I think in many ways yes. A local island that now has been turned into residential units, still has some old buildings from the 1920s. Including a dance hall. Its abandoned now. But the scale and grandeur of the place, has played on my imagination. What it was like to be in there with a thousand other people on a weekend just out dancing. No internet, or TV. I've also seen some street photos from NY from that time period. Everyone looks so trim and upright, well dressed and civilized. Its like tech added 30-50 lbs of fat on the average person. And replaced actual social interaction, with poor substitutes of facebook, twitter, youtube and TV.
A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#52It's definitely impacted some more than others. There's now an entire class of men who can no longer have romantic relationships because they've been cast out of the dating market as technology altered dating dynamics not in their favor. For these men, their world, their society is destroyed.
I'm not sure exactly what you're hinting at, but I think you should take a cold, hard look at yourself and the expectations you place on your potential partners. Do you imagine them as actual human beings with their own thoughts, aspirations, preferences, goals? What does such a person have to gain (emotionally / socially) by choosing YOU in particular for a partner? In all relationships, romantic or not, personality…
The share of young men not having sex has tripled in the past decade:
https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120
What do you think accounts for this change? Seems pretty plausible to me that it has something to do with technology. Perhaps it has something to do with dating apps, perhaps young men are substituting porn for real intimacy, perhaps some combination. Either way, doesn't seem like a good change. And by the pigeonhole principle, if more women are having sex than men, it must be the case that some men are sleeping with multiple women (modulo homosexuality and young women sleeping with older guys).
(I don't think "you just need to be a better partner" moralizing has much explanatory power, it's a lecture that can be delivered in any time or place to any gender and doesn't speak to underlying trends.)
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#53I think in many ways yes. A local island that now has been turned into residential units, still has some old buildings from the 1920s. Including a dance hall. Its abandoned now. But the scale and grandeur of the place, has played on my imagination. What it was like to be in there with a thousand other people on a weekend just out dancing. No internet, or TV. I've also seen some street photos from NY from that time pe…
It may be the case that socio-economic issues have worsened those things, not technology. And that we are not fully leveraging technology in order to improve lives.
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#54Is there a current author that follows Schumacher's Small is Beautiful in the 21st century?
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problems of 2020 weren't rooted in tech, however.
Say theoretically everything was the same in this timeline EXCEPT there is no reddit, facebook, twitter, or 4chan. QAnon has no platform available. Hell, maybe we still have blogs but you aren't plastered echo-chamber friendly messages you have to actually search for stuff to read or maybe go to a phpbb forum. Trump without Twitter, QAnon, 4Chan would've probably played out differently. Without a way for society to c…
You don't need social media or high tech to attack and dismantle democracy, to exert racist police brutality, to mishandle a pandemic, or to flock together and storm a government building like the US Capitol. All of this happened in world history before, with less advanced technology, a century or even longer ago.
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#56I think in many ways yes. A local island that now has been turned into residential units, still has some old buildings from the 1920s. Including a dance hall. Its abandoned now. But the scale and grandeur of the place, has played on my imagination. What it was like to be in there with a thousand other people on a weekend just out dancing. No internet, or TV. I've also seen some street photos from NY from that time pe…
People have been getting fat for much longer than we've had Facebook.
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure exactly what you're hinting at, but I think you should take a cold, hard look at yourself and the expectations you place on your potential partners. Do you imagine them as actual human beings with their own thoughts, aspirations, preferences, goals? What does such a person have to gain (emotionally / socially) by choosing YOU in particular for a partner? In all relationships, romantic or not, personality…
Your advice on how to find a partner is "join hobby groups, but not with the intention of finding a partner"?
I think people who use dating apps tend to focus on superficial features like physical attractiveness or (the appearance of) wealth / status. People will judge you based on their first impression, rather than taking time to know you more deeply as a person.
So, I think for someone who doesn't want to play "the dating game", yes, an effective dating strategy is to accept that they won't be able to easily find a partner in the short-term. Instead, a strategy of self-improvement combined with leading a more social life (via hobby groups etc) in which one regularly meets new people is a great way for them to eventually bump into someone they vibe with really well.
I think many people who are desperate for a partner are also unhappy in other aspects of their life -- joining non-romantic social groups centered around a common interest is a great cure for loneliness, until the right person comes along.
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#58A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty,…
It was close, in 2008. It was frighteningly close. Not before or since, but yeah, I'll give them "close" on that one. ("Worse than 1930" was part of the criterion. We didn't come close to that in terms of the final outcome, but we were, I think, within a very few days of getting there.)
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious to hear a bit more. Who are these men? The non-tech jocks? There must be non-tech females left? Are you speaking about the average looking male group who can't get tinder hookups?
I think the prevalence of social media (Not just dating apps) has somewhat shafted average men since now women have far more access to (EDIT: highly) desirable men. The world continuously becoming more sexually liberal also means that women are more likely to pursue these men, and so average men are looked down upon moreso than before. I'm sure plenty of people have seen the Tinder/Bumble studies where men rated wome…
I'm in an older group. It feels like much of the same.
In my grade school all of the girls had a crush on one or two guys even the less pretty ones. No one had a chance. High school was similiar. Going to rock concerts changed that as I started to meet girls with similiar interests. Going to a concert would automatically give me a leg up because we were now part of a social circle. Later on in life I would go to a karoke bar and just the act of showing up a few times on the same day for a few weeks puts you in a social circle with others who do the same.
I don't know if things have changed all that much aside from the amount of people online. I use to meet girls from bbses / the early social media sites. The differences is they were smaller and you felt like part of a social circle.
Today I would advise to try to go to social meetups like photography in the park groups.. try to join a smaller group.
In the end the girls from my elementary school grew up and married. Everyone married similiar to them. If they are overweight so are there husbands. If they were an 8 their husbands would be an 8. If they are a 4 their husbands are a 4. They general look like each other.
My guess is the girls from your primary school will end up with someone similiar to them and so will you.
Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
#60Sale was (and still is) cheering for a collapse? And yet he spent the time writing books. If the collapse had happened, he would have spent the time subsistence farming. I doubt that 25 years of that would make him happy that a collapse happened.
Be careful what you wish for. You may not like it as much as you think you will...