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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#121

Post by acdha »

alnwlsn wrote: post #93
baal80spam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

I think it's most obvious in hindsight, probably it was a long time (some decades) before cars were understood to have much of a negative effect at all. Nobody* thought much about air pollution (even adding lead to the gasoline) or climate effects, or what would happen when cities were built enough that they were then dependent on cars, or what happens when gas or cars gets expensive. All they saw was that trips taki…

If you read the period news, pretty much everything except lead poisoning and climate change was well known by the 1920s. Rich people wanted cars but a ton of places had resistance from everyone else to what they correctly recognized as removing the public spaces they used and shifting externalities to, for example, the people being hit by cars.

What’s really interesting is that you can find newspaper columns in the 1920s recognizing what we now call induced demand as even by then it was clear that adding road capacity simply inspired more people to drive.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#122

Post by throw4847285 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #80

The Industrial Revolution - the greatest thing ever to happen - required the British govt to deploy more troops against Luddites than they had fighting Napoleon at the same time. Damaging machinery was made a capital offense and they had dozens of executions, hundreds of deportations. At every stage, the steady progress of civilization is fragile and in danger of being suffocated. Its opponents cloak themselves in mo…

This kind of black and white moral thinking is corrosive to one's intelligence. You're allowed to talk about who benefits from massive society change and who suffers. You are allowed to talk about the ways that technology is implemented and how that leads to pros and cons. An attitude of "if we ever stop moving forward and think then the evil bad people win" is deeply anti-intellectual.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#123

Post by ernst_klim »

yubblegum wrote: post #63

I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" an…

> to eliminate "useless eaters"

It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people.

It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replacement are a fuss, a pile of lies to justify layoffs and worsening financial situation.

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-opencla...

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#124

Post by nehal3m »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #104
kraquepype wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I never want to live in a society that views individualism as toxic

You’re equivocating, your parent specifically named an example of toxic individualism, they did not say or imply that individualism is toxic.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#125

Post by kraquepype »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #104
kraquepype wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I never want to live in a society that views individualism as toxic

Saying that a type of individualism is toxic, doesn't mean that all individualism is toxic. Did adjectives change somehow?

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#126

Post by engeljohnb »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #61
willrshansen wrote: post #7

If there's too many lies, "source or gtfo" becomes more important

that's the neat part, the source is also going to be bullshit slop!

Therefore, you can dismiss whatwever claim is being made. That's the reason to ask for the source: so you can judge whether it's reliable.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#127

Post by Earw0rm »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #112
throwway120385 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a net positive effect for every owner, except that they seem to facilitate and encourage ways of living that require automobile ownership as a condition of adulthood in most places. So I'm not entirely sure they're a vast net positive in every value system. In yours, yes, but not in mine.

[flagged]

It's fine if people choose it.

It's not fine if that choice denies other people the choice not to.

And there seems to be a lot of the latter.

For example, when shopping facilities or hospitals are built so as to be, de-facto, only accessible by automobile, that locks people out of the choice to say no thanks.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#128

Post by Ifkaluva »

layer8 wrote: post #102
Ifkaluva wrote: post #100

I don’t think this is the right take. To take the car analogy: it matters how we use the car. The car in itself can be used to save time and energy that would otherwise be used to walk to places. That extra time and energy can be used well, or poorly. - It can be squandered by having a longer commute that defeats the point - Alternatively, it can be wasted by sitting on a couch consuming Netflix or TikTok - Alternati…

While I agree in principle, I don’t know how much faith is warranted in humans using it wisely in practice.

I agree with you that the majority of people will use it to feed their attention and energy to the attention economy. Meta will be more profitable than ever, as will TikTok, Netflix, YouTube

But the majority have always chosen the path of least resistance. This is not new! Socrates’ famous exhortation is “the unexamined life is not worth living”. People were living mindlessly on autopilot before TikTok.

I think if you want to give a call to action, as this piece does, the right call to action is “think carefully about how you can make a good use of your time and energy, now that the default path has changed.” I know it’s not as simple or emotionally powerful as “go down kicking and screaming, stick it to the man”, but as a rule of thumb, the less fiercely emotional path is usually the right one.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#129

Post by nradov »

kraquepype wrote: post #106
nradov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upsides of automobiles, or personal mobility in general, are enormous . I can go wherever I want, whenever I want along with other people and cargo. I don't have to wait for a schedule set by someone else, or worry about union strikes. I love my cars!

Those are all enormous benefits to you and you alone. The greatest thing about cars are the things they do for you. In order for someone else to have those benefits, they also need a car. If as a society, if we could feel the same way about public transit, bike lanes, sidewalks, that you do about your own personal vehicle - we'd be better off.

[flagged]

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#130

Post by acdha »

geremiiah wrote: post #83
yubblegum wrote: post #63

I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" an…

> This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it If AI is smart enough to replace the 99.999% it's also smart enough to replace the 0.001%.

Yes, but that isn’t the question as long as those wealthy people control most of the system: companies aren’t going to lose executives, they’ll shed the jobs which they don’t respect. Someone wealthy does not need to accept a bad deal to avoid sleeping on thr street. It’s everyone who isn’t insulated who has to actually compete for work.
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