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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?

#91

Post by glenstein »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #76
glenstein wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here was one of the predictions in the words of one of the participants in the bet: >“The first [measurement] would be an economic collapse. The dollar would be worthless, the yen would be worthless, the mark would be worthless—the dislocation we saw in the Depression of 1930, magnified many times over. The dollar is not worthless and not close to worthless. There's no reasonable interpretation of that outcome, or of…

First: Those weren't the words of the bet, per the article. The actual words of the measure of collapse, per the article were: > an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes. Now, you sound like you have a source other than the article, and the article sou…

>Those weren't the words of the bet,

Yes, they were the words of the bet.

https://www.wired.com/1995/06/saleskelly/

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

#92

Post by forgingahead »

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 don't agree that this is the fault of tech at all. Facebook et al are still largely echo chambers, where we see what we have cultivated ourselves to see. Sure, recommendation algorithms show us external things once in a while, but by and large you can cultivate what you see on social media.

The real culprit I believe, has been the incredible hysteria of the legacy media as it joined the social media spaces, and started their race to the bottom for clickbait and outrage porn. Covering inane tweets, and blowing them up to pretend that crackpot points-of-view have more weight and are more common than they truly are. Gotcha gonzo-journalism, that prides "getting them" (whichever group that may be) over informing, and in the process dehumanising large swathes of people for clicks. How you "can't avoid politics, because everything is political". Ravelry, which is a crocheting website, went mad with us-vs-them discussions. Why?

The fault is mainly with legacy media, because they had the credibility and prestige of their history, plus the consistency of their output (daily, weekly, whatever), which they used to spoonfeed poison to large parts of society. How others are "unlike us", and that "they're evil", and oh by the way, "vote for our candidate" who is the some storybook hero we need.

The "two-minutes-of-hate" has come largely from legacy media, and they are responsible for the schisms present right now.

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

#93

Post by wins32767 »

nanonan wrote: post #86
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 fall…

> Each of to need to strive to sit in the middle, true neutral.

Says the person with a true neutral alignment.

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

#94

Post by vlunkr »

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.

As a counterpoint, I've seen lots of people become more accepting because of the way the internet connects people. If you lived in a rural place before, you likely had very little interaction with minority groups outside of how they were portrayed in media. Now it's possible to interact with all kinds of people and recognize them as people instead of stereotypes.

I don't deny that there are echo chambers and major communication breakdowns, but I think on the whole it's a positive development.

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

#95

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

forgingahead wrote: post #92
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 don't agree that this is the fault of tech at all. Facebook et al are still largely echo chambers, where we see what we have cultivated ourselves to see. Sure, recommendation algorithms show us external things once in a while, but by and large you can cultivate what you see on social media. The real culprit I believe, has been the incredible hysteria of the legacy media as it joined the social media spaces, and sta…

>I don't agree that this is the fault of tech at all.

>The real culprit I believe, has been the incredible hysteria of the legacy media as it joined the social media spaces, and started their race to the bottom for clickbait and outrage porn. Covering inane tweets, and blowing them up to pretend that crackpot points-of-view have more weight and are more common than they truly are. Gotcha gonzo-journalism, that prides "getting them" (whichever group that may be) over informing, and in the process dehumanising large swathes of people for clicks.

Everything you've outlined above is entirely the result of technology and the incentive structures that have been pursued in its "advancement".

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

#96

Post by aeternum »

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.

I'd suggest approaching the conversation from the POV that you yourself have not fully made up your mind about an issue and would like input.

By genuinely adopting this viewpoint, not only will you likely have a more productive discussion, but you may reconsider some of your own priors.

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

#97

Post by at_a_remove »

Without ending up on an FBI watchlist, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Sales and "Uncle Ted" were on the right track about technology inevitably leading toward psychic isolation and environmental devastation, that corporations are finding ways to turn each human interaction into a commodity, that we're well beyond carrying capacity for the planet and have likely screwed up the ecology for the next million years or so. Just suppose ...

What solution do we have? I'm pretty sure that even before homo sapiens came on the scene, Neanderthals and even earlier versions of humanity thought about labor-saving devices. They dreamed of not dying from little infections, of not dying in childbirth, of spears that went a little further, of furs that were warmer, of fires that would not need tending. Are we not more or less doomed by our rejection of physical misery and the power of our imagination to simply recreate it all?

More interestingly, imagine a human society which selects a place to stop and then also has to enforce it, both internally and against any other societies which might have a different idea of where to stop (boy that gunpowder sure is a nifty idea). You would need a one world government with some kind of technological edge over those ruled ...

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

#98

Post by lukedoolittle »

glenstein wrote: post #91
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: Those weren't the words of the bet, per the article. The actual words of the measure of collapse, per the article were: > an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes. Now, you sound like you have a source other than the article, and the article sou…

>Those weren't the words of the bet, Yes, they were the words of the bet. https://www.wired.com/1995/06/saleskelly/

I don't know if this changes anything but I think the actual bet is described by the line

>I bet you US$1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to the kind of disaster you describe—a convergence of three disasters: global currency collapse, significant warfare between rich and poor, and environmental disasters of some significant size. We won't even be close. I'll bet on my optimism.

It seems like in the actual terms of the bet Kelly paraphrases Sale. That is how I would read it sans an actual signed legal document. But then again I'm not a lawyer or anyone versed in gambling etiquette and protocol.

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

#99

Post by masterphilo »

Great read, and a close call!

Like other people mentioned, the fact that Sale's predictions were even remotely close to what we're experiencing today should be hair-raising.

What I took from Sale's argument was that "Technology" is not an absolute good, and without a framework of life on which most people on this planet can adopt to guide our use of tech, it will be the end. Hopefully, it will only be the end of this current iteration of civilization.

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

#100

Post by giantg2 »

vlunkr wrote: post #94
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.

As a counterpoint, I've seen lots of people become more accepting because of the way the internet connects people. If you lived in a rural place before, you likely had very little interaction with minority groups outside of how they were portrayed in media. Now it's possible to interact with all kinds of people and recognize them as people instead of stereotypes. I don't deny that there are echo chambers and major co…

How does that work, like how does the connection get made and identity discovered? Generally I feel the echo chamber effect would be more common.
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