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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

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Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#141

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

pindab0ter wrote: post #78
mc32 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above sentiment is not altogether wrong. Once people have certain comfort they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time. Sometimes its neutral, sometimes it may be a productive hobby and sometimes it's detrimental (as in they know what needs to change in the world and they will make it so). It's also telling that at the dawn of the XX cent, the US was not a wealthy country. Per capita we…

What terrible phrasing is "they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time." We don't live to work, we work to live. Once less work is required to live, more living can be done. Some people may 'while away their time', others do valuable things that don't produce monetary value.

I haven't though it through in detail, but I think it has to do with the intersection of these two things. Netflix and ice cream is pure leisure, toiling in the mines is pure work, but there's significant overlap...I'm sure for many here working on a personal coding project can be both a joy in the sense of leisure and also productive work in the sense that other people would pay for it, or it brings significant economic value to them.

So...the middle of the Venn is the important part. Insofar as leisure is both joyful and productive, good. Insofar as we continue the "opiates of the masses" arms race and make ever better Netflix + ice cream, bad.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#142

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jollybean wrote: post #124
lettergram wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to…

It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain kinds of people could achieve them.

Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#143

Post by lastofthemojito »

Impressively thought-out article, but given the publication date I'm also surprised there's no mention of the impacts of the flu pandemic of 1918-1920. So much ink is currently being spilled about how so many things will change thanks to the COVID pandemic, whether architecture or remote work or medical breakthroughs. I guess once the flu pandemic subsided it was no longer at the forefront of thought?

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#144

Post by macns »

worldvoyageur wrote: post #81
viraptor wrote: post #21

When he mentions the lack of cables, he's pretty close with most of them being underground. But also he's incredible close if you consider the mess of cables that was the Stockholm telephone tower, functioning until 1913 https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/09/the-stockholm-telephon...

It is an excellent article, I agree. However, it strikes me that the author was more likely female than male. (gender deliberately obscured in the author's name, 'W.L. George', for instance.). If a male writer, the article is even more impressive given the clear sensitivity to, and awareness of, women's issues and the likely impact of technology and social changes on women. That said, the author was likely a person o…

"Cautious feminist" describes himself as:

But it is unlikely that women will have an achieved equality with men. Cautious feminists such as myself realize that things go slowly and that a brief hundred years will not wipe out the effects on women of 30,000 years of slavery.

He's definitely on point 100 years later.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#145

Post by mistrial9 »

SantalBlush wrote: post #103
lettergram wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920 is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could not vote. Seriously, give me a break.

my ancestors had property rights and university education for women, always anti-slavery.. please do not lump me into your vague assertion

edit- the USA was divided strongly between states, which had constitutions of their own. There was a very bright line between the Massachusetts colonies and the Virginia colonies, and then others.. Property rights and real education for women were a large topic! slavery was hated for good reasons .. the social contract that "my particular ancestors" created, specifically are what the PP were dismissing.. its inaccurate to dismiss that

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#146

Post by jollybean »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #142
jollybean wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to…

It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain kinds of people could achieve them. Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.

In 1922 only 5% of people went to University - now 50% go on to post secondary which is largely due to cost and opportunity.

Only about 50% finished HS - now it's 95%.

Doctors were not very affordable by anyone - now it's >90%.

Most people didn't have running water and electricity yet now it's almost 100%.

The only thing that's not as nice as 'real estate' - housing was cheap, but the houses were crap, and often you were isolated.

If you want to go out of major US urban area, and build a small home to 1925 standards, then it's affordable.

But if you are young, then I am actually sympathetic to you: education and housing costs are 'worse' now than in then 1990's. Those are the two things I will say Gen Z 'has it hard' with. That, and having to grow up where everyone has social media, which is not a social benefit, it's dystopian if you ask me.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#147

Post by singularity2001 »

krapp wrote: post #6

I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. Hubris... hubris never changes.

I wouldn't call it hubris but lack of universal knowledge of the exponential nature of development. That was before I saw the universal lack of just this comprehension in the comments.

What people may mean is that a jump from 10^5 to 10^6 can feel bigger than a jump from 10^6 to 10^7? And that we are more surprised by large things than by some small piece of 'magical paper' which can completely change its display at will.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#148

Post by Tyr42 »

mstade wrote: post #58
haunter wrote: post #15

>Similar reforms apply to cooking, a great deal of which will survive among old fashioned people, but a great deal more of which will probably be avoided by the use of synthetic foods. This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products and such. I know a lot of young professional people who technically never cook. Like almost never and whatever th…

> This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products and such. I know a lot of young professional people who technically never cook. Like almost never and whatever they have at home is just snacks, if you hungry > order. There are a lot people like these. Anecdata – I'm on of these people. I live in central Stockholm, Sweden, and almost any hour o…

Yeah, I cooked less when I didn't have flatmates to share with, even though I do like cooking. Cooking for yourself does feel like a chore.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#149

Post by jerb »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #138
Xcelerate wrote: post #30

And in almost one hundred years, we still haven’t made much progress on the fundamental questions in quantum mechanics, other than perhaps Bell’s theorem in the 60s. I wonder if Einstein, Dirac, et al. would have thought in the early 1930s that the measurement problem would remain unresolved and that there would still not be a consistent theory for QM and GR almost a century later.

His comments about the slowing pace of scientific advancement really struck me. I have felt the same thing, often. That in 1922, we were actually somewhat close to the end of discovering all the really interesting things about physics: that is, those things which really shook up our understanding of the universe, but were still somehow comprehensible to our little human brains. I'm beginning to think that it wasn't j…

Scientific progress has slowed, but engineering progress is only just beginning. For instance, the electronic transport chain of respiration/photosynthesis, is a series of quantum tunnels. Man has barely scratched the surface of quantum-level control which nature already exhibits.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#150

Post by didericis »

jollybean wrote: post #124
lettergram wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to…

Can you explain why the freedoms you mention are the result primarily of central banking and not social and technological change?

The key freedom lost via central banking (at least irresponsible central banking) is the freedom of those in the future to do anything other than meet debt obligations.

Debt and credit is obviously necessary, and making money easily accessible and keeping markets liquid is a good thing, but if debt obligations grow too large, people increasingly forfeit their future productivity and the future of their children’s productivity to paying interest.

No one can enjoy increased freedoms if they are spending all their time paying off individual and collective interest.

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