101–110 of 203 posts
Is this a variation of the old "don't fucking complain about the status quo, you have a telescreen, not even the kings of old had a telescreen watching them! How dare you question the titans of industry, whose minion's diligent effort has provided you a telescreen at an affordable price!"?
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> Propaganda for what, exactly? The status quo. Framing things in this way is something I first encountered in libertarian/capitalist propaganda (when I didn't know better and was basically a dogmatic libertarian). The message is basically: people should focus on the goods the status quo provides, instead of the political power, economic security, etc. that it doesn't.
I don't see why pointing out improvements in quality of life is "propaganda for the status quo" or precludes talking about political power and economic security. We can and do talk about both all the time.
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Can confirm. As someone living on well water in an area with semi-frequent power outages in winter I have periodically been given renewed appreciation for the value of power, central heat and running water. Now I have a great standby generator, though, so I'm sure I'll start taking it all for granted again soon.
> As someone living on well water in an area with semi-frequent power outages in winter After a few of these outages and typically two to three nines of utility power availability, I got a portable generator for my well (we have an automatic generator for the house, but the well is on a separate meter); but we've also had a well pump fail. That was "fun", I think the well company came out the next day to troubleshoot…
I can’t imagine ever affording such a nice apartment.
In the US, it's pretty easy. My wife used to live in the Tenderloin for $2400/mo and her place was nicer than this because she was good at putting things together. I don't happen to have a photo of the whole studio handy, but here's the view from the window: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/images/b/b7/Photo_-_San_Fran...
> I am an associate program officer in the Abundance and Growth Fund at Coefficient Giving, where I lead our grantmaking on Innovation Policy. In this role, I aim to identify and support efforts to safely accelerate scientific progress and innovation. I am motivated by the broader goals of improving scientific research, funding, institutions, and incentive structures through creativity and experimentation, and I am always excited to connect with others who share those goals (feel free to reach out at jordan.dworkin@coefficientgiving.org).
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It's possible to mistakenly think you've solved a problem when you've actually made the situation worse, of course, and that's just plainly a bad thing. It's important to be able to identify specific things which we thought were solutions but were actually new worse problems, and roll them back if possible. [0] But that's not really what the hedonic treadmill refers to! The hedonic treadmill is referring to the fact…
I feel that oftentimes our biggest problems come with the irresponsible scaling up of certain solutions, at which point it is usually too late to roll back because we have come to depend on them. There has to be some time between the moment we invent something great and the moment we make trillions of the thing and realize, oh, maybe that's a problem. But we don't pace ourselves. And if we keep plowing ahead heedless…
When there's a specific explanation why a specific experiment should move slowly (or even be prohibited), I respect that, but the explanation can't just be "we don't know all the bad things that might happen as a result of this experiment." That's the precautionary principle, which I staunchly oppose.
This is an interesting premise, and I would like to read the article, but the weird scrolling makes that almost impossible; the pictures overlay the text to such an extent that I can only read a couple of lines at a time. I wish there were some browser feature that would force sites to use normal scrolling.
This is so ironically on point. I recall reading a shampoo bottle in the bathroom maybe 25 years ago because there was nothing else to read. Meanwhile now you are correctly complaining about how weird the scrolling feels like.
Take the first quote. If only we had music on demand, "the limit of human felicity" could be attained. Yet -- we now have music on demand and clearly it did not cause everyone permanent happiness.
What I take from this is that material things actually matter very little to the attainment of meaning. Meaning comes from elsewhere.
I have running water, it's true, but I'm still bothered by the AI slop art in this article. Funny thing, that.
Rent, food, transport and healthcare are still very significant costs for the average person, and those are just the basics.
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We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years
Good idea. We did have one a few years ago: the Covid pandemic. Societies around the world did not handle it well, or worse, many of those that did spawned smaller chaos monkeys.