81–90 of 970 posts
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It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.
...and the saying is BS.
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It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.
this saying is often used to demean men that don't fit a very narrow definition of "strong"
I take it as hard times make it clear what’s important and inspire people to work towards that.
In good times people forget.
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Since most such pieces are written by journalists, or written by people who think about these things but are also writers, they tend to focus on the idea distribution medium aspect of today's technology. So that would be the internet, or social media platforms, or chat platforms, etc. That's the most easily comparable part to past information technologies such as the printing press.
But the novel danger with what we're facing today is not the fact that everyone is on social media, or that stuff can go viral. Even though these are turbocharged versions of past technologies, they are still versions of past technologies (being turbocharged can still make it meaningfully different, but for now I'll ignore that). The novel danger is personalized data collection. It's the fact that major companies can built extremely accurate and granular profiles of every single person on their platforms.
This is completely unprecedented. Throw in even rudimentary AI, and I can target my message to match every individual's unique psychological profile. This was never possible in the past. The most you could do is target something based on a few broad aspect of someone's personality. Where they lived, what religion they followed, what language they spoke, etc. But there were thousands if not millions of people who filled that mold, and there were vast variations within those people, which still allowed for non conformity.
Today, however, you can target every individual and even the same individual differently depending on whether it's the morning, or evening, or if they are working or relaxing.
It's this that's truly novel and truly dangerous. You don't even need Social media to be involved for this to be a problem. The Chinese government, for example, famously has a highly intrusive citizenry score for its citizens based on a variety of such micro targeted factors. And pretty much every government across the world is also doing the same. Corporations have gone even further because they have all the data.
The elephant in the room is that the Industrial world wanted alot of people, and the post Industrial world does not. Not only in terms of production, but in terms of having a livable environment for everyone. So what happens to what are now "excess" people? The answer to that question is gonna define pretty much everything.
We have never had a unified cultural perspective on this phenomenon -- it is either an artifact of regressive politics, a warning sign of the limits to growth, a reflection of deep failings in the basic structure of society, a punishment from Heaven for our disregard for tradition, or [choose as many as you like]. But as it continues to become more visible, the possible conclusions clash more and more. So while social media appears to create divisions in society, I don't think it's the only cause, and I don't think the only causes are things for which we can so easily allocate blame.
I feel generally that everything is falling apart. I also have an article still pulled up from earlier this week titled Why Pessimism Sounds Smart . It seems pessimists are sometimes wrong! But sometimes they are right too - especially in the last couple of years I have observed incompetence seemingly everywhere I go. But is this the changing world, or my changing perspective? It's really difficult to pin down. At th…
I think the question shouldn't necessarily be who started the fire, but if it is a good idea to just let the fire burn, even though you weren't the one igniting it.
I feel generally that everything is falling apart. I also have an article still pulled up from earlier this week titled Why Pessimism Sounds Smart . It seems pessimists are sometimes wrong! But sometimes they are right too - especially in the last couple of years I have observed incompetence seemingly everywhere I go. But is this the changing world, or my changing perspective? It's really difficult to pin down. At th…
I suspect that the world after WW1, where they also faced many similar situations at the same time (pandemic, financial crash, etc), also looked pretty incompetent to everyone.
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> Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace. In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart. For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.
It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.
Starvation and price rises will provide new opportunities to fearmonger and divide. Social media is ill equipped to stop Russia and others from using it to manipulate fearful people.