141–150 of 209 posts
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Wasn’t 80’s pop music disco?
Disco died pretty early on in the 80s. Flock of Seagulls and Tears for Fears are quintessential 80s IMO.
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Actually, that's reassuring. Virtually everyone agrees we are in a state of decline right now.
Strongly disagree we’re (the US) in decline at all. If you think we are, you’d have to agree that the EU is post-decline. The UK, France (the list goes on) are all countries that are past their peak of power, influence and prestige. But I would argue those EU countries haven’t declined in a negative sense. They’ve just evolved into something other than a global superpower.
Europe has some issues too but they don't have the same systemic failures we have. Also, Europe can be independently successful or failing from the us.
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As a counterpoint to this entire line of thought, I'd recommend reading "The Fremen Mirage", a series of blog posts linked to below. It does a fantastic job of going through the history of the idea of "decadence" as what destroys society, and of the idea of "hard times" as the crucible to form strong fighters. The long and the short of it is that there is no historical evidence for this idea, that the "decadent" grou…
A propos, there was a review on slatestarcodex for "Secular Cycles" effectively tracking the rise and fall of civilizations if I remember correctly. The argument is societies start to destabilize and stagnate once wealth concentrates to a certain point, after which war and strife levels the playing field once more. Except, we don't much expect that same sort of upheaval to happen today in Western society. All of whic…
So it's possible that rather than high inequality leading to destabilization, it's the opposite: destabilization leads to decreased inequality.
Eh, I grew up with the faces on TV constantly blabbering about the "decadent West" and yet my country and most of the ex-USSR has deteriorated worse than any western one. My eyes kind of roll every time someone says decadent society as it reminds me of communist propaganda. Not seeing much of those four horsemen, either.
It's an ongoing rhetoric in Russia and much of Eastern Europe. Western issues like gay marriage, feminism, overconsumption, politically-correct language and identity politics are skillfully used by nationalistically-oriented populists to paint a decadent image of the West.
Do Russians not believe in things like equal pay, all jobs being open to women, fair divorce settlements, protection from physical abuse, access to family planning? (Honest question).
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Have you ever heard of "classical" music? It's a single music genre covering about 500 years of music. Then, very briefly, the technology of recording music developed to the point where it was commercially viable to mass-market music. As happens with any technological revolution, that triggered a massive spike in innovation. That spike lasted ~50 years, we're just getting to the end of it. My point is that what happe…
The rate of change is approximately constant when you adjust for population growth: https://populationmatters.org/sites/default/files/styles/ful... Everything moves faster now because there are more people to move it. The rate/person is not that different. What we have seen since the late 90s is the collapse of musical creativity (at least in popular music... you can still find some creative music if you dig really h…
pop music was better before (even 80s music! =)
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Do you think the starving medieval peasant had time to worry about "psychological suffering"?
I think you would be very interested in the rest of the document. That is very similar to the point that the author makes throughout. He suggests that spending more time on fulfilling our primitive needs of food water and shelter would result in a much more satisfying lifestyle and much higher quality of life.
Every now and then the stench of Ross's writing wafts up unexpectedly into your day. At this point it's a pleasure because Ross gets it so wrong you remain in awe of how warped his mind has become. Even a fool can tell you America is in decline, but only a special fool--"doofus" is really the best word--will try to sell it to you the way Ross does:
“The sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration.”
Of course there's a perfectly reasonable materialist explanation for the miseries Ross and his ilk enumerate upon, but it's for their total mischaracterization of the obvious that institutions like the New York Times pay them handsomely.
I realise this is a review, not the actual text. But still. This is utter bollocks. It's typical of non-technical "intellectuals" to completely ignore the main areas of modern human progress, simply because they don't understand them. e.g. the whole discussion on Art completely ignores Video Games, which are undoubtedly Art, and also an area of rapid innovation and development. Yet they're usually dismissed out of ha…
Sure we have access to more knowledge than ever - but have we seen the effects of such? Just the opposite - anti-science sentiment is as high as ever. How many people actually truly learn a language online? Downloading duolingo and using it for 2 weeks before giving up is not learning a new language. We overrate minutiae such as this.
> if you don't understand technology, please stop fucking writing about it.
HN is for openly discussing ideas. Technologists face the same biases as anyone else.
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It's an ongoing rhetoric in Russia and much of Eastern Europe. Western issues like gay marriage, feminism, overconsumption, politically-correct language and identity politics are skillfully used by nationalistically-oriented populists to paint a decadent image of the West.
Feminism is a western issue? Do Russians not believe in things like equal pay, all jobs being open to women, fair divorce settlements, protection from physical abuse, access to family planning? (Honest question).
While I don't necessarily disagree with his thesis, I think the author cherry picks points and creates a narrative where there isn't one. He mentions the last "shared cultural moment" was Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon. Personally after watching it live, I'd argue Space X launching humans into space is one of those "moments". This all comes down to your own interpretation of the events and there's so many other exam…
Why? It's been done decades before. It just isn't that impressive from a feat perspective - if you gave anyone enough money to get top engineers you could do the same.