11–20 of 96 posts
Many of the old ways are being forgotten, and `Grandma's brain` is not so readily picked anymore since people value their Internet & the hive mind of social media more than the wisdom of their elders.
Also the old way of passing down teachings orally, like in the case of Buddhism and some other religions, is declining. Now it has to be perfectly preserved on the Internet so that people can refer back to it.
Pessimists are usually right, and optimists usually make things happen.
Optimists downplay problems and are annoying to work with, especially if in charge. I rather work with pessimists any day. (As long as we are not talking about like, grumpy vs happy, but more in a technical sense).
-Jim Stockdale, describing the Stockdale paradox.
For me to be remotely optimistic, I would need to see more people confronting those brutal facts. They are truly and properly brutal. Too brutal for the Kevin Kelly types.
According to this article, I think I rank as an optimist - I tend to trust people, feel that we can solve the problems before us, etc. But I'm listening to a book right now called The Ascent of Humanity, and it makes some interesting points about the philosophical axioms of the arguments presented in this article. Namely, the argument is that the technological approach - inventing our way out of problems - is doomed…
The notion that tech creates more and increasing problems is not necessarily true either. Viable Solar and Wind power wasn't a thing until recently, and it creates far fewer problems relative to Coal and Oil. Increasing efficiency is part of technological progress.
Ultimately the case against technology leads to humanity stagnating in some state on this planet until we run out of resources or the sun finally explodes. I'd like to think we can do better over the long term.
Pessimists are usually right, and optimists usually make things happen.
Optimists downplay problems and are annoying to work with, especially if in charge. I rather work with pessimists any day. (As long as we are not talking about like, grumpy vs happy, but more in a technical sense).
I think most of the devs I've enjoyed working with have similar perspectives, and often include a dark sense of humor with it. As when the hope runs out, all you're left with is something dark, and being able to laugh at the absurdity of it, to make light of it and minimize it that way, is a helpful coping mechanism, as well as one that can help bind a team together. And also helps avoid falling into despair along the way as the hits come; you can stay hopeful and focused on the desired outcome.
The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology that is necessary to keep the whole machine moving forward. If people en masse started to believe tomorrow might not be better than today, and that in the day after tomorrow might be even worse... the faith in our entire system starts to collapse.
People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer. But true pessimism remains a radical belief, outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. Even in academia the core works of most German philosophical pessimists remain untranslated!
Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it itself dangerous (which should be the first clue that something is not quite right with the dominant optimist world view). Whereas in practice it is optimism that allows us to perpetuate horrors on every scale without question because "tomorrow it will be better!". Ecological disaster is permitted because we will solve this tomorrow and everything will be okay. Sweatshops, child labor and modern slavery are all permitted because this is just a step in peoples inevitable rises to a better life. The murder of countless civilians around the globe are all justifiable because tomorrow we will have a better world economy, and democracy will spread through the region, making everything better.
Under optimism the shock from any horror is neutered and any atrocity can be trivially excused because the future is bright and we are heading in the right direction. We continue to burn every more fossil fuels because we are going to be fine, we'll figure it out, no reason for despair.
As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world around you starts to collapse.
We do need optimists if we are going to dream and build a great future. Techno-optimism has become almost a taboo, sometimes even within the groups that actually work on cutting edge tech (at least on the computing side of things). We shouldn’t be naive and ignore potential negatives of course, but more optimism and dreaming of a great future we can build towards should be encouraged.
"Ready, aim, fire" is in that order for a reason, yeah?
According to this article, I think I rank as an optimist - I tend to trust people, feel that we can solve the problems before us, etc. But I'm listening to a book right now called The Ascent of Humanity, and it makes some interesting points about the philosophical axioms of the arguments presented in this article. Namely, the argument is that the technological approach - inventing our way out of problems - is doomed…
Absolutely agree. The only way it's worth it to increase lifespan is to increase healthspan at the same time. Currently, most medicine seems to focus on the former.
We do need optimists if we are going to dream and build a great future. Techno-optimism has become almost a taboo, sometimes even within the groups that actually work on cutting edge tech (at least on the computing side of things). We shouldn’t be naive and ignore potential negatives of course, but more optimism and dreaming of a great future we can build towards should be encouraged.
I don't see optimism towards technology being a "taboo" at all. I see a lot of people wanting questions answered before world-changing stuff is put into place. "Ready, aim, fire" is in that order for a reason, yeah?
"Total Urbanization" - What should we do with its impact on the environment ? How will total urbanization be sustainable (i.e. who will buy your waste now ?) ? Should we even think about this, or just try to build technology to leave this planet ?
"Universal Connectivity" - How do we address rise in anxiety and other mental illnesses due to this rise of total connectivity.
"Ubiquitous AI" - We all know the pitfalls here. Hint: We are not able to secure the "Ubiquitous Internet", how will we secure the "Ubiquitous AI" ? AI related hacking incidents will be astronomically more damaging (for ex. let's replace nurses with AI robots so that they can properly care for patients without getting tired, now this system gets deployed, obviously it will be connected to some kind of "knowledge base" (to train/retrain/get updates), what happens if this gets hacked, there would be direct impact on people's lives). This is the same argument as cloud connected self driving cars.
I don't want to go further, I hate my pessimism, I WANT to be optimistic, I don't enjoy my pessimism, it gives me no joy. Even with so many academic disciplines, unfortunately we can only keep a bunch of them in our head to think about problems/ideas/etc and the ones which are left out, often that becomes the cause of my pessimism.
For instance, when creating the "algorithm" for the social media, what are the chances that they had a psychologist or even a sociologist in their team (during the nascent stages). Even if they had, did they have the same decision making powers (as MBAs ?)
Even if we consider "Long Termism", what have we borrowed from the ancient wisdom(s) in our modern world ? Obviously we have biologically evolved from them and we can establish a chain of information going back to the ancient civilizations. But even then, we have lost lot of our touch with this very Earth itself, we lost our respect for it, we have lost our respect for the stars, our quest for industrialisation (of course with its merits) has affectively wiped lots of our ancient wisdom. In this information age, we should have been starting where things were left, but it seems like we want to start our new "beginning" because now we are more "intelligent", now we know more laws and algorithms.
If we assume asteroid impacts, on large scale cataclysmic events, what kind of "long termism" will exist ? Even now we are finding hints that there could have been lost civilisations on earth. Their information and wisdom is now completely lost.
The issue I feel is that, we think the world revolves around us, we think the nature is there to provide us resources, provide us shelter, and that has lead us to completely ignore that this world, this universe was there before us and will exist after us. If we get wiped out, we get wiped out.
The only source of optimism I have are completely selfish points. I am grateful I can see, hear, move, feel, eat, type. I am grateful that I can have impact on lives of others directly or indirectly. I am grateful that I have a convincing experiencing of free will. I am grateful that our capitalistic society has structures in it to provide healthcare to the ill. I am grateful to have a chance to witness this reality.