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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?

#81

Post by Nasrudith »

p1necone wrote: post #8
boomboomsubban wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tech could have regressed our society in manifold ways and destroyed and rotted away many many institutions and there would still be books. There would not be a new book printed about this topic if society had regressed as you described.

I'm pretty sure you could destroy a lot of the fabric of modern society and still have a publishing house and a printing company able to produce a few thousand copies of a book.

Thousands of copies of a book is something quaint in our great grandfather's days. The distribution mechanisms are what make it eyeroll worthy.

Really whenever you hear anyone talk about "the fabric of society" they are full of shit. Just like how theater, jazz, rock music, heavy metal, rap, interracial marriage, women voting, and gay marriage destroyed the fabric of society. Those ample precedents of being complete bullshit aside it is a stack of abstractions with no measures. It sounds like it means something but it doesn't - it is just mouth noises to manipulate your emotions.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#82

Post by S_A_P »

I think that the bet is a bit simplistic in its scope and parameters. Society isnt going to collapse in one fell swoop unless nuclear war kills us all. If things just disintegrate and collapse, there will be a long protracted period where people slowly die and or suffer. I dont even think that any one person can fully grasp how a population of 7 billion + people can collapse accurately. I think that social media and twitter owns the lions share of our current divided society, but I dont necessarily call that "tech". Its one aspect of tech. And for every twitter dumpster fire there is huge medical advances/vaccines/50 metrics that show that now is the best time to be alive. I certainly love living in the now, and hope that we can figure out how to navigate this new territory we live in...

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#83

Post by Dylan16807 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58
glenstein wrote: post #37

A 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.)

I don't think I can agree with that as long as the FDIC exists.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#84

Post by Nasrudith »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #51

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 pe…

That is what happens when you see reality instead of carefully selected cheery lies.

You didn't see the mentally disabled in the basement, the arrest of wounded veterans under "ugly" laws justified by maternal impression theory an utterly moronic misreading of biblical miracles as implying what the mother sees influnces form of the child. Except there is a major derth of livestock how to's in the bible and a lot more focus on miracles.

Lies deserve destruction.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#85

Post by sillysaurusx »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #78
kumarvvr wrote: post #73

It destroyed the average Joe's faith in the average Joe. Now, people are more separated than ever, in their echo chambers, hating each other and firmly believing they are better and righter than the other.

I can't get people I am close with to even consider engaging in conversations about firmly held beliefs they have if I even remotely present myself as possibly holding a different opinion.

Understand that this is the norm. And understand that when you present differing opinions without being asked, you’re acting selfishly — you’re not doing it because you care about them, you’re doing it for yourself.

Ultimately it depends what you want out of your personal relationships. I’ve found people who are willing to talk. But I haven’t found people who genuinely change their mind about deeply held beliefs without a lot of patient — emphasis on patient — conversations over a long period of time. And sometimes I’m the one who changes their mind.

So I don’t think you’re going to be satisfied if you feel you must be able to change your group’s minds about social issues. A group is its own form of entity. If you don’t identify with your group, find another one. They exist. But if you don’t identify with your associates, that’s a hard problem which won’t go away.

It helps to accept that you care about them more than what they believe, and leave it at that.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#86

Post by nanonan »

kumarvvr wrote: post #73

It destroyed the average Joe's faith in the average Joe. Now, people are more separated than ever, in their echo chambers, hating each other and firmly believing they are better and righter than the other.

I'm reminded of the stereotypical personality alignment matrix common to role playing games, with lawful and chatic matched to good and evil. Each of to need to strive to sit in the middle, true neutral. In this position one can recognize echo chambers are all around us and one must hop from to the another to gain understanding and sympathy. This would be easy if we mandated the teaching of cognitive and logical fallacies. However, I fear that the powers that be (wealthy, political leaders, and attention grabbing algorithms) intentionally use these against us. Sophistry has long been a weapon of politicians against the plebs and each other. I am at loss on how all of us can transition to a more enlightened state, a state where we don't build walls between us, but recognise the selfishishness and primal fears that lead us against each other. We all suffer from cognitive limitations and fallacies and none of us really know what is the 'correct' opinion on anything. I think if we can agree we all share the same limited stupidity that's the right step go forward.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#87

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #63
wait_a_minute wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know if thats alway the case. People used to have liaisons, read books, play music together, go to church, play card games, garden, ride horses, and so on. Often surrounded by friend and family. Just seems like the quality of the average moment was better back then. The experience more authentic and often more social and more dangerous. For example if you liked to go out and play poker in a local bar in the 1…

The anxiety from modernity hits different today. We are bombarded with the most realistic forms of imagery ever in human history. What was once a black and white picture in a magazine is now a video in HD.

50-60 years ago you weren't constantly bombarding yourself with people who have more than you. Today, people go on instagram and see the rich living the dreams they'll never be able to attain, despite being told they could do anything in school and by their parents. People watch porn which shows insanely attractive people doing any fantasy imaginable, with no effort on their part.

Their regular lives will never compare with that, they get depressed and anxious seeing how they are nowhere near these people. And then this leads to anger and eventually populism, and it'll eventually lead to war.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#88

Post by wernst »

glenstein wrote: post #37

A 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,…

I agree, but I'm reminded of this quote from Ernest Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Massive change due to tech is always just waiting to happen. Here's to hoping it just changes society without destroying it.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#89

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

mseepgood wrote: post #55
gremlinsinc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is very true, but you also don't need a machine gun to wage war. It's just far more efficient at killing people than your homemade bow and arrow.
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