161–170 of 186 posts
Trying to replace everyone with AI and actively build a surveillance state also won't lead us to a better future. They say Black Mirror is dystopian but I would say we are on the dystopian timeline so it is just emulating reality a few years into the future.
Thats why we need a strong open source competitor to closed source AI.
Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there woul…
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For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses. We have a society (in the US) where cops often shoot first and ask questions later, but many people still do crimes. People will take risks about things that desperately matter to them, and indeed stories of such risk-taking are common cultural fodder. Are you not just generalizing from…
No. You are just generalizing from specific news stories you've read about cops.
I agree in the sense that Black Mirror seems almost required to be extra pessimistic when... there's a better and far more complex story available with a different approach or ending. Granted I'm also WAY burnt out on pessimistic Si-Fi, it's the default now, and it's predicable and far too easy. That's not to say it can't be mostly dark, but for many movies and shows, that's most of the meat...
> Granted I'm also WAY burnt out on pessimistic Si-Fi, it's the default now, and it's predicable and far too easy. Gosh yeah. Even watching Black Mirror this season is difficult because I'm so tired of dystopian stuff. Can you recommend any recent non-dystopian scifi?
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> Granted I'm also WAY burnt out on pessimistic Si-Fi, it's the default now, and it's predicable and far too easy. Gosh yeah. Even watching Black Mirror this season is difficult because I'm so tired of dystopian stuff. Can you recommend any recent non-dystopian scifi?
Honestly I was just thinking of watching old Star Trek DS9
The Orville is really good if you haven't seen it yet
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The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people. Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society. This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.
I understand that is the goal. I just don't think it succeeds. To show darkness you have to have light. You can't cast a shadow if its pitch black. In terms of black mirror, they show a society devoid of humanity, true. But in most episodes (there are probably some exceptions) it feels like the lack of humanity is not because of technology, but because the world of the show is populated by monsters. As a result, it d…
But...that's always been the case. Technology is a tool, and a tool is neither good nor evil; it's how you choose to use it. That gets repeated here all the time. Tech grants powers to people that we didn't have before, so people with a propensity to perpetrate evil can do it at efficiently at scale. The same goes for people who want to do good but aren't aware of the consequences of their actions. We can learn a lot more from the failure cases than the happy path, and it makes for more entertaining stories.
It's not that Black Mirror is bad. It's that, as the article points out, we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal. The author mentions Jill Lapore's 2017 article in the New Yorker, which is sort of a survey paper of dystopian fiction from that period.[1] No alternatives are presented. For most of human history, the big problem was making enough stuff. There just wasn't any way to make enough st…
I remember an article, I think by Neal Stephenson, that described the change in the attitude of SF over the years. Things like 20000 leagues under the sea, off on a comet etc. were optimistic, adventurous and generally upbeat. Even the Asimov books were more about world building than doomsaying. There's quite a bit of dystopian pessimistic stuff that's in the market now and perhaps it's just because it's what sells o…
Frankenstein is considered by many to be among the first science fiction books and is essentially a Black Mirror story from the 1800's. You had HG Wells and War of the Worlds for example. The Time Machine by HG Wells also portrays a possible negative vision for humanity based on an extrapolation of the social trends of the time.
Look at Asimov's robot stories. The orignal "robot" story was not from Asimov but a pessimistic story written in the 1920's about killer robots attacking people and being violent and all that. Asimov's optimistic peaceful robot stories were actually a reaction to the pessmistic violent robot stories that had been popular previously.
I think humans generally over the past few centuries have had uneasy feelings about technological changes and then that is reflected in dystopian, negative fiction. People react to that negativity by intentionally writing bright optimistic positive science fiction stories.
Look at Star Trek the Original Series for my final example. That tv show came out during the turmoil of the late 1960's and it responded to that turmoil and feelings of nuclear holocaust with a vision of the future that was filled with optimism and idealism.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/apr/04/if-you-...
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The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there woul…
> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to b…
I am doing everything I can think of to stop AI companies from building a god (to borrow your words). Last year and this year I've donated five figures to nonprofits that are trying to slow down AI development. I write letters to legislators whenever the opportunity arises — I wrote a letter to Gavin Newsom urging him to support SB-1047, which unfortunately he did not do; also wrote a letter to Scott Weiner offering support and encouraging him to keep trying.
You could do the same. I'm not confident about what's the best thing to do and I think the things I've done probably didn't help, but they are worth trying anyway.
Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…