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It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

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Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#231

Post by me_me_me »

ForHackernews wrote: post #110
me_me_me wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BNW world is designed to be pure meritocracy. It really does make you think about their world at the end. And its not really evil oppressive world like 1984. Its just purely mechanical construction that to us look like dystopia. I agree we are and are heading is technological aristocracy where tech is used to keep people in line. Divided over crazy theories, societal issues and squabbling over leftovers. Just give th…

In Brave New World, it's only a meritocracy because they've engineered human embryos to produce the different castes. In the novel, they deliberately induce fetal alcohol syndrome to stunt the intelligence of the lower classes. The modern reformulation would be genetic engineering or at least genetic screening. I'm sure we're not that far away from the wealthy classes testing their embryos and only implanting the one…

You could interpret current system where people are made to be good unquestioning workers in schools.

Arrive on time, don't question authority, learn to follow what you are being told.

After that they are lead to believe living on dept and credit cards is the only way to be happy.

And they are stuck in shitty job that they cannot quit since they have interest to play. So they keep their heads down and just keep going.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#232

Post by throwaway316943 »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #158
throwaway316943 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not even just exclusion. Can you imagine the scheduling nightmare this would induce? Your personal life would be run minute to minute by your calendar. Any time you wanted to do anything it would either have to be booked in advance or you’d have to wait for delivery. This article seems to be written from the perspective of someone who likes spending their time in coffee shops and riding their bike around in circ…

I do not like the future described in the article... but the scheduling nightmare is not currently the reality with by-the-minute cars, bikes, scooters, meals, groceries, apartments, personal tech, server infra, or home services. What makes you think it would be for other classes of product? If anything it's done away with some of my previous scheduling constraints. No more oil changes or tire rotations! No more groc…

I can’t imagine being able to schedule whether I want to play guitar, exercise, read, or start on a new woodworking project. I pick up my guitar few times a day to practice, not at set times. I exercise either in the morning or the evening depending on my mood and my plans. I’m usually working my way through a few books at a time so I may choose any of them to read. I work on projects when I can squeeze an hour or two in or when I wind up with a free afternoon. None of that would ever happen if I had to block out time for it or wait for the necessities to be delivered. Hell, half the time I don’t even know what I want to build until I rummage through the various fasteners and bits of scrap wood laying around and something strikes my fancy. The same goes for cooking, some of the best meals I’ve made were whipped up from the ingredients I had on hand. A perfectly planned life would be devoid of happy accidents.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#233

Post by syshum »

hahaiscjaaka wrote: post #221
syshum wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I can't tell if it's written by a normal person, some buzzword-spouting AI, I hope the latter, because I can not image a normal person viewing any of those things as good... This view of the future right out of a dystopian horror

Written by a Scandinavian politician. People from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland (idk about Iceland) are surprisingly ok with trusting institutions won’t harm you, and conformism is the norm.

Conformism is requirement in Authoritarian regimes. Now I am sure I will get massive amount of push back calling Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland authoritarian but it seems in many ways human culture is loosing what desire for freedom, replacing it with conformism, safety, and security which they falsely equate with freedom

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#235

Post by xapata »

seangrogg wrote: post #205
xapata wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a dog right now. He enjoys my company. I don't think he's a captive. I love him, he loves me. I let him off leash and he generally stays nearby. Am I a captive of my wife? I don't think so. Are children captives of their parents? I wouldn't use that word to describe the relationship.

What is protection/affection from one perspective can be captivity from another.

Indeed. Thus, to say the article's protagonist is in captivity is clearly a subjective judgement and not a fact.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#236

Post by xapata »

godelski wrote: post #198
xapata wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a dog right now. He enjoys my company. I don't think he's a captive. I love him, he loves me. I let him off leash and he generally stays nearby. Am I a captive of my wife? I don't think so. Are children captives of their parents? I wouldn't use that word to describe the relationship.

I think it is fuzzy. How do we define this line? Cults will often confine people to a location until they have been sufficiently brainwashed. At which point they will let them loose, often used to gain more followers. Are these people captive? But maybe using captive in only a pejorative sense is the problem. I don't think my cat hates me (quite the opposite!), rather she follows me around like a puppy dog and is cle…

Exactly. I'd use a different term than captive in this case. The situation isn't as extreme as for a cult member.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#237

Post by godelski »

xapata wrote: post #236
godelski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is fuzzy. How do we define this line? Cults will often confine people to a location until they have been sufficiently brainwashed. At which point they will let them loose, often used to gain more followers. Are these people captive? But maybe using captive in only a pejorative sense is the problem. I don't think my cat hates me (quite the opposite!), rather she follows me around like a puppy dog and is cle…

Exactly. I'd use a different term than captive in this case. The situation isn't as extreme as for a cult member.

But you'd agree that your dog isn't "free," right? At least not in the sense that you are. I think it is reasonable to consider domestication a form of capture. And are you sure your dog doesn't have Stockholm syndrome?

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#238

Post by xapata »

godelski wrote: post #237
xapata wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'd use a different term than captive in this case. The situation isn't as extreme as for a cult member.

But you'd agree that your dog isn't "free," right? At least not in the sense that you are. I think it is reasonable to consider domestication a form of capture. And are you sure your dog doesn't have Stockholm syndrome?

I agree that my dog is less "free" than myself, but only because he is less self-aware. I like the philosophy that one is "free" to the extent one understands the various causes that constrain and motivate one's choices, because it sidesteps the need to answer the question of how much free will is possible given all the influences we face.

Going back to the story's protagonist, using this definition of "free" it's not clear how much the protagonist is aware of these kinds of influences, and therefore we don't know where on the spectrum of freedom they'd be.

I don't think Stockholm syndrome is relevant to the experience of a dog. First, Wikipedia says there's a bit of disagreement as to whether the phenomenon is real. Second, my guess is the mechanism for it relies on a human's sense of society and shame.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#239

Post by ardy42 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #110
me_me_me wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BNW world is designed to be pure meritocracy. It really does make you think about their world at the end. And its not really evil oppressive world like 1984. Its just purely mechanical construction that to us look like dystopia. I agree we are and are heading is technological aristocracy where tech is used to keep people in line. Divided over crazy theories, societal issues and squabbling over leftovers. Just give th…

In Brave New World, it's only a meritocracy because they've engineered human embryos to produce the different castes. In the novel, they deliberately induce fetal alcohol syndrome to stunt the intelligence of the lower classes. The modern reformulation would be genetic engineering or at least genetic screening. I'm sure we're not that far away from the wealthy classes testing their embryos and only implanting the one…

> In Brave New World, it's only a meritocracy because they've engineered human embryos to produce the different castes. In the novel, they deliberately induce fetal alcohol syndrome to stunt the intelligence of the lower classes.

They also forgoed a lot of automation and engineered society to make use of the stunted lower classes. I recall a scene where they had elevator operators, even though automatic elevators had been invented when the book was written.

> The modern reformulation would be genetic engineering or at least genetic screening. I'm sure we're not that far away from the wealthy classes testing their embryos and only implanting the ones that have the highest intelligence, least propensity for disease, etc.

That's literally the backstory of the movie Gattica. Though I think the genetic engineering in that movie controlled recombination, so engineered children got all the best genes of their parents. IIRC, people who weren't engineered (like us) lived in slums and were only given menial jobs regardless of talent.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#240

Post by godelski »

xapata wrote: post #238
godelski wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you'd agree that your dog isn't "free," right? At least not in the sense that you are. I think it is reasonable to consider domestication a form of capture. And are you sure your dog doesn't have Stockholm syndrome?

I agree that my dog is less "free" than myself, but only because he is less self-aware. I like the philosophy that one is "free" to the extent one understands the various causes that constrain and motivate one's choices, because it sidesteps the need to answer the question of how much free will is possible given all the influences we face. Going back to the story's protagonist, using this definition of "free" it's no…

I don't actually like that definition and believe it is rather naive. Referring back to the cult example (extremes are easier to denote boundaries) we agree that a cult member is not free. Yet if you ask them they will say that they believe that they are free (many will insist that it is in fact you who is not free). This dictates that our usage requisites the ability to make this determination from outside one's own understanding of one's self. So either that cult member is free or freedom can't be based purely on one's understanding. I think sidestepping is an apt description, because it just ignores the nuance, which is what we're getting into here.
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