231–240 of 352 posts
The book came out in 2005. Was there any follow up, I didn't see one on the wiki. It seems like we are accelerating to this. Even the changes between 2005 and 2024. Near 20 years, we've leaned into the Huxley vision. Really leaned into it. This is all getting really scary. I feel like we should do something. We should really band together and change course. I volunteer to go out and do something, except of course, I'…
Sounds like I need this book added to my reading list. I've not been able to get through Brave New World, but I might give it another try also.
People make too much of what Orwell supposedly feared may happen some day. He was writing about stuff the Soviet and British governments were doing in his time, and in particular, imagined what Soviet rule over Britain may look like. Assigning this philosophy to him and criticizing him for it seems unfair.
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I agree. _Animal Farm_ was taught to me by my capitalist and authoritarian teachers as an anti-communist screed. The problem with the farm is that the pigs end up being capitalists, though I have never seen or heard of the text being taught to children as an anti-capitalist text. This culture does a very good job of assuming that the field of possibilities can easily and quickly be reduced to two choices and, further…
It's neither anti-capitalist nor anti-communist, just anti-authoritarian.
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Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a game, not more but also not less.
But playing Chess at any serious level (more than a couple hours a week) has some non Chess side effects; it teaches you to examine your own behaviour, it teaches you that even if you're very good you can still lose (and hopefully how to lose well), and it teaches you that the other side gets a vote (get a turn, no action happens in a vacuum). All of which are very valuable life lessons.
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Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a game, not more but also not less.
Life is a game no more no less. If you can be a champion at anything you deserve recognition - just look at the people lauded for chugging dozens of hot dogs
Life can look like a game, but to think it is nothing more betrays just how easy you have it.
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I think they mean the literal opposite of things staying the same, not the "helping people" idiom.
Fair enough, but for the sake of this conversation, if we say 'good' values are those that keep things from staying the same, aren't the values of smart people just as likely to evolve towards 'bad' ones? For example, I'm sure most people know at least one smart person who only plays video games; it does seem that we'll keep inventing forms of entertainment that wirehead people more and more effectively, which seems…
For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…
Precisely - the medium is the message. Books are slow, deliberate, require imagination and attention. Seven second tiktok videos are the opposite. The method by which we consume the information impacts us just as much if not more than its content.
The other strange part of video media is that intimate parasocial relationships it builds.
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Sure, but they’re also outbidding me for a house.
Are you trying to get in a "good school district" ? Is that really that strongly correlated to kids outcome in life . kids grow up and fight for a house in good school district :). I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl justify all sorts of things (like wars and bidding for houses) and say that they are doing those things for sake of their kids.
Anyway, I just took a job helping get more houses off gas and on heat pumps, which is aligned with my goal to be part of addressing climate change, but it is hard to get a house near work (in Amsterdam in this case) when not optimising for pay.