mammals!

et cetera, proving that this is the best of all possible worlds...

or turn myself into a pickle, I'd still identify as a man despite not having XY sex chromosomes. — Michael

I shall think of you the next time I bite into a pickle.

If to be male is to have genotype XY and to be female is to have genotype XX and if there are people who have neither genotype XY or genotype XX (and there are: see XYY syndrome and Triple X syndrome as examples) then either these people have no sex or there are more than two sexes. — Michael

By that analogy, if there are persons born without 1 or both legs, then one would say humans are not bipedal. Humans are sometimes born with abnormalities ranging from mild to severe.

I knew a person back in the 1970s who had a chromosomal abnormality who went by the name 'Neither She He'. Neither She He was very short, bald (not by choice), and had some other anomalies in proportion, short legs, for instance. I don't remember what choice of clothing Neither She He made. I came across NSH at gay male community gatherings concerning violence and two murders in a cruise park.

So yes, I know there are people who are on the furthest end of the distribution of characteristics, or maybe they aren't even on it. They are exceptions which don't overturn the principle of 2 sexes--the way 1 arm or 1 leg -- or neither of both -- do not annul the principle of bipedalism.

IMHO, it's genotype, XX and XY. Granted, abnormal conditions can arise. These are rare cases--like 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 30,000 for XX male syndrome (>200 were reported in 2010). 1 in 100,000 is the frequency for for XY gonadal dysgenesis. <100 were diagnosed in 2018. Indeed, the disorders referenced concerns errors located in the expression of genes on the XX and Xy chromosomes. Other sexes or genders are not suggested in these abnormalities.

As far as I know, the typical person claiming to be transgender does not display any symptoms of the two syndromes which you mentioned. As far as I know, there are no physical markers for the vast majority of people claiming to be transgender.

Lacking a physical marker does nothing to undermine the claims. People feel the way they feel. There aren't any physical markers for homosexuality either--none that hold up to close scrutiny. anyway.

I'm curious about how people think the pronouns have been used historically because I think this can make it easier to think about how they could be used in the future. — McMo[u][/u]otch

Once upon a time, English (Old English or Anglo-Saxon) used masculine, feminine, and neuter gendered pronouns. Over time, English shed much of its complexity and became Middle English, an evolution of Old English with the addition of many French words (but not French grammar). In the renaissance period (1550 and forward, very roughly) English writers began creating a more complex vocabulary based on Latin and Greek roots. The more complex vocabulary fit into the still simplified grammar.

Early in this long process, masculine "he" became the default neuter pronoun, along with "it". You'd have to delve into Old English to find out more. (That is quite doable, but it would be enormously helpful if you were very interested in learning Old English.)

From what I read as a long since former English major, the use of "he, she, and it" has been stable since at least 1200.

It's one thing to add new terms to a language; that happens all the time. Changing the way a language handles gender, though, is a much much more loaded process, and is likely to be contested. Further, discussions are likely to be taken up between the Biology Department and English (or French, German, Spanish, etc.) Departments.

However much acceptance transgendered persons receive, there is very little biological evidence that there is such a thing. There are 2 sexes. Only 2, and they are fixed at conception.

Other departments in academia get involved. Psychology, Sociology, and Medicine, for instance. The idea that one can change one's gender in fact, not just in practice, is another highly contested idea.

Could it be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset? — FrankGSterleJr

It could, indeed.

Competition will also determine the price. — Brett

Competition is a central feature of the capitalist market economy based on profit. The struggle is to buy raw materials at the lowest possible price, pay workers the least possible amount, sell at the highest possible price, and if at all possible, monopolize the market in [whatever it is a company makes] with the end being the largest possible profit.

In a capitalist economy everybody is competing against everybody else. It may be a very "exciting" system to operate in, but it tends to be very wasteful. A few people come out on top with a lot, and a lot of people end up on the bottom with little. Capitalism doesn't 'specify this result as a requirement' it is just the natural result of a total shake-down system.

Socialism (broadly defined) replaces the total shake down system of doing business with a cooperative, planned, non-competitive system. The phrase "cooperative, planned, non-competitive" might sound soft-headed and idyllic or paradisical, but it is actually hard headed, technologically sophisticated, and (very important) possible.

VALUE, PRICE, AND PROFIT by Karl Marx is a short, popular-oriented book which explains how the capitalist system operates. You can get it here--FREE. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf

So circling back to rephrase my original question: what are the people like who have benefited most from such a system? — Xtrix

In general? Hard to say. There are characteristics that may well apply to people who built fortunes up over time: highly motivated, focussed, maybe type A personalities; people who require large material rewards for their efforts. If they built a fortune they probably have insight into where opportunity is before it knocks on the door, or they recognize an opportunity when they see it. If they are good at it, they probably don't dither.

People who inherit a large amount of money may not resemble people who built up companies. They may or may not have entrepreneurial skills.

Are they the sort of person one would like to go drinking with? Quite likely--but don't let them get away without paying. But one impression I have of people with substantial wealth is that they tend to have their radar up for threats to their social, financial, political status quo. After all, their wealth may be threatened in the event of social turmoil, or they may at least be inconvenienced. If they feel entitled to deference, they won't take inconvenience lightly.

Just one smile at someone who's hurting could set events in motion that will roll out over the world and into the future for centuries. — frank

Apparently he also believes in smiling butterflies whose flapping wings cause an outbreak of lovely summer weather. An optimistic fellow. Smiling at the old woman lying in the street who just got run over by a bicycle will surely ripple out to the 24th century.

Well, I didn't ignore your posts. It's just that The Who's Who of capitalism is a long list, and covers a few centuries. You or I or Joe Blow can list a batch of very rich people, the 1%, and what they did / how they did it. Whether the 1% are 'good people' or hideous gargoyles would require a lot of individual biography, since having a lot of money alone wouldn't make one necessarily good or bad. Carnegie might have been a harsh employer, but he was a good philanthropist. I regularly used the Carnegie library in our small town when I was growing up. Henry Ford was richer than Carnegie; he might have been a better employer than Carnegie, but he was a vicious antisemite.

it's worth understanding exactly who they are. — Xtrix

Brett denies being interested in the question "who they are"; he says it is your question. I've attempted to address what I thought was Brett's question, either who they are or how one could find out.

Here's my last attempt to explain it:

I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.

The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.

Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.

The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.

The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.

Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.

Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.

I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult.
— Brett

The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.

I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.

I’m trying to determine who they are — Brett

And that is not the question. — Brett

OK, then what is your question? Who are the "who" you want to identify?

Regardless of how the money was made, that which might be inherited by a lucky member of the elite was created from scratch by someone before him/her. — Brett

I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.

The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.

Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.

The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.

The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.

Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.

Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.

I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult. — Brett

The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.

I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.

I would love to come up with some really original thoughts but I am inclined to think that the best way is not just to choose a topic that no one has explored enough. The reason I say this is that I believe that the most original thoughts come from experience, of battling with issues deeply. However, in philosophy there is a need to frame ideas in a way which can make them of use to others too. — Jack Cummins

"I try to think but nothing happens." Curly of the Three Stooges said,

My best thinking has occurred when I have been trying to solve a problem about which I was (at least somewhat) passionate. In isolation, one might think one had arrived at a genuinely NEW and IMPROVED idea, only to find that other people (also working in isolation) had come up with the same thing. Damn!!!!

The World draws us into similar thinking. EXAMPLE: In the 1980s the gay community had to find responses to the AIDS crisis. I was an outreach worker for the local AIDS organization, and part of the education and intervention group. I tend to be a loner and do not usually do well at collaboration, so I wasn't very aware of what other people in the country were doing. At an AIDS conference in Toronto, there was a workshop for outreach workers; it turned out that we were all doing very similar things.

Were we all doing similar things because we were unimaginative? Engaged in group think? Stealing each others ideas? No; we were doing the same things--maybe arrived at entirely independently--because the problem we were all working on--finding ways to change high-risk behaviors in high-risk settings--led us to the same approaches.

Granted, intervening in high-risk sexual scenarios isn't philosophy--though a lot of philosophy went into our collective thinking. Like, how much disruption are we willing to impose on our brothers? How does one balance the rightness of individual choice against epidemiology? The fact is that some people are risk averse and others are risk tolerant; how much change can one expect to achieve?

Another problem I wrestled with at the AIDS project was 'pitching information pieces at the right level of vernacular language'. This is a thorny problem because public health people usually avoid blunt vernacular language, and most of the public doesn't use public health terminology. My thinking about this was original to me but of course other people had worked on this problem and had come to similar solutions. (My 'original' solution was to write a computer program to help writers pitch their texts to a broad, low reading level. Original. Oh, slightly. Other people did the same thing, and better.).

WHAT'S THE UPSHOT OF ALL THIS?

Stop trying to be original. IF you have it in you, and IF you give your imagination free rein, you will come up with some ideas that are original to you. Somebody else, somewhere, some time, may have thought of the same thing. That's takes nothing away from your ideas.

It's possible that you will come up with an idea that absolutely no one else in the world has thought of, and therefore may seem like so much of an outlier that nobody will be interested in it. Or, maybe not. But most thinking involves addition and subtraction -- I mean, we add to or carve away parts of others ideas, and arrive at new thinking.

If consciousness is an illusion, who is the illusionist and who is the audience?

I don't know what consciousness is either, but calling it an illusion doesn't do much for me.

someone made it from scratch at some time — Brett

The people who made it from scratch were the workers. Andrew Carnegie didn't make so much as a pound of steel himself.

Why did workers agree to be employed by Carnegie? Because they needed work in order to earn money to live. Didn't Carnegie create the steel mills? Again, workers built the mills -- not Andrew Carnegie.

What Carnegie did was negotiate with investors and bankers to raise the capital to buy raw material. He directed the company on the macro-scale; more of his employees did the micro-managing of day-to-day production.

The pay the workers received for the millions of tons of steel they manufactured was significantly less than Carnegie's expenses. Carnegie walked away with the difference (an enormous fortune).

What goes on in a capitalist economy is exploitation and extraction of surplus value (the difference between the cost of the workers labor and the profit derived from the workers labor), It's not accidental; capitalism, and the legal systems of capitalist countries, is designed to enforce that system.

I am wondering if there are any new ideas which have not been advocated by thinkers already. This is based on my reflection on the way in which I have discovered that any idea which I have, if I do some basic research, seems to have been explored. — Jack Cummins

The more you read, the more YouTube lectures you watch, the more classes you attend, the more you talk to other people, the fewer new ideas you will come across, and the fewer new ideas you can have. So, if you want to have new ideas, ignore everybody else.

Education is, to a large extent, immersion in the ideas that have already been thought, written down, discussed, advocated, promoted, rejected, been forgotten on the shelf, and so on. Education saves us from having to think of everything ourselves, which is a great mercy.

Does all that mean you won't have "new ideas"? No. But... you probably won't think of any MAJOR new idea that hasn't already been turned up by somebody else. And that's OK.

Does all that mean that intellectuals have reached a dead end? No. There are a lot of great ideas that remain to be implemented, and the means by which implementation can be carried out requires... new ideas.

Take a currently popular topic: POVERTY. There is probably nothing new to think, say, or write about it that hasn't already been thought, said, or written about a thousand times over. Most people, when pressed, think we should not have millions (or billions) of people living in poverty. Unfortunately, we do not know how to ACTUALLY eliminate poverty, because we don't know how to reorganize society (and its wealth) in a way that doesn't make things worse. More to the point, we don't know how to get people to change the way they think.

So, Jack, there is a topic where NEW IDEAS are very much needed.

I hate to say it but it seems that we are more of a virus to this planet than COVID is a virus for us. — Thinking

Humans are as much a consequence of evolution as viruses, bacteria, clams, grasshoppers, sparrows, scorpions, kangaroos, and poison ivy. We are part of nature as far as I can tell. Maybe you believe that evolution has a destination, an end, the OMEGA POINT of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin?

I

Thinking, you start out with a seemingly straightforward question by someone seemingly interested in the "problems of modern science". And of course there are 'problems'. But then you make a statement like

It is inherent that all artificially created devices break down over time and are created from the broken parts of nature and the Earth. — Thinking

Of course. tools, machines, and products deteriorate.

But then you go on to say

the devices and entities of nature are eternal and are capable of recreating themselves through the phenomena of birth and are infinitely more perfect than any device we can create today. This is due to the fact that natures devices are created by a seemingly universal intelligence that is reflected in galaxies and beyond.

So it would appear that you are more concerned with a 'religious' or 'spiritual' or some such matters more than scientific problems. You don't have much confidence in science at all. So, one wonders, what is your interest in "the problems of science"? It would appear that you have more confidence in "seemingly universal intelligence". Believe what you want, but it would be better if you were more up-front from the get-go about what your position is.

We pursue knowledge through science, true. We discover things. Sometimes what we discover is dangerous.

We pursue ends besides knowledge. Sometimes the end we pursue involves using knowledge for the purpose of making money or obtaining power. That often leads to disaster.

Sad, but true.

Edit: and you and Pfhorrest have drawn me off topic. — Brett

So, there have been several references to the lists of people who constitute the top of the 1%. However, the entire rich 1% of the population constitutes a far longer list than anyone would want to read. Hundreds of thousands of names are on that list.

Making the list would require a lot of searching in social registries, country club files, housing sales records, corporate records, tax records, property records, and the like -- some of which is, and quite of bit of which is not public.