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Hm. Well, the ability to drop out convuluted metaphors and poor hints towards a bigger idea is a poor proxy for conversation. Could you elaborate?
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Was everyone stupid back then?
121–130 of 135 posts
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happened right about the time of Canter and Siegel and the September that never ended.
That was for spam. I was thinking of regular user posts that are low quality in the way HN tries to avoid. Of course that wouldn't have happened until there was a large general population on Usenet--and the dates do check out.
Eternal September was exactly that.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was for spam. I was thinking of regular user posts that are low quality in the way HN tries to avoid. Of course that wouldn't have happened until there was a large general population on Usenet--and the dates do check out.
Eternal September was exactly that.
That's what I meant by the dates lining up--correlation via common cause.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#124The internet has actually exceeded my expectations in how a revolution it would be.
It was sold to me as: you will have access to all the knowledge at your fingertips, and it is mostly true. And by the time I thought of a traditional computer you have to turn on and sit in front of, not something that is in my pocket and accessible 24/7. You may talk about "fake news" and all sorts of falsehoods, but debunking these have never been easier, not only the truth is usually available, but there are is also information on how to do the debunking. I realize now how much bullshit I heard and believed in in my childhood with no easy way to fact check.
Distance seem almost like an abstract concept now. Here I am, in France, writing to you guys in the US like you were my neighbors. In fact, it is sometimes easier to communicate with someone on the other side of the globe than with my neighbor. I like to travel (guess how I book my plane...), but not by necessity.
So, sure enough, the internet didn't change human nature, but for me it was world changing enough to be compared to something like the industrial revolution.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#125I think one thing we've learned is anonymity often makes things worse. Substantially so. As someone raised on BBSes & Usenet, that pains me to say. But I think 4chan, Twitter & others have demonstrated that.
One thing about $8 for Twitter Blue is it will make it easier to filter out the noise -- the trolls, the bots, etc.
Previously I would have worried that having a toll on communication would mean we'd lose some important voices. That may still be true, but I've learned that having no cost on communication results in a lot of garbage being spewed.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
You guys have all missed the point of the comic. We still have social problems despite having a printing press, or radio, or internet. In fact, at root, we have the exact same social problems as existed prior to Gutenberg's birth. Poverty, war, man's inhumanity to man, tribalism, etc. Why have they not been solved? Because they are human problems. The problem is within us and the problem is us. It's who we are on an…
>> That's really the point of the comic. Wherever we go, there we are. It's still just us in a new place. If that's the case it seems a poor choice of words for the child character in the comic to frame it as "Was everyone stupid back then?" followed quickly by affirmation, "So yes."
Well, that's children for you.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
That “drug addict” was murdered. LGB rights aren’t being curtailed by transgenderism, but I’d argue that if a large part of your identity is wrapped up around ideas of gender, then you might not want the “T” part of LGBT to gain any traction.
He was also hysterically complaining way before anyone leaned on him. The problem with transgenderism today is that it actually is extremely regressive to say that just because you don't conform to the male or female stereotype, you therefor are transgender and should transition. It is the exact opposite of what gay acceptance strived for.
Hysterically complaining is an excellent reason to lean on someone causing them to get killed. /s
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
We aren't smarter for sure but we're less ignorant i'd say, if ignorance = unawareness of random facts (e.g. the weather, how old some actor is, if a store is open) now that we have devices capable of retrieving those facts at any time in our pockets. What to do with those facts, what facts actually matter, and what do they actually mean in the context of solving problems? Who knows really...
Would we (I'm of an older generation) have been less ignorant if I'd been carrying a pocket encyclopedia with me? Doesn't seem the appropriate word. > if a store is open Well, you don't need to tell if you plan ahead. That's how it used to be. Shops here opened from 9 to 6, except on Saturday (shorter), and never on a Sunday. There simply was no reason to look up opening hours. And if you needed something after 6, yo…
I'm sure there's information that you appreciate being at your fingertips that wasn't there before. I think we've taken for granted really how easy it is now to access information, and how annoying/difficult it used to be, and the consequences of that, many of which are clearly positive. It's just now we're at the stage where we are starting to be a bit more critical instead of jubilant about it.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#129Its exactly the opposite. Back then, everyone was so smart. It was only people near the top of the bell curve who could access the internet in the 90's. Then sometime circa 2007, it stopped being a place mainly for intellectual discussion and pivoted to memes, entertainment, and political tribalism.
Re: Was everyone stupid back then?
#130I was around when the internet came out and I don't remember anyone saying it would fix everything. People thought it was cool and would fix some stuff which it kind of has - we have Wikipedia for example and anyone in the world can read smbc-comics pretty much for free.
Other stuff has been disappointing, like it seems to have made the left/right wing arguments more polarized. Maybe we'll get a fix for that?
Something that seems a big deal but it doesn't get much credit for is pre internet there were lots of talk about third world poverty, people starving and the like. That's got way better and I think better communications have a lot to do with it.